NWA320pilot

What if someone picks 2 and 3?

forgot to bid

You know the irony here is as years go by salaries decrease while the safety record increases. Just an observation.

forgot to bid

Don't forget 4):

forgot to bid

I think that most people don't deny the growth and competition factors post deregulation put a clamp on the good ole' days of being over paid, over sexed and under worked. An admirable goal to reattain in future contracts.

But here, this might explain the angst. Regardless of how we've gotten here, why is the following true and what can we expect next contract?



Because after reading things from pro-DALPA guys on this thread and from what an ALPA guy from Airtran (ironically about to be SWAPA with a huge pay raise) is that you shouldn't expect anything more. We'll be lucky not to take a pay cut while giving back section 1. Yeah! C2012, I hope our 744 drivers make at least 90% what a SWA 737 driver makes.

Really, this has nothing to do with DPA but rather just a big wow from those of us outsiders for so long who thought DALPA was the one got C2K rates KNOWING that Delta couldn't afford them and told Delta to park those damn 777s until you give us a rate. I mean I frankly thought I'd here more "okay guys, look us in the eyes, stick with us, we are going to get paid what we deserve! READY! HERE WE GO!"

Not RJs are good, scope relaxation isn't a bad thing, what are you willing to give up, that costs money, your expectations are out of line, blah blah blah.

Just disheartening to say the least.

Pineapple Guy

You tell me. Just why DOES SWA pay more than DAL (at the moment)?

Could it have anything to do with $5,466,000 compared to ($14,371,000) ?

hint: click DAL Balance Sheet | Delta Air Lines Inc. (New) Comm Stock - Yahoo! Finance

acl65pilot

FtB;
I do not think anyone, ALPA, DALPA, DAL Management thought that the decline in the margins was a lasting thing. No one could have predicted 9-11 a few months after inking C2K, no one could predict that SWA would have won the lotto on fuel hedging when the rest of us were up to our eyeballs in debt and could not hedge, no one could have predicted that their hedging would have lasted until 2009, which allowed them to keep their wages up, and prices down. A lucky business decision that will probably never happen again allowed them to look a lot better than they really are. The legacies miscalculation of this caused many to mortgage their companies to weather what many thought was a passing storm and guessing wrong.

It is a compiling of issues, add it it internet ticketing and it is no wonder that many went in to CH 11 slashed contracts, and shed debt. SWA which mind you caused much of the prolonged suffering by a great hedge (good business decision) put the final nail in the legacies coffin. As much as we do not want to admit it, CH 11 reset that, and SWA exasperated it.

You points could be argued as valid after this section six cycle if we accept less, or ALPA does not go for more than the beloved SWA rates and tries to sell you on it. Making this case prior to a section six or an interim agreement that is inked in a profitable time is nonsense.

You are a pragmatic guy, I know you are, I understand the frustration. I too want our rates and work rules to blow those little orange jets out of the water, and I suspect they will. Making darn near a billion dollars in a quarter shows us it is possible. Keeping the P/L in the black reaffirms our charge.

Sink r8

I think part of the problem is that we're ignoring the environment around us. The only way a company will grant more than it can "afford" is if the competitive landscape requires it, i.e. if competitors are stuck doing same. When we negotiated C2K, don't forget that the bag sickers all said "United Plus". When we negotiated the 777 rate, we also traded 3B6 (I think that was the right section) for it, i.e. we waved our leverage to do hold up operation of a new aircraft type in the future. And the 777 numbers were so few, that the rate could have been $500, without materially affecting the contract.

Since then, we've seen that pilot groups will go through any length to keep a company afloat, because our seniority is not portable, which tilts the equation further to the company's favor.

Now, I do agree with you that there is something distasteful in the continuous "what are you willing to give up for it" talk, which is another way to say it's impossible to achieve more. And we all can guess how a defeatist attitude at the start would affect the result of any negotiation...

Personally, I think we would gain much more if we could alter the environment in a way that makes pilot costs a constant across the industry. When I dream, I see a future where ALPA would simply be an exclusive crew-leasing company to the airlines, and pilots would be no more tied to a carrier than a plumber to your personal sink. I also see much to be gained by controlling the supply of pilots by maintaining higher barriers to entry (i.e. advocating for higher and higher certification requirements, etc.).

When I'm not dreaming, and I look at this industry, the one we actually operate in, I want a negotiating philosophy that's somewhere between the debilitating and lame "no, we can't", and the unenforceable "we want". As I said before, I'd rather simply dial in on a logical place where we should be, considering the profitability of the company, but without regard to the other groups. In other words, if DALPA could articulate clearlly where the "sweet-spot" that doesn't quite kill off the goose, I'd sign up for that. Stated yet differently, if we could articulate that the company is good for X millions/year more (comfortably or not), and we could back up that number, I would then expect polling to discuss the group's priorites in how to distribute it, and then we spool up the Strike Committee, work the press to pretend we have the right to strike, tire the owners, and get to where we rightfully need to be.

scambo1

Waaaay too simplistic PG;

Airlines are a cash FLOW business. Debt service takes some of the flow, but the scale of DAL vs LUV is significant. However, the debt inequity may have made SWAPA's job easier.

We should be about a year into the debt levelling right now. One more year and all debt servicing flattens out YOY. Then we are back to pure cash flow business...money comes in, money goes out, kind of like breathing. The residual profit should be deposited into our bank accounts.

Oh yeah PG,

We dont have to discuss this because I think it is 1, 2 and 3.

ALPA hasn't set a fixed cost to each seat.
Pilots got too far over their heads in the good times and had to take whatever cut or they might lose their house.
Deregulation brought opportunities and new traps to the business, most of which ALPA missed until they tripped over them.

forgot to bid

So PG, you believe pay should be based upon how much the company makes?

So take a snap shot in one year and project how much you think the company should make and cement pay tables off of a one time guess? So then it's really not about how much the company makes is it? It's about how much we think they'll make. It's an asinine system. It's probably why management teams throughout the industry laugh at pilot groups.

Because SWA is still going to pay their 737 pilots more than our 747 pilots despite the fact that the end of 2010 we're projected to net $1.3-$1.4 billion and they'll net maybe $500-600M.

I ask because why didn't we negotiate a snap back in 05 or even with LOA 19?

More importantly, moving forward, should 747 pilots at Delta be paid more than 737 pilots at SWA? How much more? How much less?

You could have the current system of pay tables as is, but I think you should have snap back provisions.

Sink r8

FTB,

I don't quite understand the logic on the snap-back statement. Snap-backs are given in return for concessions, in case the company does better than estimated, in the future. If you're after improvements, or getting imporvements, you generally don't want snap-backs. The company might want snap-back-downs, but I don't see how/why we could have negotiated snapbacks in LOA 19. We needed them in LOA 46 and 51, but those were the bend-over contracts, remember? It's pretty clear to me why we didn't get them back then. Was that before your time?

The mechanism often used to get more when times are better, when used in conjuction with contractual improvements, is often profit-sharing, something we already negotiated. I'd like it to be more, but the kind of variable adjustment you describe is already present, even if not enough in amplitude.