AMR Proposal Highlights

[Turtle21]

Could be the same objective with the pilot 1113 sheet, "Better accept these crap 319 rates or else the judge will hit everyone else with lower pay." As it stands now there arent any pay cuts for a single existing equip status, correct?

Had an AA pilot on the jump seat last week and he indicated no rate reductions but total obliteration of all other things, rigs, vacation, med benefits, and pretty much work to FAA mins.

Biggest beef he had was no min guarantee, i.e. reserve who gets called for 25 hours of flight time in the month gets paid 25 hours, and a block holder has no min guarantee either, i.e. no min to blocks in a line. YMMV

 

[Turtle21]

Speak for your self dude, I happen to like how ALPA is giving us all the flying. I just find it hard to believe the Major Airlines, allow ALPA to do it.

Yeah, but you gotta admit that you also like the squeals of PC and Rez.

 

[outerlimits]

Yeah, but you gotta admit that you also like the squeals of PC and Rez.

I heard PC is going to be ALPAs poster child. He fits ALPA better than anyone.

 

[densoo]

Fellow pilots,

APA has repeatedly expressed strong opposition to termination of our defined-benefit pension plan, as have other interested parties, including the Unsecured Creditors’ Committee and most especially the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC). The APA Board of Directors recently made the decision to support continuation of the A Plan in the form of a “hard freeze.” Your leadership has taken this and other concerns directly to senior management.

I am pleased to report that APA and management have achieved meaningful progress on the issue of our defined-benefit pension plan, which is good news for all of our pilots. In what I would describe as the first breakthrough we have achieved since bargaining resumed on Feb. 7, management has indicated they would work with APA to identify alternatives to terminating our A Plan. Management also informed the APA Negotiating Committee yesterday that they have decided to pursue a “hard freeze” of the other employee groups’ defined-benefit plans, rather than the plan terminations they had originally sought in their 1113(c) proposal.

There are some hurdles to overcome with respect to obtaining a hard freeze of our defined-benefit plan. Our plan is the only one on the AMR property that includes the option of a lump sum and our experts have concluded that attempting to preserve a lump-sum option is not achievable, in that it would lead to a termination of the A Plan. Therefore, before changes to our pension plans can be accomplished, we will need to ballot those pilots covered by Supplement B of the APA-American Airlines Collective Bargaining Agreement. An affirmative vote would pave the way to preventing an A Plan termination by agreeing to a freeze and elimination of the lump-sum option. If the pilots covered by Supplement B do not agree to a freeze, the A Plan will likely be terminated, which would also result in the elimination of the lump sum. By voting to support a freeze, thousands of pilots will preserve their earned annuity benefits by avoiding plan termination and the much lower annuities based on PBGC limitations.

Additionally, we plan to work with management to obtain funding relief from the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service to help secure the frozen A Plan benefit.

In a hard freeze, each plan participant’s earned annuity benefit is permanently fixed at its dollar value at the date of the freeze. If the participant retires at or after age 60, they would receive the amount as a life annuity, adjusted for the form of annuity selected. If the participant elects to retire before their sixtieth birthday, the A Plan’s early retirement factors would apply as they do today.

 

[ALGFLYR]

877-CASH-NOW...

Lol...

 

[shon7]

Biggest beef he had was no min guarantee, i.e. reserve who gets called for 25 hours of flight time in the month gets paid 25 hours, and a block holder has no min guarantee either, i.e. no min to blocks in a line. YMMV

Make all the positions salaried and all this goes away.

 

[ALGFLYR]

Make all the positions salaried and all this goes away.

Sounds good, but that would require much more staffing... All the line holders would stop picking up trips for extra money and there wouldn't be enough reserves to cover all the flying...

 

[Andy]

PBS alone, will not reduce head count.

PBS definitely reduces head count which is why management wants it. If PBS didn't matter, this wouldn't be an issue for management.

PBS is more efficient than the traditional line building. Instead of allowing a pilot to bid for a line that will maximize his vacation time - where both sides of this vacation time touch trips that get dropped under traditional lines - PBS builds that pilot a line where ONLY his vacation days are days off. He will have assignments on both sides of his vacation.

There are several other PBS 'efficiency tweaks' that come out of the hide of the pilot; I'm just too lazy to do the research on it right now.

AMR currently has a tradtional bidding system in place. If PBS wasn't going to reduce head count, why would they want to spend the money on the program?

 

[B727FA]

PBS builds that pilot a line where ONLY his vacation days are days off. He will have assignments on both sides of his vacation.

That doesn't have to be the case. It's all in how you stack your bid. PBS doesn't "do" anything to you...you tell the system what to do and it works with your seniority. You just have to be smarter than the computer...

 

[Andy]

That doesn't have to be the case. It's all in how you stack your bid. PBS doesn't "do" anything to you...you tell the system what to do and it works with your seniority. You just have to be smarter than the computer...

Not under the United Airlines system. Prior to PBS, if you bid a line that had trips touching both sides of your previously awarded vacation time, you got paid for those trips and did not fly them.

PBS wrings the 'inefficiencies' out of the system. Those 'inefficiencies' were improvements to pilots' quality of life.

Simple question: If there isn't any head count reduction for implementing PBS, why do managements spend millions of dollars to switch to PBS?

 

[PCL_128]

The inherent head count reduction from PBS isn't from vacation, it's from month-to-month integration conflicts. Companies using traditional line bidding carry extra staffing all the time just to cover the higher needs during integration. PBS eliminates the need for this, since a schedule will never be built that contains month-to-month conflicts. Vacation doesn't have to be effected, though. It just depends on how you negotiate the rules.

 

[Andy]

The inherent head count reduction from PBS isn't from vacation, it's from month-to-month integration conflicts. Companies using traditional line bidding carry extra staffing all the time just to cover the higher needs during integration. PBS eliminates the need for this, since a schedule will never be built that contains month-to-month conflicts. Vacation doesn't have to be effected, though. It just depends on how you negotiate the rules.

You must have missed this:

There are several other PBS 'efficiency tweaks' that come out of the hide of the pilot; I'm just too lazy to do the research on it right now.

If you think that vacation 'efficiencies' aren't achieved with PBS, perhaps you can explain this: Vacation 8th - 20th. Awarded in advance of monthly line bid.
Pilot bids for and is awarded a line that has trips 5th - 9th and 19th-23rd.
What happens to those trips? They're put back into open time.
The pilot is paid for the line credit of all trips during his vacation.

With PBS, a pilot is now awarded a daily credit for his vacation time. Since PBS is aware of the days that the pilot is on vacation, it purposely builds solutions with no trip overlap.

PBS also allows for lower reserve coverage, further reducing head count.

 

[PCL_128]

There are plenty of solutions to the vacation problem that you bring up. ASA resolved it, although I'm not familiar with the details of how they did it. One way that it can be done is by artificially increasing the PBS credit (not pay credit) of the vacation block. For example, a week of vacation could be worth 40 hours of PBS credit. The system has minimum and maximum credit parameters (which can also be negotiated), so by artificially inflating the value of the vacation, you reduce the amount of flying that is put on the line. If a pilot then put a preference of days off on both sides of the vacation period, he could get two weeks off for a week of vacation, just like with line bidding.

It's all about how you negotiate the rules.

 

[Andy]

There are plenty of solutions to the vacation problem that you bring up. ASA resolved it, although I'm not familiar with the details of how they did it. One way that it can be done is by artificially increasing the PBS credit (not pay credit) of the vacation block. For example, a week of vacation could be worth 40 hours of PBS credit. The system has minimum and maximum credit parameters (which can also be negotiated), so by artificially inflating the value of the vacation, you reduce the amount of flying that is put on the line. If a pilot then put a preference of days off on both sides of the vacation period, he could get two weeks off for a week of vacation, just like with line bidding.

It's all about how you negotiate the rules.

That's correct. Now watch what happens to ASA's credit per day of vacation in future contracts. ... and you do realize that management wants to 'fix' that oversight, right?

 

[PCL_128]

Of course management wants to "fix" it. Management always wants to "fix" the things that don't work in their favor. That's true whether it's a line bidding system or a PBS system. That's why we set our priorities, they set theirs, and we negotiate. In the end, I doubt management will be able to wrest that feature of the CBA from the pilots, unless they're willing to give up on PBS completely. Management already has the problem that the XJT pilot group doesn't want PBS to start with, so it's an uphill battle from the beginning for management to be able to hold on to their system. Taking away the niceties of the system will make it impossible for them to be able to keep PBS. The CBA just wouldn't ratify.

 

[777forever]

Of course management wants to "fix" it. Management always wants to "fix" the things that don't work in their favor. That's true whether it's a line bidding system or a PBS system. That's why we set our priorities, they set theirs, and we negotiate. In the end, I doubt management will be able to wrest that feature of the CBA from the pilots, unless they're willing to give up on PBS completely. Management already has the problem that the XJT pilot group doesn't want PBS to start with, so it's an uphill battle from the beginning for management to be able to hold on to their system. Taking away the niceties of the system will make it impossible for them to be able to keep PBS. The CBA just wouldn't ratify.

Spot on. ASA has a vacation low feature of PBS that bumps up the PBS credit so you can maximize vacation. The only real down side is you only get min guarantee vs line bidding whet you still get paid for the conflicts dropped.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

 

[PCL_128]

The only real down side is you only get min guarantee vs line bidding whet you still get paid for the conflicts dropped.

There aren't too many contracts left that still give you credit for dropped touching trips.

 

[HighSpeedClimb]

This is of interest..

http://www.nycaviation.com/2012/03/...deal-if-domain-name-purchases-to-be-believed/