Originally Posted by Max Glide

Quote:





Originally Posted by BATOL


Ok, now that I got THAT off my chest...

1- Downgrades. Yes, we are still downgradeing. If you don't understand why, read the Bloch award. Basically, due to current numbers, a 900 captain seat can only go to a legacy Mesaba pilot right now. So legacy Pinnacle captains loosing their 200 seats can't "displace" into the left seat of the 900. They can however go to the right seat of the 900 and continue to receive captain pay (thanks to an LOA) as an FO with a sweet schedule. Effectively nobody is being displaced from CA PAY to FO PAY.

2- No upgrades. If you are a legacy Pinnacle FO, I can see how you would feel this way. The Bloch award will bite you guys in the rear pretty hard. If that upsets you, remember the context that led to Bloch getting involved in the first place. XJ wanted a fairly equitable more or less DOH SLI, 9E wanted to staple XJ pilots essentially to the bottom of their list. Remember "hired not acquired"? Your idiot short sighted SLI negotiator was the best thing ever to happen to XJ and Colgan! If you are a legacy XJ FO, upgrades are forthcoming. In fact there where some on the phantom 14-08. You'll notice they where all prior XJ though.

3- 10 year upgrade due to "lifers". If we get to 81 airframes, which I for one doubt we will, they're saying ~900 line pilots. That's active flying bidding pilots. There are roughly 300 on the list that are either mgmt, FTI (full time instructors), LOA's, Mil, medical, union, or otherwise not bidding. MANY of those are the lifers of which you speak. Somebody claimed 300 lifers. Likely half of those are no-bids, leaving 150 flying. From company memos, 81 airplanes means 900 flying pilots (I have checked this with PR), 500 CA, 400 FO. 150 flying lifers means 350 "open" captain slots. Delta takes 144/year. Even if only 56 more get hired by anybody besides Delta, that's still 200 captains leaving per year. At that rate the full cadre of non-lifers gets replaced every 1.75 years. With 400 FO's, you're (your?) talking 2 year upgrade max, sustainable into perpetuity barring national economic collapse, and even then I think Delta will still be hiring. So if you where hired Jan 2015, you could be captain by 2017 and at a major of your choice by 2019 or before. To the bashers, just understand, things are different this time around. Again, barring disaster, we haven't seen this before, aside from maybe a brief glimpse in 2007 before Dubya changed the age.

3.5- FO hiring- Will not be an issue. There are always those willing to chase an upgrade, other companies will stagnate and become the next sinking ship with rats flocking to us. If it's really an issue, Delta has shown they will throw money at the problem. For the next two years, we have the highest paid FO's in the industry. Some will stay also who may have had one foot out the door before.

4- Delta's spotty history of wholy owneds. First of all, we ARE NOT SHUTTING DOWN. Not going to happen. It wouldn't make business sense. We are not Comair and Comair was not us. We have not struck and cost them millions, then tried to sue them for seniority integration. I'm sorry for those guys, but we are vastly different. Delta tried to get Comair set up like us. They wanted to take over much of their back of house to control costs. Comair said no thanks. Our management is Delta. Period. It's Delta guys. Delta is using every tool possible to make us a lean mean RJ operating machine. When everything is in place, and we are a single fleet (no 200's), I won't be surprised in the least if we are the only, or one of two 700/900 operators in DCI. Selling us would not make sense as they have no need for a massive influx of capital, and selling us would cost them control. Not sure if you've noticed, but they are ALL about control. And yes, they DO care about the product, and are pleased with the service that we provide. And they are able to control it much more closely through our close ties. Cost control is huge, but cost and quality do not exist in a vacuum. They will not take the lowest bidder despite horendous customer service (that's NWA you're thinking of).

5- We'll never see the bonus. I've heard it a bunch already. Delta will reneg on the $30k just like they renegged on the EtD. Ok, first of all, they have not renegged on the EtD. The few individuals hired under that program are still gauranteed the same provisions that they where before, including a job at Delta. And since we are not shutting down, and are upgrading, (see above) it should work out fine for them. Delta cannot "reneg" on the retention bonus as it is an LOA which is now a part of our contract. If they tried to not pay it arbitrarily, ALPA would take them to court in a pretty easy slam dunk contract law case. Now, that being said, Delta could come to our ALPA and say something like "Instead of paying out $56 million over the next two years, how about we just give you guys all seniority numbers in exchange for canceling that LOA". If the union agreed to that negotiation, I suppose then we would not see the money. But the point is the union would have to be involved and we would have a say. I for one would take that deal. Some would probably ***** and moan that they already spent the $30k and can't survive on whatever Delta is going to pay them. Can't please all the people...

6- Why did Delta do this to us? Very simply, after the merger with NWA, they inherited a legacy contract with 9e for like 225 50 seaters through 2020 or some ungodly timeframe. 9e was a managerial and performance wreck at the time, and was based in and had most of its operations in a market that Delta knew would be declining. They are masters of turning liabilties into assets. They saw an opportunity to essentially shut down a publically traded company that was a thorn in their side, even though they had a long term contract in place. If I wasn't the victim of it, I would say it was brilliant! Lo and behold, we've emerged looking more like Mesaba than ever and Delta got the regional that they always wanted but never got in Comair. Did everything go according to plan? Oh heck no! But I think at the end of the day, it went far better for them than they ever could have imagined.

7- But 200's are viable now with $70 oil. Somebody said something like "someone has to serve XYZ small market". Actually, no. No they don't. See, the thing is, at the other end of that trip from XYZ is a hub. The hub still has limited arrival and departure slots, gates, parking, infrastructure, etc. Furthermore, it takes the same number of rampers, gate agents, dispatchers, sim and ground instructors, caterers, mechanics etc. to get a 50 seater from the outstation to the hub as it takes for a 76 seater. These are "fixed costs". On a 200 they are just divided by a lower numerator. Coupled with no first class premium to further offset costs, plus an airplane that customers generally roundly despise and you can see why they are headed for the dessert. In fairness, I do beleive a FEW will persist, especially in MSP and DTW (and probably SLC) as these hubs can handle the capacity and have terminals that can't easily accomodate a 700/900, but the numbers will be significantly lower and I don't think it is in the plan for 9e to be operating them, but that's a forecast/opinion. Anyway, Delta is not stupid enough to build a business model around a momentary pull back in Brent Crude. Besides, news flash, they bought a refinery to control their fuel costs. If they wanted to operate 200's, it's not fuel cost that's justification not to. They just don't.

So what's coming?...Who knows. But they just bought a 900 sim in MSP with a rush on it and Delta paid cash. It was the fastest a sim in the US has ever gone from order to certification in history. At the same time, they ponied up another $800K for a mod to use the 200 sim as another 900 sim, bringing the total to four availble 900 sims. Considering how much one of those things costs, there is no way in HELL to justify four sims for a company with 900 pilots and 81 airplanes. Running at 75% that's 30 hours/year of sim time for every one of those 900 pilots! That's one hell of a PC!

Also, we just developed and disseminated new "post merger" manuals last year, at a significant expense. Now we are getting all new manuals again through the "TIGER" team. These manuals are basically the Delta manuals with our logo cut and pasted into them. Now, you can't tell me that they are doing this as a "favor" to us to aid our transition to Delta when some of us eventually go via the SSP. You figure it out.

Oh yeah, one more thing.
First year FO pay: $37500
Second year: $44700

I think that's all I've got.
If you have any questions I'll be in my office.




Once every five years (plus/minus 2), you run in to a post full of logic, facts; a post that is objective and well-written! This is that post!

Nice dissection of the Bloc Award and Delta’s way of doing business. Yet, there are still ‘Al Sharptons’ of aviation who would defy you on your logic and facts and ‘spin’ everything…because they want to ‘…win the argument’ and ‘…have the last word’ at any cost.

Best post.
Thank you!

Originally Posted by block30

I'm not saying this to be rude, but do you think at that point pilot feelings really matter, mainline or not? I don't know we would go straight European model anyways (newbies flying right seat in 737s or bigger). I'm sure the language or defacto implementation would make the MCL a regional solution. At least for a few years.

Cheers

Originally Posted by PCLCREW

In Europe their RJ is the 737 and A320. There are far less RJs around the world then we have in the USA. In most other counties they use the A320 and 737 like we use RJs.

Originally Posted by CaptainNameless

The MCL will (most likely) never happen at any regional. Are you aware how little training an MCL has? Something like 60 flight hours in a piston single and 200 hours in a simulator. These most junior crew members should not even really be called pilots at the MCL level. If the captain becomes incapacitated enroute, there has to be a competent pilot remaining to land the airplane safely. So if you operate a 2 man crew, a real pilot (#3) would still be needed on board somewhere to step in. An MCL apprentice would never be allowed to be the crew of last resort.

Originally Posted by CaptainNameless

The MCL will (most likely) never happen at any regional. Are you aware how little training an MCL has? Something like 60 flight hours in a piston single and 200 hours in a simulator. These most junior crew members should not even really be called pilots at the MCL level. If the captain becomes incapacitated enroute, there has to be a competent pilot remaining to land the airplane safely. So if you operate a 2 man crew, a real pilot (#3) would still be needed on board somewhere to step in. An MCL apprentice would never be allowed to be the crew of last resort.

Originally Posted by vilcas

Well how many hours do you think it take to make a pilot competent enough to land a commercial airliner. Last I checked we are not making a trap at night in high seas. Also from personally experience plenty of pilots with around 200 hours did just fine getting through Pinnacles training program and succefuly completed OE. There is a myth that hours equates to abitlity to do the job and it is only that a. MYTH. Ask anyone in any training department anywhere if using the metric of hours is at all substantive and they will likely tell you it is not.

Originally Posted by PCLCREW

You must be an FO with a statement like that...
Ya not all, but most people can push buttons and turn knobs when the time is right and pass check rides.
A 250 hour pilot does not have the proper decision making skills yet. I would much rather have a 1500 hour pilot sitting next to me, then a 250 hour pilot. The reason... Experience.
The difference between an 8000 hour guy and 10,000 usually not much... The difference between a 250 hour guy and a 1,500...Huge.