DeadHead

Personally, I felt the tone was more towards well "what are you willing to give up" as opposed to "what are looking for".

Do we, as a pilot group, even get to see any type of feedback from the survey? How many pilots participated? Where the majority of the pilot group fell on the issues?

I can't see any harm in releasing this to the pilot group, if anything it might send a strong united message to both ALPA and Management.

Columbia

Sent in my dpa card...

tsquare

It is not necessarily that I saw that per se. (but that is a good observation) The questions where you had to choose whether something was absolutely critical, merely critical, critical.. etc (TIC) seemed a bit managing to me. All these issues are absolutely critical IMHO. We have been on a BK contract for 10+ years now!! Almost half of my career. The problem that I see is the DALPA leadership will tout our existing contract as being industry leading in many ways, which it probably is. But that doesn't acknowledge the fact that I just intimated: we have been on a BK contract for 10+ years. Restoration (whatever that means); no, improvements on a galactic scale are absolutely paramount. And I don't know about you, but I cannot realistically rank seven items in a particular order of importance. After number 2, I am just filling it in so I can move on. I have no earthly idea whether something is 6th most important in my mind.. no wait.. it is actually 5th more important... really? I guess in a way, a survey is not really necessary. I mean, does the leadership really need a poll to determine what is/is not important to the pilot group at this point? Fire away ya'll.

Pineapple Guy

tsquare, if ALPA had infinite leverage, and DAL had infinite money, then there would be no need to rank anything. We simply demand EVERYTHING.... and DAL gives it to us. Unfortunately, in the world we live in, regardless of what we think we are worth, or what we used to have, or what is "fair", our leverage is finite, and DAL's ability to give is finite; thus, there will have to be some ranking of what is most important. Even assuming we can get 99 things out of our collective top 100, everyone's top 100 is slightly different, so ALPA needs to know which item is collectively the last priority.... so they can go get the other 99.

I know in forum world we just demand C2K + COLA, plus the pension, plus the work rules, etc. etc. and management gives it to us.... after the ALPA President goes to jail for a few days because "we're all made as hell and we're not gonna take it anymore..."

But the real world is a bit different.

Columbia

Interesting. I agree. I went through it thinking that not everything or even most things could be of critical importance, that I had to be reasonable with myself. After all, I can't "have it all" it's either one or the other. Similar to ordering at a restaurant with the kids: "You can only want one thing the most."
Total expectation management. Where's the question about pay: "Is it of critical importance to you that pay at least matches that of SW and soon to be Airtran?"
Where's the comparison to AF/KLM btw?

DeadHead

Can't agree more, the ranking questions, in particular, pi$$ed me off.
The whole thing of playing word semantics with the ranking system in some way makes it seem that certain contractual concerns are of unimportance to the pilot group.

For Example,
Where would you be prefer to be violently attacked/punched/kicked repeatedly?
(Rank the following Least/Most Important)
_ In the throat
_ In the back
_ Between the legs
_ In the face
_ Smacked in the face with a tabasco-soaked, riding crop

Based on the word play of that question one could come to the assumption that one would be most in favor of being smacked in the face with a tabasco-soaked riding crop, when maybe the individual answering the question may just not want to be violently attacked in the first place. That is why I don't think ranking questions are very applicable to an opinion orientated survey.

I'm glad the survey is out, and I'm glad I have an opportunity to give my input, but I still felt as though I was being painted into a corner with an answer from a carefully-crafted question.

acl65pilot

One thing we need to be cognizant of is: DAL may dump all insurance in favor of paying the 2,000 per employee penalty in a few years. It would be good business if we had verbiage to guarantee that more plans besides the two pilot plans be offered to us in case of that eventuality.

ilinipilot

I asked my chief pilot the exact reserve quest this week. I was told that it goes towards your credit for the month and thats it. if you think you will be on reserve and fly a lot then its worth it to keep the trip and maybe end up above guarantee. another benefit is it will raise your raw score. Plus if you end up carrying in a lot of time that sometimes gives you a better chance of a line.

But i traded for a trip this month with a higher time trip next month and it knocked my gurarantee down this month by five hours. so i would look at both months together. in my case it was 65 this month and 70 next month (assume reserve)
when i traded for the trip it was 60 this month and 70next month. so i am trying to trade back for the trip.since there is no way i will be above or even close to gura next month
hope it helps
I

hoserpilot

Almost OCTOBER!!!!! Nice Beer eh!!

newKnow

Why would they do that?