forgot to bid

If so it's not on their website.

shiznit

It's probably not something they would air in public. It sounds like a bad rumor though anyway....

Although, Seham has had ZERO success in changing the Nic Award, so maybe they are frustrated with the lack of progress? (Just a spitball, no inside knowledge was used in this supposition.)

shiznit

Did you "hear" it from an instructor when you were at training recently?

Bucking Bar

Gloopy, my immediate fear, based on straight numbers and past trends, was a sale of the 100 t0 122 seat flying in an appeal to the large number of yes voting pilots who see this contract as their last bite of the apple. I think that sale is off the table, for now.

As a matter of union strategy, I'm focused on "unity." To me, a fights over a 76 seat, a 70, or a 30 seat line in the sand are all equally flawed. As a unionist, unity is more important than economics.

Taken from a "unity" perspective, all any union member can do is support our effort to unify our seniority list. Unity is the most powerful and legitimate scope argument we have. It is best to take the moral high ground on this issue and let management figure out the pragmatic solution. They buy the airplanes, we fly them.

I will admit when someone else was right and economically, it appears Bill Kessler, Lee Moak and others were correct in calling for the economic demise of the permitted aircraft types. By taking advantage of economic fortuity, we will recover flying if we hold the line. It is an excellent tactic for us in the short term.

During this momentary calm we must shift from viewing scope and our members' jobs as a matter of unity and not economics.

Bucking Bar

USAPA might have bounced a check or two.

I dunno, but everything they've tried has been expensive and fruitless. Eventually the result in inevitable.

alfaromeo

Actually they have made it quite public. There is an ongoing food fight between the various USAPA councils over this issue and over support for their current administration. Various council publications have been printed on the interwebs on public forums.

The USAPA administration has had a huge falling out with Seham and has cut him out of any real work for the union. They have hired two independent teams of auditors to go over his billing and their initial report showed some irregularities (at least according to the DCA and PHX councils). Seham has been cut out of the lawsuit that USAPA filed in New York and they were cut out of the preliminary injunction that the company filed (and won) most recently.

Given the current legal morass that USAPA faces, there is no hope they will have any contractual gains in the next 3 to 5 years. I don't think it really matters as it seems that LCC management has just about given up on this company.

Bucking Bar

People keep saying that, but lets look at the numbers:

LCC:

2011 operating income $138 million thus far
2010 profit $502 million
2009 operating income $118 million (taxes and net losses on non operational items took them to a loss of $205 million gross)

DAL

2011 net loss of $120 million, which includes a $74 million income tax credit which will have to be repaid if profitable the rest of the year
2010 profit $593 million
2009 LOSS $1.3 billion
2008 LOSS $8.9 billion
2007 profit $1.6 billion

Lets face it, the merger synergies of 2 billion a year have thus far been happy horse manure. The merger was hugely expensive (mostly write offs) but a lot was also refinanced. Delta is retreating from markets where it can and shrinking.

(admittedly, I played with operating and gross numbers, but you have to look past hedging and non operational costs. The point is, Delta has not performed as was promised to shareholders and US Air is not nearly as dead as people make it out to be)

alfaromeo

I am sorry but you are viewing this process through an industrial lens and not through a scientific lens. There were no tradeoffs done to satisfy any party. What the ARC did was to look at two very large studies done on pilot fatigue along with other scientific research on sleep and fatigue. Most of what they found falls into the pilot "duh" category and includes:

1. People work best when they get up at a normal time in the morning and go to work. They are at their worst when they have to wake up very early or stay up very late.

2. Long duty days are tiring even if you are not "working". A three hour sit in Atlanta is NOT rest.

3. Flying more legs per day is more tiring than flying one or two.

4. When you go to a different time zone your body needs time to adjust.

5. On long flights, you need to have quality rest facilities to get quality rest. A seat in coach doesn't hack it.

All of the rules were crafted around these and other facts that arose from the studies. What the studies show was that if you are working during banker's hours, you can safely fly more than eight hours, as long as you have a duty day that keeps you within banker's hours. ALPA thinks the limit should be 9, the ATA 11, and the FAA picked 10. This was not done to keep anything "cost neutral".

The ATA was more than happy with the current regulations. It allows carriers with weak contracts to abuse the hell out of their pilots. The current regulations WERE made from an industrial view with lobbying done not on safety but on cost issues. The ATA fought changing the rules, ALPA was for changing the rules.

The conundrum was that once you agreed to change the rules, and once you agreed to base your conclusions on science, then you were faced with accepting issues where the science led to changes you don't like. The change from 8 hours was not done on an industrial basis it was simply what the science showed to be within acceptable safety margins. Sure 8 is better than 9, 7 is better than 8, and 0 is best. If we limit all pilots to 0 hours per day, then by god we will never have an accident will we. (or a job) No one can point to any study or any scientific reason that 8 hours was picked for the current regulation other than 8 hours used to be the standard work day.

The ETOPS issue is just another DPA red herring. First, our contract prohibits ocean crossings over 8 hours without augmentation. Our contract already contains many restrictions far beyond the FAA minimums so it seems unlikely that there is any consensus amongst our pilots that we would want to change this provision.

Second, if you look at the duty days and hour restrictions, it is virtually impossible to conduct ocean crossings with a two man crew (other than what is done today like JFK-SNN) unless you purchase a spare fleet of aircraft to deal with time spent on the ground in Europe and if you give your passengers really crappy connections by landing in the US at 3 in the morning. Seriously, look at our current operations to Europe and tell me how they can comply with the rules with a two man crew. It just doesn't work.

So there were no "trades" to make anyone happy. Just science. If you go with the science then you are stuck with some results that you may not like. If want to just keep the discussion on an industrial side, then you will lose as the ATA has much more money than we do.

Bucking Bar

Alpha,

Good post on FTDT.

Gloopy,

Notice how senior those "bad" trips with an extra 2 hours of block go.

You're looking at this like I am, but expand your view and it is apparent this is good for safety.

alfaromeo

Okay, here is where I disagree. LCC is an insignificant player in Star and they have an insignificant network in the US compared to Delta and United. Every penny of their profits would evaporate if they paid industry average wages and they would be operating at a loss if they paid Delta wages. Their labor groups will never come together and they have significant problems with the contracts in place to merge in whole with anyone else. It is possible that they could try to purchase AMR if they went Chapter 11, but they would have to line up a lot of suckers to lend them money to pull that off. Who thinks that deal would reach SOC 14 months after it closes?

All the talk I hear from LCC management is "someone buy us, PLEEEEAAASSSE. Take me out of my misery." My guess would be fragmentation. In my opinion, we stole those assets from LCC in the slot swap. I can't imagine how LCC would let all those assets go unless they were positioning themselves for the next deal. At best, the future for LCC is a stumbling little carrier with the most unhappy labor groups in aviation history, trying to compete amongst giant carriers in giant alliances. Would you leave Delta to go over there?

So I don't know if you can point to $2 billion in synergies from the merger, I have learned long ago to discount all these public predictions. However, Delta has great revenue momentum, Skyteam is becoming stronger every day and hopefully will have the same results as Star, and I would much rather be here than at LCC. We are just now hitting on 7 of 8 cylinders and hopefully we can get number 8 firing up next year.