31Hz

You explained it while I was typing. I'm about five posts behind. I wonder if the union leadership is interested in fighting this since it appears to fall outside the intent of the Settlement Agreement?

Haywood JB

The big gamble is that it is two different bids. If you are on the 11 or the bus and you get excessed, or relieve excess to go to HKG, that truely will be the tell. If you could get everyone not to bid it on the excess, and then everyone bids it on 09-01, then you would have those guys lined up for POP. If not, it truely is a gamble, and if your money is on the table, and you have no intention of going, you should bid what you want to fly(or call your bets off before the dice go out)

HJB

31Hz

Are you reading the 8-01/8-02 CDG cancellation Settlement? It's under General Info>Postings>8-02.

FDXLAG

You are forgetting ALPA's motto "If it doesn't effect the top 50%; it doesn't matter".

No Incumbents.

Daniel Larusso

Yeah I was reading it on the ALPA site, but it's the same thing. The best I understand it is essentially what I said above. Any pilots who have their training canceled would be placed in excess status and able to hold either their current seat, if available, or whatever else their seniority could have held based on their standing bid at the time the bid that they were awarded the canceled position on(listed ahead of their current seat). The 'if available' language would be the killer here, but it's also instructive that anyone who is going to try and play the HKG game, put their other excess choices ahead of their current seat if they want to use 24.E.4 rights down the line.

Another interesting facet of the settlement is that it was the last document written before excesses became a reality around here and reflects it. Section B.3 of the settlement agreement says that 'Exercise of a pilot's seniority under Section 24.EA. shall be limited to the pilot's standing bid for each posting specified in paragraph B.2. above, as applied to the primary and secondary vacancy awards for each such posting.' This seems to introduce a huge gray area since the awards we are wondering about here would be excess or relieve excess awards. How does this language affect 24.E.4 rights? How does it work relative to 09-01 if it actually closes? No matter what the outcome, I suggest that our NC sit down with their counterparts at US, UA, NW, DL, etc and have a little shop talk about how their respective excess bid processes are written because there is far too much ambiguity and graduate level calculus theorems involved in ours.

31Hz

I finally found it on the ALPA website. The only place is a link to it on the Special Message Line dated 12 May 2008. Unless I am overlooking something.

Daniel Larusso

That's how I found it as well.

31Hz

It says the pilot with the canceled award retains ....all applicable bidding rights and privileges...

I guess Section 24.C.6.b would have be declared "not an applicable bidding right or privilege."

This is starting to look like too much of a stretch. I think they may have to excess out of HKG to avoid passover pay.

Daniel Larusso

24.C.6.b says that if there are insufficient preferences on a standing bid of an excessed pilot, the company will assign them to the highest paying seat in the U.S. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see how that would be a player here. Are you referring to 24.C.6.c which disallows an excess into a FDA if it creates an excess, generating POP? That's the murky part, primarily because I'm not sure anyone has a really good explanation of how this settlement agreement allowed some people to get their 07-03 awards back and others not.

The official explanation I got on that was that if no one junior to you awarded the same position on the posting didn't have their training canceled then you couldn't reclaim your award and off it went into the 08-01 hopper. While that isn't clear within the settlement language imo and I've seen some situations that make me question that, if it were applied to this HKG scenario the company would use the same logic to claim that no one junior to the canceled award pilots on the same posting was activated so they have no claim to HKG Capt. and no passover. Additionally, as I said above section 3 of the settlement agreement on training cancellations says that the cancellation rights in 24.E.4 apply to primary and secondary vacancy awards. It doesn't say anything about excess awards which could be a kicker. It basically looks like it throws you back to whatever else you could have held on the excess bid.

All of this stuff is complicated and what happens is highly fluid based on what the pilot group and the company each decide to do going forward. While I'm sure we don't have the answers locked down tight, I think what is clear is how much of gamble this is all is because of the way the company has set it up, so people better be willing to do what they bid. For instance, we've all been so focused on the scenario of a large number of people bidding HKG hoping for passover, but what if the numbers on both the excess and vacancy are deemed manageable by the company?

Personally, I think the uncertainty involved with this stuff makes that a more likely scenario with the company ultimately electing to take all HKG pilots on the excess and vacancy. Sure they'll be a little fat over there, but it evens things out a bit here and sets them up for when things turn around in a base they've had trouble staffing.

Daniel Larusso

Oh and while we're throwing confusing/ambiguous lines out there, how about this line in the settlement: "The parties recognize that the Company may declare an excess at an FDA following the awards or assignments." Isn't that basically admitting that the company can get around the can't create an excess in a FDA language by creating the excess after the awards/assignments?