Career expectations? Do you think there is an arbitrator that is going to say that Delta FAs somehow have more career expectations than NWA FAs? Also, remember, arbitrators get "paid" from revenue that comes from resolving CONTRACT DISPUTES between airlines and 'unions'. AFA is the largest FA union in the world and there is no union at Delta to get angry at the arbitrator. I know you want to desperately believe that the non-contract status will play an equal part - but I differ. Setting that aside, I think the "career expectation" argument is senseless.
Our most popular and senior trips at NWA are the DTW-Tokyo, DTW-Osaka, DTW-Nagoya trips. Equally popular are the South Trips (to ALL the destinations in the Pacific Rim). We will also have the second largest base in all of the Delta-Northwest system, with several daily non-stops to AMS and daily flights to Paris, London, Frankfurt, Rome and 6 day AMS-BOM trips. In addition to that we have the MOST extensive domestic route structure in the NWA system;
http://www.airlineroutemaps.com/USA/Northw...lines_DTW.shtml
Are you saying that our most senior FAs don't have a valid "career expectation" to retain their bidding seniority? If you think NWA FAs flying out of DTW would want to transfer to NY (unless they live there, which few do), you aren't understanding our DTW base very well....
http://www.airlineroutemaps.com/USA/Northw...a_pacific.shtml
http://www.airlineroutemaps.com/USA/Northw...ope_india.shtml
Okay, let's take a look at just the international that Delta flies out of Atlanta:
EUROPE:
1. Amsterdam, Netherlands (AMS)
2. Barcelona, Spain (BCN)
3. Brussels, Belgium (BRU)
4. Bucharest, Romania (OTP)
5. Copenhagen, Denmark (CPH)
6. Dakar, Senegal (DKR)
7. Dubai (DBX)
8. Dublin, Ireland (DUB)
9. Düsseldorf, Germany (DUS)
10. Frankfurt. Germany (FRA)
11. Johannesburg, South Africa (JNB)
12. London, England
Gatwick (LGW)
Heathrow (HTR)
13. Madrid, Spain (MAD)
14. Manchester, England (MHT)
15. Milan, Italy (MIL)
16. Moscow, Russia (SVO)
17. Munich, Germany (MUC)
18. Paris, France (CDG)
19. Prague, Czech Republic (PRG)
20. Rome, Italy (FCO)
21. Stuttgart, Germany (STR)
22. Tel Aviv, Israel (TLV)
23. Venice, Italy (VCE)
24. Vienna, Austria (VIE)
25. Zurich, Switzerland (ZRH)
26. Lagos, Nigeria (LOS)
27. Edinburgh, Scotland
28. Stockholm, Sweden (eff. June, 2008)
29. Shannon, Ireland
ASIA:
1. Seoul, Korea (ICN)
2. Tokyo, Japan (NRT)
3. Shanghai, China
MEXICO:
1. Acapulco (ACA)
2. Cancun (CUN)
3. Cozumel (CZM)
4. Guadalajara (GDL)
5. Los Cabos (SJD)
6. Mexico City (MEX)
7. Puerto Vallarta (PVR)
CARRIBEAN: (25 Cities)
1. Antigua (ANU)
2. Aruba (AUA)
3. Belize City, Belize (BZE)
4. Barbados (BDG)
5. Curacao (CUR)
6. Martinique (FDE)
7. Bahamas
Georgetown (GGT)
Grand Bahama (FPO)
Nassau (NAS)
8. Bermuda (BDA)
9. Dominican Republic:
Puerto Plata (POP)
Punta Cana (PUJ)
Santo Domingo (SDQ)
10. Grand Cayman (GCM)
11. Jamaica
Kingston (KIN)
Montego Bay (MBJ)
12. San Juan, Puerto Rico (SJU)
13. Trinidad & Tobago
Port of Spain (POS)
Tabago (TAB)
14. Turks & Caicos (PLS)
15. St. Kitts (SKB)
16. St. Lucia (UVF)
17. St. Maarten (SXM)
18. St. Thomas (STT)
19. Pointe A Pitre, Guadaloupe (PTP)
20. Bonnaire, Netherlands Antilles
CENTRAL & SOUTH AMERICA: (13 Cities)
1. Caracas, Venezuela (CCS)
2. Buenos Aires, Argentina (EZE)
3. Guatemala City, Guatemala (GUA)
4. Ecuador
Guayaquil (GYE)
Quito (UIO)
5. Costa Rica
Liberia (LIR)
San Jose (SJO0
6. Lima, Peru (LIM)
7. Panama City, Panama (PTY)
8. Honduras
Roatan (RTB)
San Pedro Sula (SAP)
9. San Salvador, El Salvador (SAL)
10. Santiago, Chile (SCL)
11. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (GIG)
12. Sao Paulo, Brazil (GRU)
**Delta has applied for service with the US DOT to serve Cali and Medllin Colombia.
Now let's look at international Delta service out of New York:
EUROPE & AFRICA:
1. Accra, Ghana (ACC)
2. Athens, Greece (ATH)
3. Amsterdam, Netherlands (AMS)
4. Barcelona, Spain (BCN)
5. Berlin, Germany (BER)
6. Brussels, Belgium (BRU)
7. Bucharest, Romania (OTP)
8. Budapest, Hungary (BUD)
9. Dublin, Ireland (DUB)
10. Frankfurt, Germany (FRA)
11. Istanbul, Turkey (IST)
12. London Gatwick
13. London Heathrow
14. Kiev, Ukraine (KBP)
15. Moscow, Russia (SVO)
16. Mumbai, India (BOM)
17. Madrid, Spain (MAD)
18. Manchester, England (MAN)
19. Milan, Italy (MXP)
20. Nice, France (NCE)
21. Paris, France (CDG)
22. Pisa, Italy (PSA)
23. Rome, Italy (FCO)
24. Venice, Italy (VCE)
25. Shannon, Ireland (SNN)
26. Tel Aviv, Israel (TLV)
27. Edinburgh, Scotland
28. Lyon France (LYS)
29. Malaga, Spain
30. Dakar Senegal,
31. Cape Town, South Africa
32. Shannon, Ireland
MEXICO:
1. Mexico City (MEX)
2. Puerto Vallarta (PVR)
CARIBBEAN:
1. Aguadilla, Puerto Rico (BQN)
2. Antigua (ANU)
3. Aruba (AUA)
4. Bermuda (BDA)
5. Montego Bay, Jamaica (MBJ)
6. Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic (POP)
7. Punta Cana, Dominican Republic (PUJ)
8. Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago (POS)
9. St. Maarten (SXM)
10. St. Thomas (STT)
11. Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (SDQ)
12. San Juan, Puerto Rico (SJU)
13. Santiago, Dominican Republic (STI)
14. Barbuda (eff. June, 2008)
CENTRAL & SOUTH AMERICA:
1. Bogota, Columbia (BOG)
2. Guatemala City, Guatemala (GUA)
3. Liberia, Costa Rica (LIR)
4. Panama City, Panama (PTY)
5. San Jose, Costa Rica (SJO)
6. Sao Paulo, Brazil (GRU)
Plus more coming this summer
Now let's compare that with the international routes that your US based flight attendants fly. Not much of a comparison is it? Oh and we've got a few international trips out of Cincinnati as well. Career expectations will enter to arbitration once they get a look at these comparisons. I'm not saying that your F/A's don't have career expectations but the expectation to fly that percentage of international routes are much lower than F/A's at Delta and our seniority to hold international is most likely quite a bit lower than yours. And I seriously doubt that Delta would leave us high and dry in any negotiation. Your negotiators don't appear to have done too much for you in bankruptcy. We took our lumps during bankruptcy too but it was definitely no worse than the lumps you took and better than some others. Northwest flight attendants have most likely had an adversarial relationship with their management for some time. It was actually 3 Delta flight attendants who started the campaign for the employees to buy a 767 for the company in the 1970's. I know that was a long time ago but there is still some good will that exists between Delta management and other employee groups and I think that is very different than carriers who have been unionized for a long time. Even with unions, what has happened to the ranks of your mechanics? They've been decimated. Delta mechanics actually insource extra work to bring work to our mechanics. There are plenty of decisions that Delta management makes that aren't beneficial to flight attendants but so does every other company make these decisions and I don't see unions as having done anything better for their flight attendants than Delta has for ours. Up until around 9/11, Delta flight attendants were the highest paid in the industry and not by a little. Now we all trail Continental, American and especially Southwest but none of those carriers have entered bankruptcy. I remember when I started flying how many flight attendants from other carriers would tell me that they wished they worked for Delta. In my time at Delta the philosophy has been that when the company is doing well, we all do well and when times are hard, we all take some lumps. During bankruptcy we had some very good leaders and we all were hoping that Jim Whitehurst would be Grinstein's replacement. It didn't happen and we aren't as thrilled with Richard Anderson, but we go on. While we may not have a choice in final decisions, we do have input and that has helped us through the years. We also have the benefit of seeing what other carriers have and some positive changes have come about as a result of that. Our A-day system is so far superior to straight reserve that I can't begin to tell you. No way would I want to see that go away. Just as you have many flight attendants that are unappy with your union, so do we have many flight attendants that are unhappy with our management. It's inevitable and will always exist at every carrier. I truly get the sense that unionized flight attendants are scared to death of being without their union. That's really never entered into my thoughts to be scared of Delta. I've had an OJI, they were great, got sick on a trip and ended up in the emergency room and stuck in Milwaukee for 4 days and they were more than great. While I haven't agreed with many decisions our management makes, I can often understand the reasons for them. We have people who know that we've been through the ringer with pay cuts etc., and yet they do look for ways to improve our work lives like the AFP's that allow many to now work from their home cities. As long as there are other unions we benefit from the comparisons and I remember a time when unions were negotiating for things in their contracts that Delta F/A's had so it's not such a one sided issue as some portray it to be.
I'm not saying here that I am anti-union, I know that they've offered people at different carriers a lot of protection in the past. I've looked at what your union has done for you and I just don't see the benefit. I remember when your union kept threatening to creat chaos around the systems. I don't ever recall it happening. It was just a bluff time and again and you ended up getting nothing for all of that. If we do get a union I sure hope it won't be the AFA.