minimwage4

And Mesa pilots would finally get their wish of preferential hiring at Skywest. Sounds good to me.

BarbieTrash

Not to me, goin back to 19K a year sounds like a terrible Idea...but hey to each their own...

seafeye

I think it would be best if skywest stays on the west coast. But we can always swap out our F/A's.

mking84

No. SkyWest did. Any more questions?

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-relea...-64939432.html

Now if it is the stock warrants you are referring to, which i DOUBT you are then XJT gave UAL stock as part of the CPA, which is smart if you think about it. The reason it is smart minimumwage is that if XJT tanks so does UALs stock they own, so UAL now has a financial interest in the regional doing their flying.

Any more brain busters?

rickair7777

SKW might very well do it, they have been discussing this with LCC since the AWA days. SKW has the advantage that it already has 900's on the certificate, and has a bunch of cash if it needs to buy the airplanes all at once (or pay-to-play).

But there are some things SKW will not do...

1. Enter enter a non-profitable contract. They are not as risk of making lease payments on parked airplanes, so they have no incentive to take on additional flying. If other regionals are willing to do that, SKW will not get the flying. That's why we have missed out on several recent growth opportunities...lack of desperation on the part of management.

2. Enter into a short-term contract, or one with a whole lot of tail risk on the back end.

I also find it unlikely in the extreme that SKW would ask the pilots for concessions to do this. The pilot group is already sufficiently annoyed by benefits erosion as it is, and given the company's finances it would be a ludicrous request.

rickair7777

They have always had that...there are hundreds of Lamas at SKW. Prepare for the interview like you would for a PC and you should be good.

rickair7777

It's 22 now, but 36 second year...can't beat that at mesa.

BarbieTrash

1) Intrest=Profit (thats how banks make money).... West Coast Monopoly=BIG MONEY

2) No need or demand to enter into a short term contract with any airframe over 50 seats..

3) SKW will not ask for concessions from its pilots...no need to...West coast flying is too profitable, but in all reality they didn't "ask" for the benefits erosion either...

Nevets

Were any reps recalled? If they were not, its probably still somewhere on the burner. I know that if when I was a rep, and if I was ever threatened with a recall, it would not change my stance. If my pilot group doesn't want something that I fundamentally beleive is the right thing to do, then they should recall me because I would not betray my principles on a threat of a recall.

Well, it would be written so that your pilot group would reciprocate with any other FFD pilot group which has reciprocal language as well.

Exactly, this FFD thing is an insurance policy. You never want to have to use it but when it happens to you, you are glad you have it.

Actually, nothing is written is stone. But theoretically, pilot would get seniority and longevity BUT ONLY for the aircraft they bring to the party. No screwing of any of the pilots. This would in essence reduce the incentive for management to recycle pilots at first year pay and force them to compete on their product rather than on pilot labor costs.

That is not exactly the way its envisioned. The pilots would only get longevity for the amount of aircraft that are "transferred" to the new company. Just like ASA kindly does for you at SKW. Has nothing to do with prospects and all to do with pilot career insurance. The way it mitigates whipsaw is from preventing management to be able to bid to replace current flying with the assumption that their labor costs will have X number of pilots at first year pay, or by having their average pilot longevity lowered, you know, like SKW did with the their CPA with CAL to take over XJT flying.

I think you are making the same kind of mistake ALPA made in the 30s by not creating a national seniority list to begin with or when they voted away regional jet flying...shortsightedness. The FFD thing just allows pilots to go with their aircraft while keeping seniority and longevity. By making them start over at the bottom of someone else's seniority list, you help management whipsaw us just as they have with the divided pilot groups both in terms of industry fragmentation of pilots and major versus regional pilot groups.

Every single airline is one JO away from being the next Mesa.

Except if the FO at the quality airline is not hurt by it. In other words, if the quality airline acquires the flying from a non quality airline with their aircraft, then the FO at the quality airline has not lost their relative position pre-acquisition. The FO does gain insurance that if his airline gets the next JO, he has a possible career security blanket.

I agree that we should have some sort of minimum standards for pay and work rules. The FFD task force is in the process of doing that as well. We can do this on both fronts. But to say that this is what we signed up for and therefore be resigned to it is ludicrous. You are saying that whatever contract you inherited when you were hired, you are stuck with and don't want to improve it.

And they said we would never put a man on the moon. Yet there is no lack of technology to prevent this from happening! This is a way of limiting managements' ability to turn us against each other. Its too bad that we must fight each before we can fight management's propensity to lower our bar.

Sounds like a conversation that I had with a lot of your fellow pilots during the last drive. ALPA is not be the answer to everything but at least we have these discussions. I wished we could have input from others like Allegiant and Jetblue as well.

And when pilots try to limit management's leverage like what the FFD task force is trying to do, they fight amongst themselves.

Can you provide the information from XJT's CPA with UAL so that I can see this for myself? Not that I don't trust you but I just don't trust you unless you provide the document that shows how much XJT gets paid.

They sold UAL 2.7 million shares for $27k as a material inducement for him to award ExpressJet the flying and in order to align UAL's interests immediately with those of ExpressJet shareholders. No money was lent.

Is this flame bait?

And with the NMB changing its rules, they wouldn't want to add another risk of their pilots organizing, as if that's a bad thing.

With the FFD thing, first year pay would be a thing of the past unless of course this is your first year in the 121 industry.

Ooh, burn!

seafeye

Originally Posted by rickair7777
It's 22 now, but 36 second year...can't beat that at mesa.

What makes you think that management will go along with this? The last talk I had with our CEO is that he would welcome the pilots and seniority as long as they all start at year 1 pay.
Why would managment take pilots from Bankrupt airline "A" and give them seniority/pay/longevity? When they could just hire new pilots and upgrade those that actually put energy into the company.

The only way to reduce the whipsawing is to have an industry wide pay rate/contract on each airplane. So it doesn't matter if you worked for airline A or B, they would have same labor costs.