cactiboss

Aol just filed a lawsuit in phx federal court. Details to follow.

cactiboss

Aol just filed a lawsuit in phx federal court. Details to follow.

cactusmike

You are one funny guy. PHX spun off. That's a real winner, right there.

R57 relay

YES! A lawsuit! Why didn't anyone think of that before?

Maybe you guys have finally found the right combination cacti.

LittleBoyBlew

Famous last words......So tell us Mike, what precludes the Co. from spinning off the west?? Do you currently have ma scope protections in your cba?? Remember the mou is simply a handshake until POR approval. We are still operating under OUR respective cba. Im sure the insiders have a contingency plan for this. You guys might regret the outcome. Little old AOL will NOT derail this transaction. DP will throw you under the bus to make the deal happen.

ackattacker

LBB you are smoking some serious dope. The West is not getting spun off. The AOL lawsuit will not derail the transaction, and even if it did or could, there are a number of extremely serious obstacles to the company just "selling off" the west.

LittleBoyBlew

Such as?? And please don't mention the operating certificate. That has never been an issue in the past.

ackattacker

Such as most everybody else in the company is combined except for the pilot group. F/A's are now on one contract. All the millions of big and little departments (H/R, MOC, scheduling, IT, ground workers etc.) are already combined. Many of those groups have their own unions with their own contracts and protections. Separating them again would be such an absolute nightmare that it would not be feasible to spin off or sell the West as an operating airline. Only way to do it would be to just sell the airplanes and furlough the pilots and F/A's... which is specifically prohibited by the previous T/A and the current MOU and F/A contract.

Incidentally, the MOU is a step below a contract, but it is a legal document and does bear legal weight. They can't just ignore it or break it at will. The separate CBA's and TA's continue until they are replaced by the new MTA which is formed from the MOU. So at no point are the pilot groups operating without a legal contract. The MOU/MTA requires the company to maintain certain East and West block hours, protects certain LCC routes including West routes (such as the Hawaii flights out of PHX) and prohibits furloughs. The separate CBA's and TA also have fleet protections, so at no point is the company legally free to spin off/sell/furlough the West.

VenetianFryCook

Read the complaint this morning. It makes clear what was muddied by the wording in MH's letters a couple weeks ago, which is that the West has ZERO interest in slowing down the corporate merger of AA and US. They want a court order requiring the use of the Nicolau list in the AA/US SLI, or an injunction freezing the SLI process until the disposition of the list is finalized.

As I've said all along, this will do nothing to slow down or abort the merger; the most it will do is stretch the SLI process a bit longer. As long as Parker can schedule airplanes in a profitable way, he doesn't care about that (as the last eight years have proven). And unlike the last time, the MOU ensures that the pilots get our money first, so we won't be languishing on bankruptcy-era contracts while we wait. And ... since all three groups will be working under the same pay rates, and soon the same JCBA, there is no particular incentive to move flying between groups. Plus, until the SLI is complete and in effect, the minimum block hours provisions for East, West, and AA from the MOU will remain in effect.

Not to downplay the importance of seniority - we all in this industry know about that - but this fight will not stop the corporate combination. The most it will likely do is postpone the ability of any of us to bid, if we so desire, a seat/fleet/domicile from one of the other subsets of the group. (Which is mostly bad news for the Boeing guys at US who see the large 737-800 fleet at AA as a glimmer of hope that they won't have to be assimilated to the Borg - I mean Airbus!)

VFC

eaglefly

Just thinking outside the box, but are the two carriers (legacy US Airways) and America West) really ONE merged airline ?

Considering the questionable value of Phoenix and associated routes to the new Merged AA/U as opposed to International and East Coast ops, what's to keep Parker from cutting the former America West operation out of the merger and either fragmenting that operation or selling it outright ?

Trying to consider what options Parker and the UCC might have or be forced to take to move forward. Considering the terminal quagmire this latest development may produce, I wonder if this option if available, may be the most expeditious and beneficial option.