shiznit

Just remember this is the OPINION of a VERY opinionated pilot.

The facts are not necessarily sandwiched within his editorials.

hoserpilot

Capt Kochblauch
New Hire



I love the avatar and your screen name. Welcome, but please don't use your name to interfere in our underboob festival. A Kochbaucher is not always a good thing......unless your saving a crewmember from a terrible drunken size 28 red dress mistake, aka Shallow Hal!!!


(-:

Rather B Fishin

I thought one of DPA's talking points were to decrease dues??? Your personal hatred of all things ALPA clouds any logical discussion. We currently have a PWA that stipulates the company pays certain union FPL, you say that's bad. If pilots had to pay, dues would increase, DPA says that's bad. You put DALPA in a no win posiition.

alfaromeo

So, after dealing with the, well let's give the benefit of the doubt and call them "mistakes", over the flight pay loss issues, let's turn to some of the other "mistakes" coming out of the DPA. For instance, American Airlines declares bankruptcy so the DPA has to find some way to blame bankruptcy on ALPA. This is what they put on their website:

So we will start with the source. DPA claims that this article is from the Washington Post. It is not from the Washington Post and never was published in the Washington Post. I found out the article was from the Washington Examiner, which is the free paper distributed locally. This is the one where they have a picture of your kid when he gets his scout badges and most people call it the Penny Saver. I discovered this through a painstaking effort that consisted of clicking the link embedded in the article, it took me 3 seconds.

That leaves one of two possibilities; either the DPA is comically inept and lazy about publishing attacks on their website or they were deliberately trying to deceive their readers into thinking that this article had more weight behind it than it being published by some part time local hack in the Penny Saver. I am not sure which is worse, I sort of go back and forth, idiots or liars, not sure which I would hang my hat on there.

Now let's get to the claims in the article, claims that apparently DPA endorses. The article claims there was this secret $15 billion asset, the frequent flier program at United, that ALPA missed. Of course the DPA forgot to mention that the creditors who lost billions of dollars missed it, the stockholders who were wiped in the bankruptcy missed it, the investment bankers that managed the reorganization missed it, the bankruptcy judge missed it, the PBGC missed it, Wall Street missed it, and the other unions at United missed it.

So who caught it? Well an eagle eyed retired pilot who had his pension terminated. This is the source that the DPA wants you to rely on for your financial and economic analysis. This pilot believes that this secret pot of gold at the end of the rainbow was just sitting there and everyone in the world missed it. Now he wants his share of the pot. Now did our intrepid Penny Saver reporter do any research to back this up. Did she talk to an economist? No. Did she talk to United Airlines? No. Did she talk to the PBGC? No. Well, let's just use the thoughts of a random retired pilot and use that as our primary source for financial reporting. Very thorough.

Let's dig a little deeper. If the United Frequent Flier program was worth $15 billion back then, it must be worth at least $25 billion or more now that they have merged with Continental. If you look at the market cap of United right now it is about $6 billion. That means that if we believe this reporter and this pilot, then the worth of the Frequent Flier program is $25 billion and the real worth of the rest of United right now is negative $19 billion. They try to back this up with some more dreck from the Motley Fool which is right up there with US Weekly as a source of financial acumen. This article was published almost two years ago and mentioned a RICO suit. Not sure what the status is on that lawsuit. Of course the DPA lawyer should be familiar with RICO since he filed a RICO suit against HIS OWN PILOTS. Now that he has been fired by USAPA, he is searching for some fresh meat to strip clean.

If that all seems a little fishy to you that is because it is the most idiotic assertion that has been printed for a long long time. This loops us back to the DPA relying on this as some proof that ALPA dropped the ball on bankruptcy. I mean the entire article, the entire assertion is Three Stooges worthy.

The DPA can't accurately source the items they put on their website either through deception or incompetence. They also are so blinded by their hatred of all things ALPA that they would rely on the most idiotic ideas printed by anyone with a keyboard to back up their assertions.

This would be funny if it weren't so sad. It is just this same sort of mindless thrashing that has left USAPA sitting at the bottom of the heap for 4 years. They rely on this type of simplistic, wishful analysis that in the end does not hack it in a business environment.

Let's see if the DPA at least has the integrity to at least fix their sourcing of this article.

shiznit

Wrong, wrong and still wrong.

Carl, feel free to be mad about problems, there are many things that need to be fixed. But for Pete's sake please quit conjuring up random stuff to be angry about.... It diverts your energy (and ours) from the REAL problems.

scambo1

Shiz;

Can you post any facts to refute the "opinions" that fatboy bolded?

shiznit

Volunteers never get monthly average pay hours +5 (92 last year).
Not all volunteers get monthly average pay hours (87 last year).
Committee chairs and volunteers don't get "highest position they can hold"(except NC?).
Only a few specified officers get avg.+5, and it doesn't even come out of dues or MEC budget.
NOBODY gets "loosely accounted for" expenses. Everything must be documented and accounted for in a computerized database that at least 2 people in different offices have to approve to be paid.

*Personal experience(so not quite an admissible fact): KR was extremely vigilant and expected full documentation/details on an expense report. The guy was VERY protective of the DAL pilots' dollar(notice the massive surplus in our monthly budgets). I hope BF will do as good a job going forward.

shiznit

I view union work pay like LCA/Inst. pay.

You don't want to pay so much extra that guys who only care about the $$$$ take the jobs and do a cruddy job and crowd out the pilots who WANT to do the job and have passion for the work.

Yet, you want to give the guys who have a passion for the job and do the extra work involved to do the best work possible bonus $$$ for their efforts.

It's a catch-22.

TheManager

Including profit sharing to boost a monthly average to determine FPL is disingenuous at best, particularly when one on FPL is paid out profit sharing seperately.

NuGuy

Call your rep. They know.

Nu