vroll1800

Soooo....... UPS was a private company prior to 1999. That didn't stop the UPS pilot group from getting their 1st break away from the dirtball plus a nickel contract in 1991. (Recall that USA was still in a recession then.) Nor did it stop them from getting improvements in subsequent contract round that placed them in the top 3 out of ~13 airlines in career value in a 1998 Air, Inc. survey. Nor does being a private company seem to be hampering American Family Insurance from posting $12B in revenues or having $81B in assets.
There are some valid "rationalizations" for some people taking their positions, but the private company straw man argument ain't it. Maybe the question that should be asked is why Connie hasn't gone public. Is it because he's not confident that his business plan, and prospects can't pass rigorous outside financial scrutiny, or is it because he doesn't want outsiders diluting his control over company. Do some people perceive K4 as being more like a mom and pop convenience store vs the $1B plus company with a global reach that it really is ?
Ultimately, people will assess their ability (willingness) to walk away from a subpar deal and vote accordingly. Btw, when does voting start and end ?

gollum

Didn’t he take one company public before? Didn’t they run that company into the ground? Didn’t he buy it back for pennies on the dollar and turn it in to what it is today?

Rama

He merge with KittyHawk which turned out to be a disaster. I think he needed the money at the time.
Bought the certificate back out of the bankruptcy and started with 3 airplanes in 2000.
It was a sizeable operation in the 90's with 2 bases, DC-8's, 727's, 74's and L1011's.

jhugz

Then they should unionize. I respect all the people in YIP, but we are negotiating for the pilot group and no one else.

Frank717

Sorry I didn’t answer earlier, been out flying.

So two points on this. First, we have the right to ask for as much as we want, and take as much as we can. Honestly, Connie does the same for every business transaction he ever makes. His goal is to get the most he can, that’s common strategy. He wants to pocket the most he can on the same accord. It’s not that he’s greedy, it’s be a business man.

Second, by no means am I looking down on those around us. They deserve everything they can get too. Just because we get more, doesn’t mean they get less. In addition, it’s been proven time and again that better pay, draws better people (you can be more selective in hiring). Better people produce a better company, especially when they are driven by profit. But honestly, at the end of the day, they have to look out what’s best for them, I look out what’s best for me.

“Frank” on here is just a alias, but the 717 is real. And if you can figure that out, then you know who I am. I run my side company and have a MBA. The point being, money is money and business is business. That argument that “so many slices of a pie” is disproven day one in business class. A companies doesn’t pay out on profit is a difficult concept that many don’t get. So, look at it this way. If FedEx can pay their pilots those rates and still operate successfully, then so can we.

CA Deplorable

Connie sold AIA to Kitty Hawk for approx 75 mil. He sold during a time when he had an aging fleet of DC-8s, B727s, L10-11s, and 747-100s and 200s. Kitty Hawk was a small domestic carrier and had no clue what they had gotten themselves into. The L-10 could have been a great freighter but because they were converted by Marshall in the UK (which subsequently went BK shortly after conversion) Because Lockheed was not part of the conversion process they never gave Marshall the weights the needed to be viable vs the DC-10. Connie almost had Emery hoodwinked into buying them and that fell through, L10s became a white elephant, combined with all the other old equipment. That's about the time he unloaded to Kitty Hawk. After the collapse of Kitty Hawk International, he bought the cert back for pennies on the dollar and restarted. The company never was public. That's probably one of the reasons why Connie doesn't fly Amazon, as they want to see the books and have someone on the board. Remember K4 is an LLC, profits and losses are listed on the personal tax returns of the owner(s) unless structured differently.

maxjet

Thank you for your response Captain. My point is that you cannot go about thinking that the pilot group negotiates in a vacuum. I am guessing that you may not know that from your response.

What is most troubling about your comment, is that you were on the negotiating committee. Had you known these simple things, perhaps things would have worked out better when you were on the committee. Instead the new committee was saddled with an Instructor section that your committee negotiated. When I saw it it was hard for me to believe that it had been negotiated by a union taking union dues from the instructors? Heartbreaking, that union members would do that to other union members. Why? You didn’t even secure better benefits in exchange.

To recap, short sighted and situationally unaware of the environment. Negotiating in direct conflict to a part of the pilot group causing considerable disruption in their pay. Perhaps to the rest of the pilot groups pay also. (When they all go back to the line and you have to deal with the growing pains of a training department that has all new inexperienced Instructors.

Makes me very happy to be retired and watching this tragedy from the cheap seats.

maxjet

Frank, I agree with everything you have written except the last sentence. FedEx gained their scales during expansion. FedEx Mgt. knew that in order to succeed they needed to be the right size. In order to be the right size they needed to expand. Etc, etc.

K4 is different. This is a kind of expansion, but it is a lot different. First, it is expansion as a subcontractor. FedEx wasn’t subcontractor that could be whip sawed around. DHL, the military and anyone else that K4 flies for can. Second, this “expansion” will not result in a huge increase of aircraft. Once things resume, the airlines will pick up their belly freight and the foreign airlines will resume their operations also. Excess will dry up. Fortunately, because of the K4 business model, they will survive any slowdown. Third, as you stated above, Connie is a businessman, and this is his legacy. He took a lot of grief from the increases in the last contract that were not passed onto other employees. If you cannot show him a ROI I think it is very much an uphill battle. Lastly, for the most part, the pilot group is made up of people who take great pride in completing the mission and are loyal to the company. Besides it being illegal, I think that most pilots at K4 would find a work slowdown or any other job action to be very distasteful. Not so much at FedEx.

Good luck, I wish you all nothing but success.

goinaround

That instructor section was put in place due to the behavior of one notorious instructor who had a near 100% dissatisfaction rate during subsequent sim sessions in a day. Too bad for the group that’s in there now. Doesn’t seem fair.

Lockheed

its being taken care of