Carl Spackler

I think that's pretty much true. I'm nearly a silver elite at Delta this year for my business travels and I use Delta nearly exclusively. But without a doubt, our main problem is Atlanta. When I absolutely have to get to a meeting without fail, I will not accept an Atlanta connection. If ATL is the only way, I take another carrier. I think our service is better than anyone else's, but it's the missed connection in ATL that I cannot risk.

Carl

scambo1

Carl;

Aint it the truth. I have been the victim of the atl rolling snowball, canx, overbook, re-book, go to hotel. The only sure fire way I have seen to avoid it is to take the 1st flight of the day thru ATL for the connection.

Did you north guys use checklists? I am intentionally flaming.

Merry Christmas to the homies of APC! Remember the reason for the season.

Scambo

Carl Spackler

Merry Christmas to you as well my brudda!

Carl

Rather B Fishin

Hey Carl, thanks for the profit sharing. The Mrs. is looking forward to spending it!!!

DeadHead

Funniest thing I've heard about fNWA guys was that when they first started putting wool seats in the cockpit standards was having a hard time keeping the pilots from facing the wrong way.


I've also heard that DELTA was an acronym for:
Do Everything Like Those Aholes.


Personally, don't really mind the fDAL vs. fNWA back-and-forths, takes a little pressure off the Dal New York Crews for once.
Why do you think DALN is associated with fNWA?

CTIIpilot

I get that. I understand about them not holding the flight. Still, they were there 5 minutes prior to departure and it was the last flight of the night which took off early. With the information technology we have today, this shouldn't happen. No reason except the agent wanting to make sure she closed it out on time. They can see that that have tight connecting customers and therefore delay in releasing the seats until the last minute. So in this case, 48 minute delay out of Denver which leads to 20 minute layover. They run, sprint, do everything they can to get there...get to the gate 5 minutes early and told thanks but no thanks. Doesn't make sense to me, they should change the policy. No amount of me citing company policy is going to calm down my sister who just dropped more f bombs than I have heard in 5 years.

I probably am biased because this same scenario has had me sleeping in the pilot lounge more than once. But that is different, I am a nonrev and they weren't expecting me. We have to value our customers or in the long run we are going to pay the price.

DeadHead

I've been noticing a push to get the planes out a few minutes early, especially with the new pushback procedures.
I think it has become a primary objective by management to drastically improve our on time performance.

I think you are kind of preaching to the choir here, it sucks we have all been there, but I don't think you are going to get any sentiment from the management side of the operation.
Even the slightest delay needs to be put on someone, and odds are it will fall on the gate agent.

Wasatch Phantom

Leaving people behind is one of my major pet peeves. These days (full flights) it can have a domino effect. If you have a cooperative gate agent and Captain you can make it happen.

Recently I had a fairly long flight and there were 12 pax that were connecting to ours. Their aircraft (DAL mainline) had landed and the jet was at the gate deplaning. Ramp was telling our agent to close the door and push. The pax would get to their destination the next day (18 hours later).

We worked together, waited for the pax, and got everybody to their destination on time. So to me it was a win-win. I'll take a hit in D-0 when we get there on time (more important statistic in my book) and take care of our customers.

You know them. They're the ones that pay our salary.

Merry Christmas Everybody!

Sink r8

If it's a great concept, surely there are issues. I like what Capn has to say, and I'd rather we discuss how we make it happen, or how we improve on the theme, than why we can't.

My concept of ALPA is that it would be an exclusive crew-leasing company, with one common exclusive contract with the carriers it now has multiple exclusive contracts with.

I would envison training to be administered by ALPA, and not by companies. We would own and operate one/several training facility(ies), the funding for which would come from the standard cost paid by the companies. The companies would only provide a few check airmen to ensure standards are met, and they would thus get out out of the pilot training business. This would shift liabilities away from companies in accidents involving pilot error (a big incentive), and the funding for proper insurance to protect ALPA also would be baked into the contract rates. All ALPA cockpits would be standardized, since there is no logical reason an A320 at United needs to be flown differently than an A320 at DAL. If you can say the right airline name on the PA, you've made the CEO happy, and the passengers comfortable. They don't care that you call your manuals FOM, POM, what color they are, whether you do or don't use memory items, and whether or not your heading bug is normally centered or not.

So if you could have, say a five year "company-lock" to develop some sort of brand identity, you would get one week of basic company indoc at the new airline, and off you go. If a company didn't like a pilot, for whatever reason, they could call ALPA, and ask for a replacement. That would help solve any fears over losing control of hiring. We could have internal procedures for dealing with such a person. Obviously, if multiple companies have a problem with an individual, that's a red flag. But again, since we would essentially be a big exclusive crew-leasing company, we would have procedures in place to police our own. It's no different than having a chief pilot.

The standards used by ALPA in training would be significantly higher. Since companies would not compete based on pilot costs, we could go back to having actual, you know... "training", with "instructors" etc. We would be the major partner is setting standards with the FAA, and we could thus ensure ALPA pilots are much, much better trained than anyone else out there. We could more effectively lobby for stricter and stricter standards, and make it more and more cost-prohibitive for non-ALPA companies that try to insource training to compete with our economies of scale.

It would be tough to become an ALPA pilot, and Pro-Strandards would play a bigger role in policing our own. Probation periods would be extended. But it would be far, far more stable and rewarding.

The main benefit of the scheme I propose is that would no longer be married to an airline. Alomst every concessionnary decision pilot groups have ever made are linked to the fear their company might not survive, which is a direct result of the current seniority system. If we had a NSL, we wouldn't have that problem. If a company gets close to dying, it's healthier for the industry that it dies, and it would beneficial to the pilots to turn in their wings for another set of wings, and go fly somewhere else in a healthy industry.

Another area that would yield great personal satisfaction is that we could almost eliminate commuting. If you live in Houston, it would be nice to fly for UCAL. The only reason you wouldn't under today's system is if you expected a better career somewhere else. With a common contract, there would be no incentive to go fly for anyone but UCAL. But still, if your wife got a new job in Atlanta, and Atlanta positions were available for bidding, and you were of your "company-lock"... off you go to DAL.

There are many economic benefits to such a scheme. One of the most obvious is that you can more easily agree on a "baseline" compensation package, and simply adjust for inflation. If pilots had simply been able to hang on to what we once had, with cost of living adjsutments, we would be doing back-flips every morning. The scheme I propose might take contract negotiations down to arguing over a paragraph here and there, and fighting like hell over a tenth of a percent in inflation figures. Add some profit-sharing to capture economic upside, and you could have a decent, predictable contract.

At the end of the day, we don't have the same amount of face-to-face interraction with the customer as F/A's. It's more important for other groups to be immersed in the culture. We provided a technical product that doesn't actually need to be differentiated across brands. A greaser is a greaser, a crash is a crash. A minimum amount of company-specific indoc is all we would need. That makes us almost like fuel. We could be a common, predictable expense across the industry. We could negotitae one contract, as one block, against the ATA as ablock. They would get predictable costs, a much more predictable labor environment, deferred/reduced liabilities. We would stop having to give a kidney every time the company we're married to has a hickup, and we wouldn't have to be burried with it if it died.

1234

I would recommend you request additional facts from them while they are complaining. We all know, once someone knows you work for an airline, people feel like it is their responsibility to tell you why airlines suck and more importantly why the company you work for is the worst (unless maybe you work for SWA because we all know that everyone loves luv ).

Who was telling them that the flight would be held, a Delta rep or some airport/tsa worker that has no clue? How long was their "delay" in the airport and why were those 11 customers the only ones that were impacted? Were they running a little late themselves to the airport?

Sorry, I get tired of hearing this sort of stuff from my own family and have now turned it around to continually complain about what poor service I get when I use a company that they work for. I know that two wrongs don't make a right, but it really can get tiring, as you all know. I am proud to be a Delta Air Lines employee!

Merry Christmas to all!