New ASA information FWIW

[BigDave]

ductleak I am scheduled for an ASA interview in Feb as well. I am currently an FO and I have a long commute. I know the pain of commuting, leaving on the redeye landing at 6:30 am showing for my trip at 7am, it hurts. I too want to get to SWA as soon as possible, if I was in your shoes I would stay with SkyWest and get the upgrade ASAP. It may take a while to get on with SWA but when they do start hiring in more quantity it would be nice to have the qualifications to apply. Since SWA is your goal and as we know sonority is key, you need to get to SWA as soon as possible. I am leaving my present job because I do not think the parent company will be around much longer. If I get the ASA job I would still be commute but DFW is a lot closer then the east coast for me. From what others have said it looks like upgrade at ASA is going to take for ever. This is just my thoughts, good luck…

 

[ductleak]

hmmmm...

THANKS for the reply. I appreciate it. ASA is a great company though. It is going to be hard to make this decision. I have even thought about getting out of aviation all together lately. I am sure that there are a lot of people out here on this board that can actually relate!

Commuting is hard but, if I do stay in this profession, I know that SWA has been my goal since the begining and that Skywest is growing very fast and will probably provide the best route for me.

 

[General Lee]

Stay at Skywest---move to another hub, like ORD, and try that commute. Get the upgrade and move on to Southwest. That is what I would do. Good luck.

Bye Bye--General Lee

 

[wms]

What new JFK flying?

Travel net shows a CR7 JFKDFW in mar and I saw other JFK flying somewhere. I don't remember where the memo was though, my memory is perfect but very short.

 

[sleepy]

I am flying some ATL to JFK lines in March on the CR7.

 

[General Lee]

You already know your March schedule? Dam! (mis-spelled of course) Or, there are so many of those flights that you most likely will get one.

Bye Bye--General Lee

 

[wms]

You already know your March schedule?

I think the latter. We don't even have our final schedules for Feb. I'm on reserve and only know four of my days off for next month.

 

[~~~^~~~]

To play Devil's Advocate, of course it is worth it from a management and shareholders' perspective. How many hundreds of millions of $ did the Comair strike cost Delta? Of course they don't want to be in that position ever again so the whipsaw is their insurance policy.

No, it is not any insurance policy. The Comair strike cost 640 to 670 million depending on who is quoted, or $355,000.00 per pilot. Whether ASA is spread out, or concentrated, makes little difference. What does make a difference is that 80% of ASA's passengers connect to Delta flights ( a much higher percentage than Comair's pax ) and the difference of 15 to 20 passengers on a Delta flight is all the difference between an operating profit and loss.

The Comair strike was about ego, like most strikes are. ALPA wanted to show Delta how tought they were and Delta wanted to show ALPA how tough they could be. The Comair pilots were about $10,500 apart per pilot over the life of the contract, obviously Delta's 600 plus million intervention was a failure. Even worse, this 600 plus million has been financed at 10% interest rates, so the loss to the shareholders is likely to be close to a billion, if Delta can ever repay the money.

ASA's anticipated release date for "self help" will likely coincide with Delta's most serious cash crunch. ASA can take Delta into bankruptcy.

Why Delta management responds to this threat by forcing people to commute to their jobs is beyond me. All Delta's introduction of Comair to Atlanta has done is anger ASA pilots and galvanize the pilots' support for their union's bargaining efforts. After all, if Delta makes this job not worth having, what motivates us not to walk off the job?

Nobody can organize a union like airline management can.... keep up the good work boys...

~~~^~~~