Pilots Carry Out "Practice" Strikes At ATL, Other Airports

It was, frankly, a demonstration of outrage in Atlanta Thursday, as some 275 Delta pilots marched through the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport terminal to protest the company's attempts to have their contracts run through the shredder.

"You can consider today's actions an exercise and you can stand by for the real thing," Lee Moak, chairman of the pilot union's executive committee, said as he led the line of uniformed pilots through the airport.

After stating last week that they would turn up the volume on their protests by staging practice strikes at airports around the country, Delta's pilots did exactly that this week -- in spite of a warning from the mediation committee overseeing contract talks to tone it down.

The panel, led by chairman Richard Bloch, conducted negotiations that ended in Washington last week without any resolution to the company's demand for more pay and benefit concessions from its six-thousand pilots.

As Aero-News reported, if the panel has to actually decide on whether to allow Delta to toss out its existing contracts in order to save an estimated $365 million annually... it would likely mean disaster for both Delta and the people who fly its planes.

Delta hasn't commented very much on that ultimatum... or, on the "striking" pilots. "We won't comment on the status of negotiations in any way," Delta spokesman Bruce Hicks told the Associated Press. 

For now, this was only a "practice" strike. But pilots warn if the company tries to exact those concessions without a mutual agreement... they'll hit the picket lines for real. 

"We would be happy to turn down the noise if the senior executives turned down the noise and removed the 1113 motion," Moak said. The 1113 motion is the case number of Delta's motion to reject the union contract.

Matsen Exits

Delta is making good on some of its pledges to cut back expenses, however... by cutting approximately 1,000 management-level jobs with the company. The latest to be shown the door is marketing director Paul Matsen, who until Thursday had been with Delta for 12 years.

Matsen came up with Delta's reasonably successful Simplifares program, as well as the arguably less effective (and certainly less prescient) "Good goes around" advertising campaign that the bankrupt airline has been using for the past year.

Delta told the AP it will be dropping "good goes around" in the near future (in fact, already the logo is nowhere to be found on the airline's website.)

Chief Executive Gerald Grinstein announced Matsen's departure in a message to employees Thursday, adding that the marketing position would not be filled immediately.

Other management changes are expected to be announced next month... although top officials like Grinstein, CFO Ed Bastian and COO James Whitehurst aren't expected to have to start looking for new jobs any time soon. In fact, Whitehurst now has an additional title... marketing director.

FMI: www.delta.com, www.alpa.org