I would love to comment, but cannot say it better than this, from a 767 Captain, on the DALPA board. I hope he does not mind my copying his comments unattributed.
"At what point do you just come out and call it as you see it? Is it a misrepresentation, a half-truth, a mis-speak, or just an outright lie? You know, those "Full Pay to the Last Day" bag stickers Gerry is so "tired of seeing". I signed in early, did a tour of the bag room, and lo and behold, not one to be found. I'm so glad everyone ripped them off their flight kits as soon as his Gerryness deemed them verboten throughout the Reich.
If a man will lie about something so fundamental as that, why should you trust him and worse yet, what else is he capable of? He could have said he "heard about them", or "someone told him", but no, he saw them. In fact, he saw so many of them over such a long period of time that he was "sick and tired of it". Are you sure you were looking at Delta pilots Gerry?
Yesterday Gerry spoke to the press and said his comments on the previous day's conference call were taken out of context. Delta was in better shape than was reported and was in no immediate danger of an imminent BK filing. What he should have said was that I was making comments to scare my employees and manipulate people to put pressure on the pilots to surrender their contract. You media people should be able to make the distinction between the BS I tell the employees and the BS I tell you. Now that crude oil futures are dropping and the gas prices at the pump are following suit, Gerry wants to make his last push prior to the summer numbers coming out.
To review where we are, let's start when Rip Van Grinstine woke up from his 17 year nap and noticed that Delta had a problem. He took over from the guy he was paid a 777 Captain's annual pay to bring here. He ordered a six month review of the operation because he didn't know where we were. He did however know the exact amount of concessions the Delta pilots had to underwrite this yet to be determined operation. With these new G-Scale wages, Delta would somehow survive to do something in the yet to be determined future. Now that we are soon to be entering the 7th month of the 6 month review, what has changed? Gerry doesn't like RJs but we continue to buy and deploy them everywhere, including 2+ hour legs. SWA will get a 14% raise in September. Gerry wants a G-Scale 767 Captain to make less per hour than a SWA 737 Captain will in 2 months. Or less than twice of what a Comair RJ Captain does. That's going to be a hard one to justify. How about our $20 Billion debt that is actually made up of both debt and long term obligations? If you count the $2.5B to acquire Comair and ASA, the $750M for the strike, $5.5B in RJ costs and leases you realize that half of that "debt" number is tied directly to DCI. The same DCI that provides less than 20% of our revenue.
The last thing to talk about is "imminent fear of BK being used to make the pilots negotiate". The pilots have always been willing to negotiate, not capitulate. Ask yourself this: Once Gerry gets this prized pilot deal he speaks so highly of, how is he going to pressure the unsecured creditors to restructure anything? He keeps saying he wants us first, meaning we underwrite all the risk the unsecured creditors take by waiting to see what happens. They will have no incentive unless we start "Fear of BK Part 2". I think ALPA is engaging the creditors and this latest meeting may bring them to the table, but isn't that Gerry's job? He wants us down close to a CAL contract so that NWA has to come down and then mergermania can start. That's the only logical reason for him to pull numbers out of his arse yet doing very little substantive to change the operation of the airline.
It's just my opinion, I could be wrong. If you disagree with me, just call 1-800 GERRYREALLYLIKESPILOTS."
And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.
A jobs. He asked the government to get out of the way and let it happen. This is stunning from the head of ALPA and shows they do not have their head in the sand.
