I'm still waiting for something useful to come out of Puffdriver. And btw, puff what does "you were there when comair made their bed, now you lie in it" (approx. quote) mean?
I hear people say things like, "Comair screwed themselves" and it makes me think. Why are we parking our aircraft now...the real reason? And why do some have a "serves them right" attitude about it? To help me figure this out, would you please indicate which past indiscretion we are now paying for: 1. strike, 2. JC furlough hiring policy, 3. RJDC.
I am just trying to get my ALPA brother's take on it. Thank you
Why bother with useful stuff? Tell me that you don't read flame bait in the very first post of this thread. That's where the downhill slide began.
I will indulge you, however, and tell you the real reason you are parking airplanes: Delta doesn't need them. Pure and simple. The RJ bubble is over. Ridiculously cheap fuel--gone. Ridiculously lopsided lucrative fee-for-departure contracts-gone. Compound that with the fact that we are trying to unravel several contracts with several feeder carriers, and Comair takes the brunt of the parkings. No doubt that Comair is also an unattractive carrier from a labor standpoint, and Delta would love to rid itself of them, what you are also seeing is Comair being packaged to the best of Delta's ability to try and gain some revenue from a sale. Now throw in SWA coming to Atlanta, and look out below. Now your 70-76 seaters are in danger--huge danger.
Now, how about the major/regional relationship. It's not just Comair and Delta, its Eagle and AA, etc. There has always been ire, always will be. Why? Simple you are doing flying for less compensation, you gloat every bit as much as you perceive mainline pilots do, and you all have little man syndrome because you have to run to every board, to whomever will listen and point out that you guys are every bit as good as mainline guys. Who cares? Then you get to point out fun little stats like landing on taxiways, and overflying airports. Let me ask you, when was the last time Delta had a fatal accident? You don't have to look it up, I'll tell you: Pensacola July, 1996--and that was an uncontained engine failure where pieces came through the fuselage killed a mom and daughter. Hardly the pilots' doing. Before that was 1988. 22 years ago. Massive, and I mean MASSIVE, changes in CRM at Delta since then along with some strategic rule changes have cleaned up our record quite nicely. You won't see Delta pilots taking airplanes up to 510 because it's cool--little man syndrome. If we take a look at Comair history, we will find some more recent statistics. But let's not. Let's look at the number of departures per day. Let's look at inertia, and engine spool up time, and leading edge devices, and media scrutiny. Then, and only then, can we find some useful comparisons about who the "better" pilots are. Guess what, it still won't make any difference.
Certain posters also felt the need to post his resume, with his scads of experience, and the horror of flying an Aerostar <gasp> single pilot. I can certainly post my creds as well, but what does it add or not add to the discussion? Frankly, it's a juvenile mentality brought on by, you guessed it, little man syndrome. Then, certain posters have to exacerbate it by impressive tales of how I'm lucky it is anonymous here, and how big they are, and that they triple-dog-dares me to say that to their face, yadda, yadda, yadda. I don't care how big somebody is: little man syndrome. Good interviewers, like those at Delta for example, can pick out that trait through careful questioning. As current hiring practice shows, certain groups, who shall remain nameless, aren't making a very good showing here. Throw in a strike which yielded no additional gain, and a group who shows that will backstab anybody who doesn't succumb to their demands, and that is called lying in the bed that you made.
Make no mistake, there is no boasting on my part, the is no glee in other's demise, there is no ha, ha. At the same time there is no remorse. Regionals exploded in growth due to a perfect storm of events, and that storm is clearing. The only problem is that these pilots think that the world now owes them something for their greatness, after all they ARE as good as major pilots. Maybe they are maybe they aren't. It's not the point. The point is that some chose to make their living off of somebody else's flying. That choice is now going away, and rather quickly--as it always could have.
The End
Is that better?
