Scoop

George,

Funny how the LAX 737 are the only CAPT bids not out yet. I guess its getting harder and harder for PBS to find a solution to Alaska flying so many of Deltas passengers out of LAX. No wonder that the 737 leads DAL in total credit and LAX leads the 737.

But the Alaska code share is really good for us - just keep repeating it fellas. I hope DALPA figures this out.


Scoop

DeadHead

Apparently fiber is good for me to....

forgot to bid

Do we have wifi at the training center? Since we don't have paper books anymore I just wanted to know if I could fire up my laptop.

Carl Spackler

I understand Scoop, but it's been my experience that once an airline loses control of its brand and believes the outsourcing "strategy", they never go back. It's almost as though they can't figure out how even if they wanted to. In the case of SWA and the few others that actually want to control their brand by only entrusting it with their own people, while it's true it could change with the next CEO, it's not that way now.

Given the option between an airline/ticket broker that has already adopted the outsourcing strategy versus an airline that wants to run like an airline, I'll take the latter. There's risk in the latter turning into a ticket broker also, but there's way more risk in staying with the ticket broker and hoping they'll turn back into an airline. As a young person today, I would only consider Delta a stepping stone to gain experience until SWA or FDX called.

Carl

capncrunch

I just had a jumpseater who was coming back from his ASA interview. He said that they told him something along the lines of "this is also your Delta interview". He also said that he not only did the ASA interview but they sent him to Delta to do the same cognitive/psych tests that he did at ASA.

I'm curious what is going on and how this ties into the ASA flow up business I've been hearing about.

Anybody know anything more?

gloopy

I don't think its that linear. AMR is a financial wreck. They are only in our peer set because of their size, but their financials make them as much of a "different animal" as Frontier.

SWA is our closest comparison for narrowbody flying and up proportionately from there. We are making billions while paying down billions in debt. AMR is losing their shirt every single day.

If the APA caves that still won't save AMR. And an AMR in retreat mode that guts its operation by shredding narrowbody scope only means on the flying they now outsource, we are competing with JB and AS, which we are already competing with and both are growing regardless. BFD.

SWA+ in all areas with very significant scope recapture including and especially the AS code share abuse. No matter what the APA does, this does not change our position. If no airline can ever strike, then no airline management would ever offer more than 10 bucks an hour with no bennefits. Even though the process is unfair and the road is long, we still have the nuclear option of a strike, plus the ability to turn this into a USAir with our next merger ambitions. We still have leverage. The key is making a reasonable presentation:

Profitable low cost carrier parity with reasonable premiums up from there to account for our significantly higher per pilot revenue and significant scope recapture in all areas while still providing plenty of flexibility within DCI, AS and AF/KLM and other JV's and an overall cost structure VERY competitive with our biggest domestic competitor and our biggest JV partner.

And COLA is not a raise. Any year less than 5-6% is a pay cut, more in the future as global money printing causes even higher inflation.

forgot to bid

How come it wasn't also his United interview?

gloopy

Yeah really. I don't see what a one way, management negotiated flow up would do for the company. It wouldn't "supply pilots" any more than just hiring whatever number you wanted to from that airline would in the first place. So why even get your hands in it.

The only thing I could see is DL management wanting some source of quality control so they get their mits on the interview process. But again, big deal. DL still has an interview process. So what if someone passed a cog test 5 or 10 years ago? It doesn't save anything giving it to them now versus way back then, and now is a better indicator anyway.

If we get a massive one way flow through with ASA/ExpressJet, how does that help DL get more pilots when the time comes (if the time comes)? If anything that will just incentivise junior pilots waiting on the flow to try and "seniority jump" by going somewhere else before they could flow to DL, sometimes years sooner.

With no code share, and if/when DL was hiring, they could still go to any regional airline they wanted to and say "we'll take ___ number of pilots" and have the added flexibility of taking them in any order they wanted.

If the hope is we can get the "cream of the crop" by inticing them to hang around for the flow through, that makes no sense either. Unless you want DL over others and are willing to pass others up anyway, then even with the flow you can sit back and bank on that while shopping your other options that will get you to the kind of airline you want to be even faster than waiting to flow.

If this rumor is true, I doubt there's very much exclusivity in it. Remember, Compass also "did the DL interview" and yet that flow was cancelled. Other regionals in the past used the same cog and/or psych tests like Eagle and Comair. DL has proven it likes to hire tons of regional pilots from places that don't have a DL style interview, so DL just gives them a quick DL style interview.

Unless this rumored deal includes some sort of binding element on the pilot's end of the deal (which I very much doubt) I don't see it accomplishing much other than some middle level guy getting a bonus for "taking care of" the future hiring problem (scope notwithstanding).

I'm not against a flow or pref hiring in and of itself, but WRT the issue of getting the best pilots in a pilot's market in the future, we will need to be the best choice for pilots by being the best place to work. Our management will have to put our pilots first, pay us much better and chose us to do this company's flying. Without those improvements, we just look like "another major airline" to future DL pilot candidates. No flow will ever change that in the slightest.

acl65pilot

Told ya something was going on with ASA and DAL.

Boomer

From the FltOps.com Job Fair posting:
Are these the guys getting a Delta interview? What the heck is 100 MEI?

Some days I really hate this industry.