Delta TA on SCOPE

[Jim]

If I had a dime for every time I heard ALPA bluster about raising the bar I wouldn't have to sell pencils on the street corner before going to dinner on my overnights. :lol:

If you'd honored binding arbitration and hadn't created the abortion called USAPA, you'd be eating steak & lobster with plenty of money left over to leave a huge tip.

 

[charlie2]

If you'd honored binding arbitration and hadn't created the abortion called USAPA, you'd be eating steak & lobster with plenty of money left over to leave a huge tip.

Fly navy jimmie must be new in airline biz cause he thinks if we accepted the nickie old served time for dui Chug a lug dougweiser parker would give us raises. Do a little research sailor Jim and you'll see that they won't budge from the kirby award which no sir would have us eating steak.

 

[SWA Bubba]

...and you STILL don't get it....you still don't see the contradiction. Everybody wants your hourly rate, right now, but that won't last long, the legacies got whacked pretty good, but it'll come back one step at a time.

I would guess that most of us on here wouldn't want your retirement "plan", work rules, work with guys that taxi-around at VR and then run out onto the ramp and start off-loading bags either.

Let's be clear, what little you have done at SWA to help this profession is far off-set by the damage that was done all those years agreeing to work harder for a fraction of what everybody else was getting.

You have only now reached, where the rest of legacies were back in 2001. They have all been knocked down and you have been left standing. That's great, and I don't wish any harm onto your pilot group, But don't come on here like your group are a bunch of trail-blazers at the edge of the envelope in improving conditions for pilots. That they are not.

And you still don't get what I'm saying. "Agreeing to work harder for a fraction of whatever everybody else was getting" was not what happened. It was either work for that amount of pay, or don't work. Although I'm sure that would have been fine with you. In case it never occurred to you, that's how all NEW carriers work. Even the one you work for was new once and didn't pay crap. My point was that it always got better and better at Southwest, and that is a good example to set. As the company could safely afford more (because of our hard work), we got paid more. Legacy carriers go up and down like freakin' yo-yos, screwing their own pilots along the way. If that's what you want your life to be, and you want to think that's progress, then good for you. Seems a little short-sighted to me personally (especially giving away flying for a few bucks upfront), but hey, that's my opinion.

Don't like our work rules? Why? Are you really lazy or something? Our rules are great: you want more money, you work more. Pretty much as much as you want. It's that simple. You guys limit yourselves to no more than some arbitrary amount of hours, because ALPA wants more pilots to pay them dues, even if there's hardly enough work to justify those bodies. That costs the company much more for the same flying, but it works in the short term, at least on the up cycles. Not so much in the down cycles.

As far as our "retirement plan," it works pretty well for us. 401-K match and profit sharing are doing me personally pretty damn well, even in a down economy. And that's just not us. You can't blame the demise of the traditional retirement plan on Southwest, as much as I know you want to. It's been coming and it's been happening in ALL industries for quite a while now. Nobody can afford the DB plans anymore; there's too much retirement money and benefits promised, and funded by too little income. Especially as people live longer. Even the federal government is trying to switch from DB to DC for the military retirements. Can't afford it. It amounts to promisng essentially unlimited benefits for people without knowing how much they'll take in and how much they'll pay out in the future.

I'm not sure why you complain about our taxi speed or work groups helping each other out, at least in terms of business. The better the business runs, the more profit sharing for us. The less time we waste, the more we can pick up and make more money personally (if that's your inclination). Hey, that's good for the company and us.

Now don't get me wrong--I'm not bitching about what you guys do. I don't care as much as Waveflyer, because I know your nature isn't going to change, and I don't want to raise my blood pressure over something I can't control. But I also think your digs on Southwest are crap. Don't blame us for your problems. The "damage to the industry" you describe is largely self-inflicted. It's just convenient for you to blame it on us, rather than looking in a mirror. Your way of negotiating is to hobble your company for your own short-term personal gain, knowing full well that you (or your juniors) will pay for it later on the downturns. And then you wonder, and then you complain about why so much of your flying is subbed out to regionals at a fraction of your pay...YOU caused this. We adapted; you did not. We work synergistically with the company to avoid the downturns that you expect (and of course get). I say our way works better for everyone. It seems to be "blazing a better trail" than YOU guys are doing.

Bubba

 

[igneousy2]

And you still don't get what I'm saying. "Agreeing to work harder for a fraction of whatever everybody else was getting" was not what happened. It was either work for that amount of pay, or don't work. Although I'm sure that would have been fine with you. In case it never occurred to you, that's how all NEW carriers work. Even the one you work for was new once and didn't pay crap. My point was that it always got better and better at Southwest, and that is a good example to set. As the company could safely afford more (because of our hard work), we got paid more. Legacy carriers go up and down like freakin' yo-yos, screwing their own pilots along the way. If that's what you want your life to be, and you want to think that's progress, then good for you. Seems a little short-sighted to me personally (especially giving away flying for a few bucks upfront), but hey, that's my opinion.

Don't like our work rules? Why? Are you really lazy or something? Our rules are great: you want more money, you work more. Pretty much as much as you want. It's that simple. You guys limit yourselves to no more than some arbitrary amount of hours, because ALPA wants more pilots to pay them dues, even if there's hardly enough work to justify those bodies. That costs the company much more for the same flying, but it works in the short term, at least on the up cycles. Not so much in the down cycles.

As far as our "retirement plan," it works pretty well for us. 401-K match and profit sharing are doing me personally pretty damn well, even in a down economy. And that's just not us. You can't blame the demise of the traditional retirement plan on Southwest, as much as I know you want to. It's been coming and it's been happening in ALL industries for quite a while now. Nobody can afford the DB plans anymore; there's too much retirement money and benefits promised, and funded by too little income. Especially as people live longer. Even the federal government is trying to switch from DB to DC for the military retirements. Can't afford it. It amounts to promisng essentially unlimited benefits for people without knowing how much they'll take in and how much they'll pay out in the future.

I'm not sure why you complain about our taxi speed or work groups helping each other out, at least in terms of business. The better the business runs, the more profit sharing for us. The less time we waste, the more we can pick up and make more money personally (if that's your inclination). Hey, that's good for the company and us.

Now don't get me wrong--I'm not bitching about what you guys do. I don't care as much as Waveflyer, because I know your nature isn't going to change, and I don't want to raise my blood pressure over something I can't control. But I also think your digs on Southwest are crap. Don't blame us for your problems. The "damage to the industry" you describe is largely self-inflicted. It's just convenient for you to blame it on us, rather than looking in a mirror. Your way of negotiating is to hobble your company for your own short-term personal gain, knowing full well that you (or your juniors) will pay for it later on the downturns. And then you wonder, and then you complain about why so much of your flying is subbed out to regionals at a fraction of your pay...YOU caused this. We adapted; you did not. We work synergistically with the company to avoid the downturns that you expect (and of course get). I say our way works better for everyone. It seems to be "blazing a better trail" than YOU guys are doing.

Bubba

I agree with a lot of what you are saying. i.e Scope problems now...totally Legacy pilots deal...should have just negotiated rates for those BE-99's and never let that horse out of the barn...now it's going to take decades to put the horse back in...if that is even possible.

You fault the legacies for negotiating unsustainable contracts, which turned out to be obviously true, but only because of the cancer of the LCC's that is continuing to spread. You'll see...your next contract is setting up to be concessionary as your yields are way down to about a fifth of what your company wants even during this time of modest oil prices. You'll get to see what it's like to have the excel spread sheet of Allegiant and Virgin America shoved in your face at every opportunity. At the end of the next negotiating round you'll be happy to just maintain the status-quo. That is what you were during Legacy negotiations during the 80's and 90's.

But I don't fault any individual pilot for taking whatever job, because at the end of the day we all have to do what's best for us. I had hoped that Deltas scope would be a little stronger, but if they as a group decide that the TA is the best for them...then that is okay to.

What I do have a problem with, is the few of the claimed-SWA pilots on here calling Delta pilots "sell-outs" and other names for not standing their ground on the latest TA. Telling them that they are bringing the whole industry down unless they...the Delta pilots...put individualism aside and draw a line in the sand and essentially "take one for the team"...in other words, do what they (the SWA pilots) wouldn't do themselves, when they took that job with less pay and less benefits, however many years ago.

As far as your taxi speeds = often ridicules and unsafe...and btw...it is not okay to use the Whisky line in SEA as a passing lane!

 

[waveflyer]

Ig-
You're off base man. An airline deciding what they themselves will fly for is a lot different than deciding how many jobs it will farm out to an artificial whipsaw market, where the pilots in it will have almost no control over their destiny.

See the difference?

 

[Jim]

......blah, blah, blah.....I have no integrity.....blah, blah, blah......

Did you say something?

 

[GogglesPisano]

Someone who is under the belief that this TA loosens scope has not done his homework. The additional 76-seaters are more than offset by the dramatic reduction in hulls, blockhours, RPMs -- use any metric you'd like.

This is negotiation. Taking advantage of opportunities as they present themselves as opposed to fighting for the next 3 years only to wind up with what we would have had anyway.

The next non-Delta guy who opines that we should recapture all Delta flying, please remain silent until your CA rates are $1,000/hr.

 

[Dan Roman]

Ig-
You're off base man. An airline deciding what they themselves will fly for is a lot different than deciding how many jobs it will farm out to an artificial whipsaw market, where the pilots in it will have almost no control over their destiny.

See the difference?

Wave, you don't agree with him but that doesn't mean ignousy was "off base". His post was spot on. The point made over and over on here by so many is quite simple. SWAPA certainly did nothing to raise the industry bar for the majority of it's existence, period. To now stand on a soap box and call DALPA sellouts with this TA is stunningly short sighted and hypocritical.
It's nice to see DALPA get the payscales going back up, they even got the 737 payscale higher than yours, which is good for all of us.

 

[Dan Roman]

As far as your taxi speeds = often ridicules and unsafe...and btw...it is not okay to use the Whisky line in SEA as a passing lane!

It's that warrior spirit thing.

 

[waveflyer]

Jesus, are you guys this dumb?
No dan, this thread doesnt have anything to do with Swapa. You defend your right to comment on any subject you want to- even when it rarely has anything to do with Hawaiian. But, I'm not allowed to voice an opinion about legacy outsourcing bc Ive ended up working at Swa well after working at a legacy, and have only worked at Swa when they did have an industry leading contract?

Try and remember, I'm happy at Swa, BUT- I was forced out of the legacy doors due to outsourcing gone wild through BK- along with thousands. Many of whom were furloughed twice in the last decade.

But that's what you're saying? You do understand that I don't speak for SWA or Swapa- and I wasn't part of the groups that voted in anything substandard.

Got it. My personal experience in the past with a legacy means nothing, but the 30 years before I got to Swa mean everything. ?? I just have to accept that somehow makes sense to the haters.
Even though that's as illogical as pcl128 lecturing me on the history of Swa when he bought his 1st job for $25k to sit right seat at Gulfstream, then worked at pinnacle and air tran, both paying substandard- But of course- I'm the problem because my 6th airline is Swa. Understood.

You guys sound really weak bc you won't address the topic at hand. Most of this TA is well and good- but there is no reason to cement the -900's as an outsourced airplane. USE the leverage you have to get an RJ on the property- then you'd have an impact. To not do that is to cut the legs out from every other carrier.

Wave, you don't agree with him but that doesn't mean ignousy was "off base". His post was spot on. The point made over and over on here by so many is quite simple. SWAPA certainly did nothing to raise the industry bar for the majority of it's existence, period. To now stand on a soap box and call them sellouts with this TA is stunningly short sighted and hypocritical.
It's nice to see DALPA get the payscales going back up, they even got the 737 payscale higher than yours, which is good for all of us.