[Ronnie Raygun]

"No, the article does not mention pilot pay raises. The $3.26 billion has been lost due to competition reduced fairs and revenue. You do not lose revenue by paying your employees more; you reduce your profit. Revenue is how much money you take IN, and profit is how much money you actually make that goes towards paying for things." - Chimp

I've already covered this. ....but you refuse to pay attention.

We lost revenue because we couldn't afford to lower our fares because of the overhead we are paying out to the pilots. In short, the pilots have put us in a bind. You are looking at this from a completely simplistic point of view because that's all you can understand. Pilot pay effects all sorts of other options we might have other wise. Instead, of paying pilots...we could be using that money to attract customers by adding benefits to our Skymiles program, reducing fares, etc.

".. throwing $85 million at a $3.26 billion debt won't stem the tide like you seem to be implying. It's like trying to bail out the Titanic with a bucket." - Chimp

I agree. That's why they should also give up 16.5% of their wages help their comany survive while still remaining the highest paid pilots in the industry. That will stem the tide.

"Even if "pilot raises" contributed to 25% of the total debt load that Delta has, it would take 10 separate raises of $85 million each to reach that point. Ten raises in four years?"

The raise they got before 9/11 was much larger. Like I said before, it was the largest payraise in history for airline pilots. The 85$ million dollar raise was just a regularly scheduled payraise. When they got their contract they went from being a couple of % points behind United to beind 17% higher than United. You're just ignorant of the background.

"Giving the pilots a raise is not the cause of the problem, and it barely contributes at all compared to $780 million for new planes.
When you are facing massive downturns in revenue, you do not go out and buy buy buy. " - Chimp

It's not like Delta is blowing money and those assets are not yet aquired... therefore it's not a number you can use to prove your point. You have to have new airplanes to have a successful airline. It's a necessity....and at some point it will cost you more to in "up keep" and maintenence costs than it would to buy new airplanes. ....but you didn't think about that did you?

"Like Max said, Delta has much bigger problems to worry about." - Max

Like you, Max knows little or nothing about this situation.