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AA Pilot Union Article

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Wow, how gentle of you to not even mention the age change.

I'd say you are at least one factor short.

FJ
 
Why this policy?

1. "Up or out" policy, which states that whenever someone Jr to you upgrades in your base, you have a certain amount of time to do so as well. This forces EVERY F/O to upgrade when it is time, which creates a long upgrade (as opposed to senior F/Os passing it up and CA upgrades go way junior, a la CAL.) As far as I know, we are the only airline to do this.

Very interesting. There must be some reason, other than tradition, for this policy. Does it save on training costs? Does APA support it? Seems like the price would be a lot of unhappy pilots, unable to make their own choices on QOL.
 
I would be interested to see comments how the old "astronaut physical" mindset of pilot hiring, ala the 1980's, has affected things. This is not a strike against the pilots themselves, but directed towards the corporate mindset that existed at American back then.

I recall a link-chart or family tree asking if your grand-dads next door neighbor had high blood pressure.

One thing I always wondered about was I believe (and I could be 100% wrong) AA "targeted" new hires to all be like 30 yrs old, thus ensuring that they would get 25-30 yrs of life out of them. I may have even read this in some business book on the shelf at Barnes and Noble. ANYWAY, supposedly this came back to bite AA in the azz when they all hit retirement at the same time.

The above is just something I heard/read about, but anyone else have any comments?
 
Very interesting. There must be some reason, other than tradition, for this policy. Does it save on training costs? Does APA support it? Seems like the price would be a lot of unhappy pilots, unable to make their own choices on QOL.

Actually, it is AA's way of getting out of age discrimination. By only hiring pilots able to upgrade to CA, they manage to eliminate the factor of hiring pilots only able to serve a relatively short time (i.e. someone in their mid 50s.) The prerequisite of that is that the pilot must upgrade to CA when their time comes. Clever loophole, but we and the APA never liked it. We were just never willing to give up some other major work rule to get rid of it, to date. I would LOVE to see it go away.

Yes - forgot to mention age 65 as one of the reasons of stagnation, but I figured most of you already knew that.

The astronaut physical is LONG gone, thank goodness. Last time we hired, the medical portion was a formality, nothing more.
 
Instead of seeking "pay raises" APA should replace the words pay raises with "pay restoration" adjusted for CPI.

Same thing, different verbage...
 
Instead of seeking "pay raises" APA should replace the words pay raises with "pay restoration" adjusted for CPI.

Same thing, different verbage...

Glad you caught it, actually APA does call it pay restoration. Other media outlets and even a pilot in this thread still call it a raise.. Considering these are 1992 contract wages, IT IS PAY RESTORATION.

Cheers,

AAflyer
 
They will eventually understand when their flights have some kind of emergency and Sully types just ain't up there in the cockpit anymore because the job ain't worth it..... then it'll hit home real hard.

What? I though AA only hires the highest time, most experienced pilots. Have they ever hired anyone without PIC turbine?
 
What? I though AA only hires the highest time, most experienced pilots. Have they ever hired anyone without PIC turbine?

I am 99.8% sure they hired "back in the day" some guys with zero turbine, nada. I think circa the MD-80 purchase, mid-80's
 
Virtually all newspapers in the large markets are owned by one of a handful of media conglomerates.

The business pages of these newspapers are anything but liberal--they reflect the infatuation with the "Senior Management Oligarchy" that, until the Wall St. debacle, ran the country.

Articles like this might as well have been printed in Centerport (and my well have) and faxed over to the paper.

APA's demands are reflective of the fact that, during good times, management can drag out negotiations indefinitely, knowing that there's nothing (especially in APA's case) the union can do to exert pressure and speed things up. The RLA is weighted totally in management's favor these days.

All AMR had to do was wait until the mini-rally was over and now they cry poor. Sorry, FUPM.

Some pilot group has to stand up and declare that our worth is not elastic. Management has declared that THEY are worth it--why is it wrong for those of us who make the machine work to make the same claim?

Those who started the airline unions faced violence, jail and unemployment because of their actions. Why should we be afraid of a newspaper article?

TC
 

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