Airtran-Swa. out of seniority?

[Floatplane]

as a swa pilot with a good aai friend, fairly senior guy on the the 73, i am very disappointed in how swa is doing this. first an foremost, business is business, but there is good and bad business. his 2 complaints right now are; 1.) not knowing what is going on, 2.) that guys much jr to him have a better quality of life, pay, sched, etc than the senior guys. part of this is alpa's fault i believe. the way it was told to me was alpa didn't put up a fight for how the aai pilots were to be chosen. swa put on the table the way they wanted to do it, which was simply we(swa) will make the decisions on how the pilots are brought over, and alpa agreed to it. swa gave no plan and alpa didn't ask. swapa guy told me they were surprised alpa agreed to this, but that was a agreement between alpa and swa.

i don't expect swa to tell the world what our next city will be or our next a/c purchase, although it seems we announced hawaii before we had/have the ability to go there, go figure. back on track, but in my opinion keeping employes in the dark about their so called 'secure' future is disingenuous to me. it is still a great gig, but the tarnish is starting to accumulate at a somewhat alarming rate for me.

That sounds more like the MEC's fault and not ALPA's!

 

[CaptWidgeon]

ok, i know very little about the internal roles here. if you say it's an MEC thing i ain't gonna argue that cause i can't.

who was their MEC?

 

[Whine Lover]

It is unfathomable that the Airtran MEC would not ensure that protections were put in place that though allowing SWA to transition out of seniority via base/seat/aircraft more senior pilots would at least be pay protected as junior pilots made the full transition prior to them.

Oh, wait.....This was the same group of geniuses that turned down the first deal ( without a vote of the membership ) that would have transitioned for pay and benefit purposes EVERY single Airtran pilot on April 1, 2012 and allowed EVERY Airtran Captain to retain his seat.

Sorry...I was using my brain and/or some form of logic when I wrote the first paragraph.

Something sadly, The Airtran MEC is/was incapable of doing.

Are any of them still alive?

Or, have the angry pitchfork wielding mobs carried them all off and burned the carcasses to keep the apparently viral Brain-Disease from spreading?


WL

 

[bladeusa]

It's reduculous and embarrassing that the AirTran merger committee and MEC allowed that to happen. Talking about 50k a year for about 3 years. Must not have affected them.
How many on the MC and MEC when this went down have already transitioned vs who is stuck behind on AirTran side of fence?

 

[717capt]

Whine I do know that the merger committee and the MEC were afforded a view at the transition schedule during negotiations, so maybe what they saw then they didn't feel the need for protections. I can tell you that the original transition schedule has been changed a number of times, based on SW needs. So it is what it is. Oh also check airman on the AirTran side can't go over as well. I know of one guy that was a check airman and when he found out he couldn't transition, he turned in his letter and went over.

On your 2nd point, not all AirTran capt's would have retained their seats. What the 1st agreement did do was afford a right of first return to that seat for the AirTran guys. Can't really remember the specifics of it, but I think that they could only return to the 717. Anyway, based on the 71's going away, most capt's would've lost their seats, albeit maybe not the top 200. Yes SW pay on 4/1/2012

As far as the MEC is concerned. 2 of the 7 that voted no were recalled, 2 others of the 7 are already at sw and 2 additional of the 7 will be at sw in Jan. Also 2 members of the merger committee are at sw already. No pitchforks. No unruly mobs. Just recalls. And so what? recalls after the fact? Big whoop! Didn't change anything. Change has to happen before the fact, not after. The MEC did change around the original merger committee shortly after the merger was announced, Still not sure why. I did hear it was because the original committees views on how we should proceed differed from the MEC so a change was made. In my opinion the wrong people were selected for the replacement. Not a senior one among them and all 717 guys. It became evident after the fact that they were all working for themselves anyway. Now if pitchforks and mobs were called for it was for those bastards. Just my opinion. I do know that a lawsuit was filed against alpa by some AirTran guys, but I don't know too much about it. Oh also, one of the original members of the merger committee, the committee that was changed around that is, he was voted on to the MEC, from MKE I think, and he was one of the 7 that said no. He is at SW now.

Look. say whatever you want to say about our MEC, but like it or not, they were the ones chosen to make decisions. Unions, much like our government, are set up as a republic. We choose those to make choices for us. If we don't like that choice, we get rid of them. Anyway just my prespective.

 

[funnyman12]

It was agreed to by AAI MEC because they were threatened with non-integration if we didnt agree to managements demands. If they threatened the Airtran pilots in that manner, it is only a matter of time until SWAPA is threatened. Hopefully im wrong.

 

[fletch717]

It was agreed to by AAI MEC because they were threatened with non-integration if we didnt agree to managements demands. If they threatened the Airtran pilots in that manner, it is only a matter of time until SWAPA is threatened. Hopefully im wrong.

This is the whole story. Threats and lies is all I've seen from SWA.

 

[freightdogfred]

first and foremost, it's about money.
how and why, it was agreed that swa would determine who and when came over. from what a union guy told me, was that mke and mco are not going to be bases anymore (for airtran, not swa), so they wanted to get those pilots trained first, regardless of order. atl is closer to order, but swa isn't going to bring all aai capt's to train as swa f/o's then train aai f/o's to be aai capt's for short term cuz of...$$$.

I used to believe, but now I don't. It's plainly evident that for all their claims for cost savings and synergies, it rings hollow. The delays of integration due to IT deficiences I believe to be accurate but not insurmountable if enough priority was placed. I flew a trip on my last sequence from FLL-PHL, with 12 passengers. (I've NEVER seen that here before.) The agent told me that was a big load, for a few weeks the flight has gone out completely empty. Evidently on the last big announced "Fare Sale" IT/Rev management had incorrectly set the 1-way fare at 700$, or roughly more than twice the going rate. I've talked to DL/NWA guys, and AA/TWA guys, airlines twice the size, and the integration was completed in half the time.

This pace is set for a reason.

 

[Whine Lover]

Whine I do know that the merger committee and the MEC were afforded a view at the transition schedule during negotiations, so maybe what they saw then they didn't feel the need for protections. I can tell you that the original transition schedule has been changed a number of times, based on SW needs. So it is what it is. Oh also check airman on the AirTran side can't go over as well. I know of one guy that was a check airman and when he found out he couldn't transition, he turned in his letter and went over.

On your 2nd point, not all AirTran capt's would have retained their seats. What the 1st agreement did do was afford a right of first return to that seat for the AirTran guys. Can't really remember the specifics of it, but I think that they could only return to the 717. Anyway, based on the 71's going away, most capt's would've lost their seats, albeit maybe not the top 200. Yes SW pay on 4/1/2012

As far as the MEC is concerned. 2 of the 7 that voted no were recalled, 2 others of the 7 are already at sw and 2 additional of the 7 will be at sw in Jan. Also 2 members of the merger committee are at sw already. No pitchforks. No unruly mobs. Just recalls. And so what? recalls after the fact? Big whoop! Didn't change anything. Change has to happen before the fact, not after. The MEC did change around the original merger committee shortly after the merger was announced, Still not sure why. I did hear it was because the original committees views on how we should proceed differed from the MEC so a change was made. In my opinion the wrong people were selected for the replacement. Not a senior one among them and all 717 guys. It became evident after the fact that they were all working for themselves anyway. Now if pitchforks and mobs were called for it was for those bastards. Just my opinion. I do know that a lawsuit was filed against alpa by some AirTran guys, but I don't know too much about it. Oh also, one of the original members of the merger committee, the committee that was changed around that is, he was voted on to the MEC, from MKE I think, and he was one of the 7 that said no. He is at SW now.

Look. say whatever you want to say about our MEC, but like it or not, they were the ones chosen to make decisions. Unions, much like our government, are set up as a republic. We choose those to make choices for us. If we don't like that choice, we get rid of them. Anyway just my prespective.

Excellent post. Informative and unemotional. I am typically not capable of that...So I salute you.

Seriously, it seems to be a self created mess ( via the MEC ) but, in the end I hope it all works out for everyone concerned.

Whine

 

[Lear70]

part of this is alpa's fault i believe. the way it was told to me was alpa didn't put up a fight for how the aai pilots were to be chosen. swa put on the table the way they wanted to do it, which was simply we(swa) will make the decisions on how the pilots are brought over, and alpa agreed to it. swa gave no plan and alpa didn't ask. swapa guy told me they were surprised alpa agreed to this, but that was a agreement between alpa and swa.

Your buddy is incorrect.

The way it went in negotiations was that the transition plan, including the 717's coming over to SWA, was given to us in a sheet that broke it down month by month, including draw-down in monthly block hours, etc (which is why I pushed for the increase in guarantee and we got it). I still have the original transition plan graph they gave us in negotiations, took a picture of it, could probably upload it if anyone wants to see it. Accounted for every aircraft by hull number by month through the end of the transition plan.

We asked for pay protection for people who were bypassed and they said No. We asked for a very specific training / transition flow after I brought up the fact that there was NO backstop for how many people and at what rate compared to aircraft leaving they had to take. They said No. We asked for a lot of things, they said No. We all know that story.

The instructions we had as the NC from the MEC reps was "Go out there, negotiate as best you can, take what you can get, the only thing you're allowed to say No for are being wholesale stapled or probationary periods (they tried the latter, we said No). The union reps were being recalled, the pilots were scared out of their mind from the GK letter after the first SIA was turned down. There wasn't a lot for us to do with SWA saying No to everything we asked for.

The idea that we just "didn't ask" is ludicrous and patently incorrect.

Incidentally, once the ISL negotiations were done and we were working on all the other conditions and restrictions like this, SWAPA was only in the room with us two days for a couple hours each of those two days for the entire week. The rest of the time it was just us and SWA management, so SWAPA really has no idea what was going on in the room, any more than we know what they were doing in their caucus room, except when something we were asking for required their input.

Just clearing up the misconception that we just said "OK" without trying to do SOMETHING to help mitigate the out-of-seniority transitions.