AA scope / sale of Executive Airlines

[~~~^~~~]

Monkeyboy - good post!

 

[Draginass]

Ah, now I see! It's all APA's fault. No responsibility on regional pilots for signing labor contracts for sub-par compensation. It's very easy to blame other groups while you willingly work for sub-par compensation.

While it seems that our regional collegues know what needs to be done, but don't have even a clue on how to do it as a matter of practicality.

 

[Ameriagle]

It is a case of the "tail wagging the dog" at this point. It is a poor mess AMR is in.

Another reality is this: AMR and Eagle has the Brazilians and Canadians pumping out RJ's as fast as they can. The financing for these aircraft has long since been in place and no doubt the routes they will be utilized on have been decided. So now Eagle starts to bump up against an ASM cap that was negotiated in APA's last contract. The question I have for the APA members on this board is how effective is your scope clause really? To date NO JET ORDERS have been deferred. If your narrow body flying is being outsourced, to RJ's, well it is just gonna happen cause the jets are on the way. Many of the routes flown by the RJ are the point to point legs that you are trying to protect. What, in my humble opinion, could contribute to the long term health of AA is the turbo-prop routes that still truely feed the mainline carrier. These are the routes AMR is willing to sacrafice to keep within the guidelines of your SCOPE! How does that serve APA's best interest and in anyway help your pilots back into the cockpit?

Unfortunately many good folks are about to lose their jobs needlessly and that is the shame of the whole thing. As stated in an above post (from an assumed APA member)....we operate in a capacity to help ourselves first......apparently no matter what the cost to others....or in this case themselves it seems!

 

[FOAgain]

Believe it or not, there are many here at Eagle that fully and completely support the APA pilots. They were smart enough to see this coming when they wrote the SCOPE clause. I applaud them for not backing down under AMR's heavy media pressure.

How can an Eagle pilot complain about our outsourcing, and in the same breath, blame APA for all that is happening?

AA Connection is to Eagle as Eagle is to APA

Integration is the answer. This would not be easy, but in the end, I think it would make a very strong airline. I think most Eagle pilots would be satisfied with our current pay/benifits if we knew we were AA pilots, and could eventually bid directly into AA aircraft. How does this cost the company more? It doesn't. They could completely cut AE management thus saving even more money.

AMR's biggest concern is that we would fight to raise the pay of RJ pilots and put them in line with mainline wages. It will never work without the "new B scale."

 

[Draginass]

The APA membership will never go for another B-scale. The bitter taste of the last one made sure of that. If integration occurred any new aircraft would have negotiated rates of pay just like any other aircraft. However, benefits, retirement, etc. must be uniform.

APA isn't going to give away scope. Period, dot. The ASM cap and acft cap will hold, and AMR has said (at least until they change their mind) that they will respect the scope clause. (Why? Not because they're nice guys, but because they know they'll lose in court.) The ball is in AMR's court. If they decide to cut feed and damage their core business, ok -- but I think that's an empty threat. AMR can order all the RJs they want, but they aren't going to fly them past the ASM/acft caps. You guys seem to be genuflecting to the alter of the RJ, but in many analyst's opinions, it's a relatively short-term phenonoma. Part of the future, but not THE future. As ridership and air traffic conjestion increases, small jets will decrease in importance.

AE ALPA's real threat is the outsourcing of their jobs to the likes of CHQ and TSA.

One more time . . . can any regional guy out there tell me, in practical and specific terms, how AE and APA would force/convince AMR to integrate? With AE's 16-year no-strike contract, what legal leverage does AE ALPA bring to the fight????? None of you guys seem to want to answer that. What's YOUR contribution to the fight??? You guys can't keep your own jobs from being outsourced, so you want APA pilots to put on furlough while AMR substitutes cut-rate RJ labor for mainline flying??

Still waiting for a rational, fact-based, legally valid, management acceptable and union acceptable solution.

 

[monkeyboy]

You ever wonder why regional pilots get paid less? It's not because we are any less witty than the major airline pilots. It's because we all want to be major airline pilots and are just at the regionals to build time. It's very hard to get a strong Union leadership when the turnover rates are high. A large percentage of regional pilots don't stay around long enough to care about the contract.

However, times are changing and more and more flying is being done by "regional jets". It's time to realize that the only way to stop cheap labor is to raise pay for RJ's. The only way to do that is pilot unity across the board.

There is no use blaming anybody for the poor pay rates, we need to focus on the future.

I applaud APA for taking the first step. I hope APA does not back down on "resolving the outsourcing issue once and for all". I'm sure if one major does it, the others will follow shortly.

 

[Draginass]

As an APA member, I've got ZERO say about what kind of contract that AE ALPA members sign. That's up to them. The buck stops with AE ALPA members. I hear regional pilots on this forum carp about how they're just as worthy as mainline pilots, yet they keep selling themselves into cheap contracts. It's not up to majors pilots to make themselves cheaper in order to make an integration more attractive to management, it's up to regional pilots to make themselves expensive enough that it's more costly to run separate operations. It's not about how "good" or "worthy" you are, to management, it's all about MONEY.

 

[~~~^~~~]

I hear regional pilots on this forum carp about how they're just as worthy as mainline pilots, yet they keep selling themselves into cheap contracts.

So are you saying the Comair pilots sold themselves? A 100 day strike folded only after they saw their aircraft and routes going to other airlines. They did everything they could!

It's not up to majors pilots to make themselves cheaper in order to make an integration more attractive to management

The mainline pilot groups negotiated away domestic codeshare as a way to preserve mainline pay structures during concessionary bargaining. The mainline guys let domestic codeshare out of the bag to begin with and now want no part of the responsibility to help fix the mess.

It's not about how "good" or "worthy" you are, to management, it's all about MONEY

And the only way to fight this is UNITY. As a union members, unity is what we should be about.

Now why don't you answer the questions posted to you?
(1) Wouldn't all American brand flying performed by American pilots be effective scope?
(2) If scope works so well at forcing the Company to operate larger equipment at mainline pay rates, why not force American to operate 777's in all markets? After all, compared to a 777, the Folker 100 is a low compensation airplane that "steals" flying from better paying MD80's, right?
(3) How will you benefit by forcing the sale of American Eagle's assets in Puerto Rico? How will you benefit from their pulling seats out of ATR's and Saabs?

 

[seagle]

Draginass,
AMR will never integrate both pilot lists because they don't have to. Whether AE had the ability to strike or not would not change AMR's position on integration. It is not in AMR's benefit to integrate so they will try any and all means to circumnavigate Scope, even if this means selling parts of Eagle as evidenced by Peter Bowler's announcement. It is not in Eagles benefit to integrate because labor costs will rise and those high paying Eagle management positions would disappear, from president to chief pilots. Eagle knows they can always find cheap labor to fill their cockpits so they don't have a pilot shortage. What the 16 (now 12) year contract really affords AMR/Eagle is subpar wages for the next 12 years without the pilots ability to do a thing about it.
The real question that needs to be addressed by AMR/APA is how can AA compete against the SWA's, Jet Blue's, and Air Tran's today? Remember that these airlines were in the black last year, AA wasn't. SWA is planning on doubling their fleet size in the next 10 years. Can any of the big three say that? If you look at labor costs I'm sure you will see AMR's reason for wanting to expand AMR/Eagle. It is simply a matter of economics and survival of AMR. Look at the mess United is in and the rumors abouding of bankruptcy! Draginass, can you tell us how AA is going to compete against SWA, Jet Blue, Air Tran and for that matter all the regionals out there? I know it is a very complex issue, however one that must be addressed by the APA.

 

[80drvr]

Now why don't you answer the questions posted to you?
(1) Wouldn't all American brand flying performed by American pilots be effective scope?
(2) If scope works so well at forcing the Company to operate larger equipment at mainline pay rates, why not force American to operate 777's in all markets? After all, compared to a 777, the Folker 100 is a low compensation airplane that "steals" flying from better paying MD80's, right?
(3) How will you benefit by forcing the sale of American Eagle's assets in Puerto Rico? How will you benefit from their pulling seats out of ATR's and Saabs? [/B][/QUOTE]

First, good job to the Comair pilots! They may not have gotten everything they wanted, but they did move the bar incrementally higher for regional airline labor. Now if all the other regional pilot groups had the same cajones, this thread would probably not exist.

Now, I'll try and answer your questions....

1. Yes, AA pilots owning all flying on the AA code is effective scope. Prior to 1987 this was the case. In 1987 an exception to scope was made that concieved Eagle to feed mainline hubs with turboprops. In 1997, another exception was made allowing Eagle to obtain RJ's within certain specific airframe and ASM limits. These exceptions have resulted in double digit growth at Eagle and more importantly, the transfer of mainline narrowbody flying to the regionals. Now that certain contractal limits in those agreements have been reached, that double digit growth must stop. The inception of scope exceptions in the industry was a huge strategic error on the part of all mainline labor groups. The RJ issue has just compounded that. There are a number of ways they could have tackled the turbo prop feed issue in the 80's, but the result of those decisions or indecisions is definately a mess.

2. It's not the equipment APA cares about, it's the flying. When mainline flying is outsourced regardless of the airframe, it's a problem that APA has to deal with. If the company wants to put 80 RJ's a day on ORD-DFW, that's fines as long as the jobs aren't outsourced. And, smaller capacity generates smaller revenue and consequently pays less. And you'd probably be surpised that an RJ capt is being paid approximately the same percentage of capacity as a mainline capt. Applying mainline pay scales to the RJ's won't significantly affect the pay rates, but the work rules and benefits will certainly improve as would career expectations.

3. APA won't benefit from the sale of Executive airlines. If management chooses to pursue a path of mutually assured destruction in an effort to circumvent the intent of their agreement with APA while complying with the ASM cap, then I guess that flying isn't all that important to the bottom line. But don't expect APA to budge on this one. They've offered mgmt an a la carte menu of solutions in there latest proposal that would preserve mainline jobs and retain all feed flying.

 

[jetexas]

I flew with a guy not too long ago that told me a story about when he was in college. He was able, through his college aviation program, to visit SWA HQ. As he was led down a hall they passed Herb Kelleher's office. Herb invited the small group to come in and talk. Herb, with feet on the desk and a cigar in his mouth said "Go ahead, ask me anything". This guy says "Could you tell me what specific ways you treat the passengers to keep your business going strongly?" Herb looked him right in the eye, took his feet off the desk and said "____ the passengers. I take care of my employees and they take care of the passengers".
I think AMR is entirely focused on $ mode right now for obvious reasons. What the bean counters don't realize is that now is the time to give a little. They would likely receive a lot in return. They trashed the APA proposal and are violating Eagle's Scope instead.

 

[Tim47SIP]

Could someone from the APA side of the house please explain to me how capping Eagles growth right now makes sence. Other airlines are using the RJ to their advantage to gain market dominance and APA says, whoa! Ya, I understand the the reasoning of APA not wanting Eagle to dominate AA with cheap labor, but someone has to think about the state of the economy and how to regain market shares. That aint going to happen by stiffeling growth. Now AMR wants to possibly sell its Miami asstes to compete? Fine, Delta has been waiting to move more DCI down there anyway.
Look at the other extreem with US Airways scope. They said NO jets at the WO's and look where it got them. Their scope was so damaging that US Air cant even try to regain footing in the industry withought resourcing to contract carriers. Matter of fact, they finally have figured out that in order to survive, the company needs RJ's. The mainline ALPA has authorized additional RJ's but they will only go to the contract carriers because US Air cant finance the equipement itself. Their scope has damaged the company to the extent that mainline furloughies are negotiating to fly those additional jets at the contract carriers and not their WO's. What a mess that is.

 

[Tim47SIP]

Just thought that I would give his thread a little boost and i am still waiting for an answer. What do you think.

 

[DougCorp-9]

Hey Draginass

Since when can Eagle not strike for 12 years?

 

[English]

Since four years ago when they signed a 16 year contract...