NWA MEC Opposes Merger

[Flopgut]

I agree with some of your logic, but your facts are just wrong. You currently do not make anywhere near 20-25% more than us. Your 767 pays 11% more than our 757. Your MD88 pays 12% more than our DC9. Maybe you're including other benefits like DC plan, but remember we have many pilots getting a lot more than your DC % due to our targeting so I think that is a wash. I also disagree about the inevitability of NWA furloughs in a standalone plan. Our scope, unlike your scope, prevents NWA from parking all the DC9's and replacing the flying with RJ's. BTW, I agree with XJohXJ that RA's comments so far suggest a future for the DC9 in the new DAL.

Just trying to get this on an accurate footing. Having said that, I believe that we (NWAALPA) should get back to work on an SLI with you guys and get on down the road with this. I'll probably catch grief from fellow NWAers here, but after reading everything I can find on it I don't see the mother of all injustices to us that others apparently do. Are their differences and gripes about how things have been handled? Yes. I'll really catch flack for this, but it seems like we should at least try to take DALPA up on all the things they have stated since the merger announcement about working together as quickly as possible to reach a joint deal(we already had success at this) and, the biggy, a fair SLI. Then we will find out if you are really conniving,back-stabbing,throat slitting, ambushing weenie-heads. Again, we can argue about how all this should have been handled, but, IMO, the meat and potatoes of what has and hasn't happened so far don't seem to support the conclusion that you guys ARE all of those things. Maybe just some of them. Disclaimer: I reserve the right to apply any/all of the above derogatory slurs to individual DAL pilots at my sole discretion despite the fact that I do not believe they apply to said entire DAL pilot group as a whole.

OBE, Overcome By Events, applies to all of our collective prior arguments too. Let's GetRdone!

Really good post!!

 

[NuGuy]

Source?

Not just someone talking about what they "might" do, but a hard, definite retirement schedule with published implementation dates?

Don't think you'll find it. It's been rumored both ways by NWA execs back and forth for the last 2 years.

Bottom line: they're still out there flying, and will likely continue to fly since they're paid for until their frames come up for those heavy bulkhead checks.

Pay the extra fuel or pay double that extra fuel in the form of a new lease payment. Pick your poison.

Heyas Lear,

The source I saw was the conference call that RA and DS had yesterday. They basicaly said that the DC-9 (specifically, not RJs) filled an important gap, and would be replaced when it became an issue with OTHER 100 seaters. This was the same coonference call where they accepted that there was $110 oil, and that it might go higher.

In seemingly unrelated news, Bombadier just set up a development office over at NACTO with C-Series mockups.

FWIW, I've had a direct, personal communications with people on the merger committee. What they said doesn't sound like it's within 1/2 percent. It also explains why DAL didn't want to go to arbitration.

All the other nonsense, from top NWA guys at the top, to DAL guys stapled at the bottom was nonsense. I will conceed that these MAY have been the result of initial negotiating positions, but if so, they were long discarded.

If the DAL deal was so fair, they could have put their offer out to the NWA membership, and along with the equity & bennies (which were VERY significant), our senior guys would have run to it like pigs to a trough. We had more than a few guys firing up the steamroller machine to make it happen once they got wind of the money involved, but when the true nature of the SLI came out, they abruptly stopped. Truth is if the SLI had even been remotely related to reasonableness' 3rd cousin, twice removed, the senior guys would have turned turtle and made it happen.

But they didn't. Occams' Razor and all...

Nu

 

[Lear70]

Heyas Lear,

The source I saw was the conference call that RA and DS had yesterday. They basicaly said that the DC-9 (specifically, not RJs) filled an important gap, and would be replaced when it became an issue with OTHER 100 seaters. This was the same coonference call where they accepted that there was $110 oil, and that it might go higher.

Now THAT is a different animal altogether than what FDJ2 was saying.

The premise that the DC-9 is going away anytime soon, WITHOUT a replacement aircraft, and that furloughs were going to happen at NWA is simply ludicrous, and is a faulty basis for negotiations.

It's good that DAL wants to negotiate; that's great. I'm just saying that they need to stop promulgating false information about NWA pilot's career expectations as a basis for pushing a bad SLI.

At the same time, the NWA MEC digging their heels in and refusing to negotiate because they were left out of the party isn't the answer, either.

There's gains to be had; hopefully cooler heads will prevail.