American... Get that rig!

[HA25]

AA sure didn't help HA's future contract talks. DL currently has 3 day trips worth 15:45 (unless arrival morning of the third day between 12am to 2am local). Which way will your HA management lean? I can see why you're not happy.... A lot of your future 321Neo flights will probably be 2 leg three day trips to West Coast cities, and that wouldn't be great if they were worth 11-12 hours total.



Bye Bye---General Lee

right now the vast majority of our West Coast trips are 3 day... on the 330. The NEO should be more "productive" we hope.. time will tell, as they haven't announced how they plan to operate or base them.

Yes, AA did us no favor.. the pay was going to come (as you guys are showing).. it's the productivity that we are worried about.

 

[aa73]

truth is they could have held out for section 6... the DAL guys were already doing a lot of heavy lifting, as were we at HAL about to do.. (and as we did in 2010 when we set industry rates and retirement benefits)..

I have mixed feelings about the AA situation and while I understand the despair for the pay raise, truth is, we will never have a chance to get productivity back to where it was in the pre-9/11 contracts ever again if this becomes the new "industry standard"

HA25, General Lee, I have a feeling you and many of you on this board don't quite understand the ramifications involved had we voted no and chosen to "just wait for section 6."

Here would be the timeline for that:

- We vote No
- We immediately forfeit an industry leading pay rate
- We submit our entire contract to a cost neutral arbitration
- The arbitrator is Bloch, who historically rules in the company's favor
- We get a weighted average of delta/united pay in 2016, once again dependent and riding delta/united coat tails
- We once again stay well below the industry in pay (the weighted average would be far below the JCBA immediate industry leading pay rate)
- We start early openers in 2017
- The company chooses to "kick the can" for another 3-5 years
- All of this in the hopes that the industry is not in the toilet again with a recession
- Rinse and repeat.

Etc, etc.

I don't think you guys understand that we were not in section 6, and didn't have any kind of leverage or unity to engage with a no vote. The company would have proceeded on with their new arbitrated contract, and we would have floundered on with our Bk contract subjected to a cost neutral arbitrator.

THE WORK RULES WERE NOT IN PLACE. They were never there. We never had 5hr min calendar day...before bk, during, or after. It wasn't part of the JCBA and it DEFINITELY would not have been part of a cost neutral arbitration.

Would I like 5hr min calendar day? YES! Just how would you guys have suggested getting it from the company when it wasn't available through the JCBA or through cost neutral arbitration?

The only way we will get it, along with other work rule improvements, is:

- through side letters (like Delta did)
- through the next section 6 in 2019.

This JCBA was far from perfect. It fixed the pay issues and some work rules but not all of them.

Let's all remember please that the Delta and United post-Bk JCBAs were nothing to write home about and were quite inferior to ours today - and yet still passed by a landslide. Nobody gets their dream contract with their first post-bk contract. The fixes will come , just like they did with delta and united.

General Lee, your company (Delta) only just got 5:15 min calendar day last year through a side letter in which you traded HBT. In other words, as the company needed cooperation with the union, improvements that were not part of the original contract, were secured. We hope to be able to do the same.

I hope this clears it up.

73

 

[redflyer65]

Excellent analyst AA. I'm sad that you don't have better work rules and voting this down wouldn't have helped. It was clearly a rock and a hard place.

Take the rates now and work on the other items down the road. Completely agree.

 

[General Lee]

HA25, General Lee, I have a feeling you and many of you on this board don't quite understand the ramifications involved had we voted no and chosen to "just wait for section 6."

Here would be the timeline for that:

- We vote No
- We immediately forfeit an industry leading pay rate
- We submit our entire contract to a cost neutral arbitration
- The arbitrator is Bloch, who historically rules in the company's favor
- We get a weighted average of delta/united pay in 2016, once again dependent and riding delta/united coat tails
- We once again stay well below the industry in pay (the weighted average would be far below the JCBA immediate industry leading pay rate)
- We start early openers in 2017
- The company chooses to "kick the can" for another 3-5 years
- All of this in the hopes that the industry is not in the toilet again with a recession
- Rinse and repeat.

Etc, etc.

I don't think you guys understand that we were not in section 6, and didn't have any kind of leverage or unity to engage with a no vote. The company would have proceeded on with their new arbitrated contract, and we would have floundered on with our Bk contract subjected to a cost neutral arbitrator.

THE WORK RULES WERE NOT IN PLACE. They were never there. We never had 5hr min calendar day...before bk, during, or after. It wasn't part of the JCBA and it DEFINITELY would not have been part of a cost neutral arbitration.

Would I like 5hr min calendar day? YES! Just how would you guys have suggested getting it from the company when it wasn't available through the JCBA or through cost neutral arbitration?

The only way we will get it, along with other work rule improvements, is:

- through side letters (like Delta did)
- through the next section 6 in 2019.

This JCBA was far from perfect. It fixed the pay issues and some work rules but not all of them.

Let's all remember please that the Delta and United post-Bk JCBAs were nothing to write home about and were quite inferior to ours today - and yet still passed by a landslide. Nobody gets their dream contract with their first post-bk contract. The fixes will come , just like they did with delta and united.

General Lee, your company (Delta) only just got 5:15 min calendar day last year through a side letter in which you traded HBT. In other words, as the company needed cooperation with the union, improvements that were not part of the original contract, were secured. We hope to be able to do the same.

I hope this clears it up.

73

I hear you, but the result overall still sux. Better pay, but the rest didn't help anyone else. Hopefully it will be changed in future TAs.



Bye Bye---General Lee

 

[Angus Khan]

Nice job aa73 intelligently summing up our position. And exactly why I voted 'yes'.

 

[808pilot]

HA25... i heard from one of our capts thats tied into the union that said, in so many words.... that because HA doesn't operate like delta/unted/aa..etc therefore we won't even be asking to try and get the same rates... i really hope this is BS but as you know there has been a lot of upheaveal going down within the union so who knows... i'm cautiously optimistic...

 

[HA25]

Yeah. The "we've always done it this way" mentality gets sorta old 808... I have faith in this MEC tho to get us what we are worth.

 

[get2flyin]

I think a fact check is on order... there is so much misinformation on this board.

........................

Good luck to you all who have contract negotiations coming up. At the very least we've given you a pay rate to shoot for.

73

Nailed it. Best web board post I've read in a long time.

 

[Jim]

HA25... i heard from one of our capts thats tied into the union that said, in so many words.... that because HA doesn't operate like delta/unted/aa..etc therefore we won't even be asking to try and get the same rates... i really hope this is BS but as you know there has been a lot of upheaveal going down within the union so who knows... i'm cautiously optimistic...

That is the reason we just changed the union leadership. That is NOT the opinion of the new MEC or the vast majority of the pilots.

Plus we didn't accept that attitude for the current contract so why would we now?

 

[fly4surf]

If anything the pay should be double due to the cost of living.

And min days off increased due to the nice weather!

Agree there is no reason to ask for, or get, anything less than industry standard on many fronts. Anything but is a no vote.

 

[Hose A. Jiminez]

DL currently has 3 day trips worth 15:45 (unless arrival morning of the third day between 12am to 2am local). Wh

Surely that's a minimum, right?

 

[HA25]

Surely that's a minimum, right?

I would assume this is an example of a non productive 3 day trip with trip rig. The same 3 day at HAL likely is worth 11-12 hours.

 

[BentOver]

Concerning those NEO's


If they do plan on running 3 day trips with 4 total legs at 12 hrs pay.... I envision a lot of FO's bypassing upgrade...

We all know, to get a line of West Coast 3 days one has to basically give up 2-3 extra days off a month.. It makes for a brutal schedule...and barely 80-82 hrs...

How many 330 FO's are gonna give up nice international schedules to go to a NEO 3 day West Coast schedule for barely any pay raise at all...( senior FO pay+ international pay/per diem+ more days off)t

They'll either build 2 day trips, or upgrades could start getting pretty junior.

 

[HA25]

I just saw they're flexing FO's on the 330 to 80 hours this month.... how does that work with all the 3 day's that go junior?

 

[SpauldingSmails]

Surely that's a minimum, right?

Correct - that's the floor based on 3 calendar days.

 

[Luv2BFlyin]

Correct - that's the floor based on 3 calendar days.

Do the rigs apply outside of line construction i.e. daily operations?

 

[General Lee]

Surely that's a minimum, right?

Yes. A 3 day trip that doesn't return to the pilot's base between 12 Midnight and 2am on day three is worth 15:45 minimum. There are plenty of three day trips worth more, like 3 day Europe trips worth 17-18 hours from the East Coast, and 3 day Europe's from the West Coast (SEA) worth more. (For 2 legs total). Variety, it's just fantastic.



Bye Bye---General Lee

 

[B6Driver]

Do you have any friends?
Just because you can post here does not mean you have to.
Give it a rest already.

 

[Bringupthebird]

Now that the pay is fixed - one less Damocles sword dangling over our head - we have opportunities to improve the work rules through side letters and such, as merger-related implementations come up and the company will need our cooperation. As I recall, delta did exactly that: their 5:15 min calendar day came as a result of a side letter they did with the company on exchange for HBT.

Does anyone at the APA even bother to ask the west pilots about their experiences negotiating with Parker and his mentor Franke?

If you want any possible relief from the onerous work rules it will come at the expense of book rates. The west pilots fought for years to get the scraps that eventually became the high water mark for work rules, only to have APA cast them aside in an act of characteristic hubris.

So don't sit there waiting on side letters that will never come. Enjoy your career at the highest paying regional airline in the world.

I do agree that a NO vote was throwing your vote away, but I don't blame Parker or Kirby. I blame those folks who just had to get Horton and used the work rules of AWA to do it. Even more so I blame USAPA who prevented the LUS pilot group from building a better contract from which to cushion the blow of the JCBA due to their single minded vindictiveness.

So everyone got something, but no one got what they deserved.

 

[SpauldingSmails]

Do the rigs apply outside of line construction i.e. daily operations?

Yes. The scheduling guide from DALPA that I've linked below explains the different mechanisms that create a credit "floor" for our trips. The link should be accessible to the general population without logging in.

Pages 44-46 talk about pay guarantees. It's a nice plain language explanation with an example trip.

https://dal.alpa.org/DesktopModules...yId=7171&language=en-US&PortalId=0&TabId=1125