acl65pilot

Depends on who the reps elect. The names are just starting to come out. I would call your reps and ask them who has announced.

DAL 88 Driver

Good suggestion. Will do.

In the meantime, it would be interesting to know how many of the current reps voted for LM for ALPA Nat'l President and support the strategy LM has used as MEC Chairman. Probably a fairly strong correlation between how that vote went, how they view his strategy, and what kind of new MEC Chairman they will elect. If I'm not mistaken, most of the reps support LM and his strategy. This would not fit with my input as to who should be our new MEC Chairman.

acl65pilot

I do not think it is that easy. Really. There will multiple rounds of voting. In the end it was down to a pax airline guy and a freight guy that tried to sound like he was an outsider who clearly did not have all of his fact straight (From a pilot from another airline that was in the room)

From my talk with him, it was clear that there was more at stake here than LM and whether or not you liked him or not. It was about making the best choice at the end of the road for the pilots that each rep represented. That is why at the end of the day, LM got 65% of the vote. He was the best choice for the majority of the pilots that had votes.

In the end Lee is a pax airline guy. Whether or not you agree with him he is intimately familiar with all of the issues that are facing us on the National and International playing field. From my other airline bud, this is why he/she voted for him. It was his/her impression that by his/her interaction with all of the candidates Lee was the one person that truly had a grasp of the issues that are coming at us. (His/her words, not mine, so take it FWIW)

With our MC moving to National I suspect that what we have seen out of Prater will NOT be what we see out of LM. It also changes the way the next Master Chairman's election will go. A lot is shifting here, and that can be good. I suggest we all stay informed, talk to our reps, and continue to stay educated on the issues that are coming our way. With this info we can direct our reps.

DAL 88 Driver

Being familiar with issues and knowing how to address them appropriately are two different things. Based on LM's track record here, I don't see any kind of real focus on restoration forthcoming. In other words, no significant change from Prater. Hope I'm wrong. (But I doubt it.)

Carl Spackler

Civilian. I graduated from high school right when Viet Nam ended. I was offered only NFO (non flying officer) slots.

I've answered this way too many times previously. Don't ask me to repeat it again because you don't pay attention.

Carl

acl65pilot

DAL88,
With expectations so low, he should be wildly successful!

Carl Spackler

That really is a very good analogy. I turned down my AMR interview in 1982 when I found out what a "B" scale meant. I was told I was a fool for turning it down because eventually the B's would be the majority and then they could rule the roost. These pilots hired after 1982 interviewed and made a compelling case to be hired at AMR under the B scale. What happened after they were hired? Non-stop b!ch!n and moaning about how the "A" scalers sold them down the river and "FORCED" them to work for B scale wages.

Like I've said in the RJ debate, imagine this scenario:

AMR fights tooth and nail to get that "B" scale and even gives contract increases to everyone in order to get that B scale, then

All prospective AMR pilots do what I did and turn down the interview, then

AMR management is stuck with paying out all those contract increases while their B scale does them no good.

Wouldn't that have been great? All it requires is people who will not work for less than what they're worth.

Carl

Carl Spackler

We should have voted the BK contract down and called everyone's bluff. That's how I voted. I called management's bluff and the BK judge's bluff and wanted to see the judge try to force us to work without a contract, while we went through the RLA to eventually strike. The contract asked for too much in my opinion.

Carl

Carl Spackler

Sure the DOT will give them to us...right after we divest some gates and slots to Southwest Airlines.

Carl

forgot to bid

Two ways to do this Top Gun 2 thing. Since is Friday night movie night.

First, Star Wars like. Remember how excited everyone was to see the new Star Wars movies but instead of Millennium Falcons you got a U.N. meeting?

Well, set it in 2005, big opening sequence the same as the first where you meet Goose's ****ed off boys who are now some of the last of the F-14 pilots. They go to Fallon now to find the man who killed their dad and prove to him he sucks, but instead, they run into him at a bar. He actually left the Navy in 1996 and they spend the rest of the movie talking about life in the airlines, scope, pbs, unions, RJ's, pensions, furloughs, crabby Captains, weird FO's, old FA's, who's really to blame and some bad overnight hotels... and bed bugs and crabs. The end.

Well except Meg Ryan makes a cameo. All of it was cheap. And btw, if there is a Mig scene, instead of hiring one from Russia they just get a... C-182 to play the part, all in black.

Or you go the Mission Impossible / Matrix route. Gooses kid is an E-2 pilot, plane runs into trouble and crashes in the middle of the Pacific but instead of dying they some how all wash up on shore of some deserted island. There is 5 people, 2 hot in-shape girls, 3 dudes one who is serious, one who is long haired and not so serious and one you know will die right away, say in the prop or by the smoke monster. Anyways, they're there for a while, things get goofy, they meet strange "others" that live there, time travel occurs, lottery numbers show up, flashbacks galore, they have a chance to get off the island but instead they end up time traveling to 1986 where Goose's kid meets his dad who is still alive and has a chance to tell him to not spin out to sea and it all builds to a huge climax that the writers can't handle and it fizzles out.

The best part, all the CGI necessary to recreate the F-14 which allowed for lots of hookie slow motion scenes.

Either way, it sucks.