Albief15

For all our complaining about the current contract, I do think there were some very real improvements. With our without it--FDX was free to crank up the optimizer on their terms. Hoping they'd "go easy" on us if we didn't ask for too much is a foolish economy.

Not publishing the city purity letter earlier was a big mistake. I hope nothing like that happens again.

All that aside--if you look closely you'll see you are going to get an extra hour for your weekend layovers next month, and if you are doing a DDH somewhere for week on/week off you'll probably score an extra 2 hours. The 3.75 trip rig may force you to plan your vacation carefully, and if you go "advanced sick" you may burn a few more hours. But for the guy having to go and work the trip its extra money for the same days away. We don't have it for MEM turns, but maybe we can get it next time. I guess if you get shacked on an R day with those it also means you'll get a tad more leveling.

Not to sidetrack the discussion...sorry. The LOA was God-awful. Let's see what we can do better...

BrownGirls YUM

It still is.

skypine27

I am 100% convinced that line of thinking is/was totally incorrect. Here's why:

Yes, on paper, they could open FDAs w/o an LOA. But in practice, there was NO WAY they'd been able to do it successfully. Reasons:

• The FDA bid was a failure on the FO side: You saw how few bid it with the LOA. Imagine without the LOA, even fewer FOs would have bid either domicile, putting the company in an even tougher spot. It would have been very likely that HKG FO would have gone completely unfilled. Paris as well (see next point)

• Tax Equalization: CDG would have had a drastically low turnout on the FO side, and very well may have had captain seats go empty too. Without tax equalization, do you know many pilots that would have bid CDG, willing to pay 40% French income taxes?? Know many new hires that would accept a position at FedEX, knowing they were going to France w/o any housing allowance and having to fork over 40% of their income in taxes? I sure don't.

• Waiver of the 2 hour grand trans: The company would not have had this ability without the LOA. How would they get crews from HKG to CAN in a 4.5 to 5 hour van ride w/o the LOA? An absolutely essential part of the operation that would not have been available w/o the LOA.

• The infamous labor law document: That document they are forcing FDA crews to sign was absolutely essential prior to placing crews in France. Without the LOA, they wouldn't have had that ability either.

It absolutely amazes me that people think the company actually would have been successful in opening these FDAs without the LOA. Sure, they could have tried, but I would LOVE to have seen the bid results of that one....

DLax85

Coming from Al Gore.......completely expected!

DLax85

Spot on ---- especially the labor law document.

This was absolutely HUGE to them --- no way in h#ll they were going to hire foreign pilots under French labor law --- just not going to do it!