Toddnel

For those that do not subscribe to EWR Chief Pilot Mike Bowers email update, here is the latest. Mike is a pilot advocate and a straight shooter who tries to keep us as up to date as he can.



Directors meeting in ORD: I attended the annual Directors meeting in ORD last week. This the where senior management gets together and are briefed by Jeff on the direction for the company in the coming year(s). As always, it was an interesting meeting and I will share with you some of what I took away from it. It was an upbeat message. While in the trenches you may be too close to the operation to see that we are making real progress in all of our goals. We aren’t perfect, I don’t have to tell you that. But we are improving and meeting our goals as we work our way through this long merger. As you know we made a 1.1 billion dollar profit this year beating our minimum goal of 1 billion. Let me point out that 1.1 BILLION dollars is a lot of money. I certainly never expected to be working for an airline that would be making over a billion dollars. I doubt if many of you did either. So don’t let that fact get by you. We are a very profitable company and we are doing it while running a race with one foot stuck in mud as we work through our merger issues. It seems to be a popular activity to compare ourselves with Delta. In many ways we should, because they are our competition and their ability to have deeper pockets can give them an advantage. While Delta enjoyed a larger profit than we did, we actually brought in more revenue. It is our cost structure (and the fact that we are spending a lot of time and money to close out our merger) that keeps us from outperforming Delta. We are working on that higher cost structure and have plans to reduce our costs primarily through fuel savings but also from many innovative ways to change processes that we are doing that can be more efficient. Our “margin” (percentage of return on investment) was 2.8 % last year, up from 1.4% in 2012. That is a very small return on our expenditures. In comparison, last year American’s was 5.4% and Deltas was 7.1%. A normal margin for most businesses is around 12%. We want to continue to grow our pre-tax profit margin. One of the things that we do well and plan to continue to expand is our ancillary income. That is income from bag fees, meals for sale, change fees, etc. Most of us don’t like the fact that we charge for those things, but let me throw some numbers at you that might make you see how significant those ancillary fees are. Last year we took in $2.8 billion in ancillary income. Yes, that is billion with a “b”. Our revenue from these fees make up a substantial amount of our profitability. We plan on increasing this revenue to $3.5 billion by 2017. We want to grow our profit from 1.1 billion last year to 3-4 billion in 2017. Our stock went from $20.49 at the end of 2012 to $44.60 at the end of 2013, an increase of 118%. We continue to modernize our fleet with satellite based Wi-Fi. We have 155 aircraft complete today and will essentially have the entire fleet done by the end of the year. We are the only domestic airline to have satellite Wi-Fi that works internationally as well as domestic. We are putting in-seat power in 100% of our seat on international aircraft and in First Class on domestic flights which are generally short enough to allow for battery use. We continue to modernize our A-320 fleet and take delivery of new B-737’s and B-787’s this year. We will take delivery of the first B-787-900 later this year as well. The general feeling at the meeting was that this was a turn-around year. We should substantially have the merger completed by the end of the year and some of the improvements that we have initiated will start to bear fruit. It is easy to get focused on some of the issues that make our life difficult each day that we lose sight that we are making very good progress in becoming a successful airline. Last year we meet our goals for profitability, operational performance and customer satisfaction. We will continue to raise the bar to ensure that we continue to improve in all three areas.

Also,

Chief Pilot Meeting in ORD: I was also in Chief Pilot meetings in ORD last week discussing issues more dear to your hearts. Here are some of the highlights of things to come. You can expect another large bid in the near future to nail down the summer flying. There will be new sub bases opening this year. SFO 787, IAD 737 (Fall time frame), IAD 756 (March) and a LAX 756 (April). All of this is tentative, some more than others, but that is the “plan” so far. We may also elect to maintain some of the s-UAL 752’s that were slated to go away a little while longer to cover some of the flying lost with the closing of the UEX base in CLE. One of the positive things that I am looking forward to is a new automated hotel assignment computer program called HOME. It is being tested this month with the FA’s and may be available to us as early as next month. Currently, when you have a schedule modification the Crew Coordinator makes the changes to your pairing and then sends an email to the hotel desk who assigns the hotel and transportation. That may work okay for normal operations, but during irregular operations the number of emails and this manual process cause huge backlogs and is totally unacceptable. The new system does all of this automatically. So when the Crew Coordinator modifies your pairing, the hotel and transportation associated with it happen instantly. No emails, no hotel desk. This can’t come soon enough for me.


In the training world, we are moving the 764 simulator this summer from IAH to DEN to make way for the new B-787 simulator in IAH. All future 756 training will be done in DEN as well as all 777 training. The B-777 has been the test fleet to have all CBT’s loaded into the iPad. This has been very successful and in the future you will have all of the CBT’s loaded in the iPad. This is important because we all have the same iPad and there will no longer be compatibility issues with different browser and different computers that each pilot may have. We will all be going on a 9/18 training cycle which will include two days of training every 9 months. There will no longer be GSR classes, your door training will take place during your appropriate sim visits and the remote learning will be done through the ULN. Speaking of door training. To align us with the new process, we will have some pilots who will expire for doors before their sim period. Those pilots have been identified and have been alerted via CCS messages. You can do the door training as early as you choose to, even several months early. You can also do it in any of the following bases; EWR, IAH, DEN, CLE, GUM.


In the Flight Standards world there is some really good news for the B-756 fleet. Come April (during the first Jepps update cycle) you will no longer be recognized as the pilots who have the longest arms and the sorest backs in the fleet. Shipsets will be put on the 756s. This of course means that our progress on Class II EFB installation is not going well. We have unsuccessfully tried to mount the EFBs on the A-320. We are still working on that problem. Once we have a successful Class II installation on the A-320’s then we will start installing them on the 737 fleet next. While a delay in the EFB program is not good, I think most of you will agree that getting rid of carrying our own Jepps is 90% of the problem and I am certainly glad we are finally doing that airline-wide. We have decided that we are all a little weary of changes so we will only be updating any manuals (FOM, FM) on a quarterly basis, allowing things to settle down a little. If you are a LCA or you are getting OE the rules will be changing soon to not allow bunk time to count for OE time, consolidation and low time in type restrictions. Come July 1st, you will only count 67% of your time in three man crews and 50% of your time on 4 man crews. Your 100 hour consolidation will soon count OE time for both CA and FOs. The restriction prohibiting two age 60 pilots from being assigned to the two flying seats on international flights will be going away soon also. That will make life better for many of our senior 777 FO’s. One less than positive change will be that only the pilot flying during an auto-land will get credit for the landing. The MP will no longer be able to get credit as well. On the plus side, we will be removing the requirement for new captains to get the first 10 landings out of OE which will help our FO’s maintain currency. All of these changes are not in effect yet. But they will be in the next 6 months or so. Wait for official notification before applying them.

jsled

Thanks!! Good stuff.

Sled

Toddnel

Even if your not based in EWR I believe you can ask Mike to add you to his email blast list. It's usually good info.

Just send an email to [email protected] and ask to be put in his list.

hopeSales

He's only repeating what his bosses tell him to. What has he done to help the company enforce the pilot contract they negotiated without litigation.

You could tell us how and why he's such a great pilot advocate. Hope it's not because he lets you use the soft toilet paper in the executive bathroom.

Toddnel

Have you ever met him or dealt with his office? My guess is you haven't. As anyone who has dealt with any of the CPO's for any reason will tell you, there are good ones and bad ones. I have always been treated fairly whether it was for emergency leave for family illnesses or fixing a missed trip from scheduling for a maintenance cancellation of my deadhead flight.

It is not the Chief Pilots job to enforce the contract for you. That's what ALPA is for.

hopeSales

And ALPA does - Your boy is just a tool not a pilot advocate. Check with the grievance committee for the EWR domicile and tell me how he advocates for the pilots.

CRM114

Aside from missing a trip, that you have to go through a CPO to get any of those things addressed speaks volumes about the culture you're coming from. Each of those are admin tasks at best that should be fixed with a call to scheduling or an office staff.

The CPO is the company administrative representative for a contract that managment entered with ALPA. The CPO is specifically named throughout the contract and has very specific duties under the CBA.

One could say the CPO is a direct reflection of management's integrity under the CBA. Like the long line of ineffectual glad-handers before him, a CPO's job is to serve you a plate of crap and tell you it's Kobe beef. This message does nothing more than that.

Toddnel

So I guess you're saying you haven't dealt with him or the office personally then?

In the past year I have had no less than three fairly major items either fixed or paid without having to involve the grievance process. I have found Mike helpful when needed. I'm not saying he isn't management but he is one of the good Chiefs.

Probe

For l-UAL, i was based everywhere but DEN and LAX. Twice. I never had a CPO that was a douche. Some had more b@lls than others, but all were on the pilots' side, unless said pilot was a douche.

I wish I could say the same for the ALPO reps I have met and flown with. They were on the opposite side of the spectrum, and could be described by a word I used in the previous paragraph, twice.

Toddnel

Geez I call an old airplane old in another thread and you guys flip out yet you slam our 'culture' without knowing the facts and that's ok?

Ever since this merger the calls to scheduling or the pilot service center do absolutely nothing. Everyone is afraid to make a decision or just has no idea how to even process the request. Each time the CPO picked up the ball that was dropped by the system. I suppose I could have grieved it but it was so much easier to just pick up the phone and call the CPO.