deltajuliet

With your legal background, do you feel we have a good case? How do you see this all panning out, it just gets dragged on into legal oblivion?

WisJudge

Strictly from my personal experience as a litigant in Federal Court:
Nothing moves at anything other than a glacial pace.
The side wanting delays will do everything they can to prolong the process; and the process WILL be delayed.
Outcomes are 100% unpredictable. You can have the best slam dunk case anyone has ever seen, out lawyer the other side, and you still end up with a loss.
Sorry to be disheartening, but that's the game.
No one ever truly wins except the lawyers.

That being said, I think this goes the distance. Think years. I'd love to be wrong.

As for the substance of Mesa's offer, who knows? Our trust is in those permitted to see the offer. The few folks I know, I think highly of. That being said, I was unimpressed with the last union call. The call was teed up as BIG NEWS and all there was was Q&A. Was particularly unimpressed with the ALPA attorney's comments, fluff.

Regarding the stock I've heard about:
Who wants to be a minority owner in a privately help company? There is no upside, unless one had 100% confidence in the corporate leadership. Even then I'd probably pass.

Stock will be backed, by whom?
If the backing entity files bankruptcy, all contracts are stayed; if BK is granted to the backing entity, pilots get 100% of nothing. Would the growing cash value be held in escrow to prevent future shenanigans? Can that stock value be backed by the hard assets of Mesa? Will JO, Mesa, the officers, and the investors personally guarantee the value of the stock joint and severally? Of course not. Personally, I'll take the cash and avoid all the hocus-pocus.

I have lots of questions that I think cannot be answered due to the confidentiality of the negotiation process.

Big picture strategy; why are we not taking a 3-pronged approach to this?
1. Let ALPA continue as they are, perhaps they accomplish something.
2. Begin discussions with the Teamsters to see what they can offer.
3. Understand the Skywest model of a pilots association. Allied broke away from ALPA with AA. Are there better options for Mesa pilots?

Moving forward on all three fronts at one time provides the pilot group with the most opportunity for success, and might even motivate the existing players to a faster conclusion in this near decade long process.

Lots of questions.

Whatmeworry

By talking to another organizing Union it MAY give the impression of a no confidence feeling towards the union. It takes years for a new Union to be be elected and brought up to speed on negotiations. As far as the pilots, start doing lil things like if a caution message comes up before push back or during.... don't control alt delete the damn airplane, call maintenance. Don't be afraid to Delay the flights. If anything is not to specs, delay, delay

And most of all, STOP PICKING UP THE OVERTIME AS A LINE HOLDER!!

squawkoff

That's one thing I've noticed since I've been at Mesa. Many captains are reluctant to write up an item. Last month we had an acft with no APU. So we do a crossbleed start. Only problem is we can't get the operating engine up to 42 PSI. We try a start anyway. We get a Start Abort because the ITT exceeded limits. We tried again and got it started. It never got above 39 PSI. Even on takeoff roll. So we get to DFW and I was adimant that it needs to be written up. We have 40 min turn and we swap acft. When we get settled in the next acft I ask the captain if he wrote it up. He said "no but I told them about it." I'm sure they (I assume maintance) never did a thing about it.

We need to be writing things up when they occur. Don't wait till they get to an overnight maintainence base. I hear captains *****ing all the time asking "why don't they fix these airplanes?" Because they don't get written up. Unfortunately the MEL is the go to first reaction. I swear they're playing musical gear doors on the CRJs.

BeatNavy

Good insight Judge. Here is the thing that no one is discussing. What happens between now and a new offer? What happens as the NMB and the company crawl through this process? I predict this summer will break Mesa and flying will have to get taken from Mesa and given to someone else. Even if a huge offer came tomorrow, you can't get enough in to cover the bleeding nor the growth IMO. And attrition will get worse. Other airlines keep finding cash, i.e. real money, not phantom stock money that will in all likelihood, with JOs shady background, be as useful as Monopoly money. And many of those places have faster upgrades and/or flows to boot.

Good luck. Hope you guys get what you deserve (a good contract). But I have zero faith in JO ever paying pilots, and I'd be packing my things if I hadn't already done so a year ago. I guess for those trying to build time you'll get to fly 1000 hours every 365 days, though, a lot for 200%. Other regionals aren't even lateral moves anymore.

Bikingscott

Hears another CP is leaving for greener pastures.....

airflight999

To another regional no less...

MrWizard

[QUOTE=WisJudge;2337803]Regarding the stock I've heard about:
Who wants to be a minority owner in a privately help company? There is no upside, unless one had 100% confidence in the corporate leadership. Even then I'd probably pass. Stock will be backed, by whom? If the backing entity files bankruptcy, all contracts are stayed; if BK is granted to the backing entity, pilots get 100% of nothing. Would the growing cash value be held in escrow to prevent future shenanigans? Can that stock value be backed by the hard assets of Mesa? Will JO, Mesa, the officers, and the investors personally guarantee the value of the stock joint and severally? Of course not. Personally, I'll take the cash and avoid all the hocus-pocus.

I've been meaning to write about the 'offer of stock' and thank Judge for starting that discussion.

I stongly recommend everyone tell any union reps they know, to avoid stock at all costs. There are many reasons why Mesa might considering offering stock to the pilots, but none of these are good for us.

Let's try to make this a simple explanation: many people in the business of picking stocks for a living say "buy what you know". (Peter Lynch, Warren Buffet, Motley Fool, others too.) Given what you know about Mesa today, would you buy any publicly-offered stock if there was such an animal? Since there is no publicly traded stock available to the general public, how would you do your vetting of the financials of the company if there are no publicly-accessible documents: company financials, SEC 10-K from the initial filing, compnay annual report, etc? There are none of those things here .. and reasonably so. It's a privately-held company and they have no obligation to make any of their income/expenses/revenues/EBITDA/gross profit margin/etc information available to outsiders.

Any private company can issue any shares they want .. but what equity is behind the stock? In other words, what financial stake in the company is represented by the shares? There is no market now nor likely the future for any stock issued to pilots .. despite any claims to the contrary that a 'private company' will buy the shares back at any time. **If** there is a true outsider company willing to buy the stock, show me their offer sheet now so we can decide what the value is. With no restrictions in place that a publicly-traded company must operate under with respect to their stock, Mesa is free to print as many shares as they want .. but I can guarantee you that if these represent true equity in the company, and not just some artificially derived numerical value, the existing creditors of Mesa (which includes AAL as reflected in the recent financial interest filing) would almost assuredly object because it dilutes their holdings. Who holds any existing shares today, and what are they worth?

In a private company issuing vaporware stock, you have no voting rights in the business of the company as is possible with publicly-traded stock.

I could really go down many different detailed reasons why we must not accept any offer that includes 'stock', but time and space here prevents that. Many of you perhaps never have owned stock, and this is not a good way to learn. I respectfully suspect that many of the union officers and those negotiating on our behalf may never have owned stock. Without controls in place required of public companies, we're completely in the dark about what this 'stock' is worth, or more likely, isn't worth.

I will leave you with this: please consider JO's background as a stockbroker and how/why he left that industry. IMO .. this is a pump-and-dump scheme very similar to what happens in the Wild West of Stock Trading: the OTC market.

JUST SAY NO TO STOCK.

Whatmeworry

This discussion of stock options should NOT be even discussed!! Period, end of sentence!! The grocery store or the mortgage company doesn't accept stock as payment unless they have ZERO options!! The pilot group should end this speculation of any thing but $$'s and sense. Put pressure on the company in anyway possible by legit means for mx etc. and stop picking up the overtime!! There are folks who likely haven't even seen the flt deck of these airplanes getting 25k plus bonuses!! This is just like Freedom, but it's the same company and same tactics!!

I'm trying to get out now before the summer because I'm seeing things happening soon that will either cause loss of aircraft or downright bankruptcy because of the loan activity of the company!!!

WisJudge

And?

If you hired me for anything, and I did not get the job done, how long would you keep me around? At what point would you start questioning my abilities, intentions, loyalties? At what point would you feel like you're getting milked? 2 years, 5 years, 8 years, 20 years? If you started looking for another service provider, would I feel a little heat, would that be a bad thing? I'd do one of two things: abandon the effort because I was not serious anyway, or I'd kick it into high gear because now there is competition. I find there is usually associated positive action when people are held accountable.

I'm not saying ALPA is not the best for Mesa pilots, maybe they are the perfect fit. Question, have ALPA's actions and results with larger airlines been the same or better compared to Mesa? Does ALPA take this long lets say with United's pilots, Delta's, Jet Blue's?