CAL Fleet Plan

[AWACoff]

Initial negotiations started July 07 (I believe)
Contract became amenable Jan 09
Economics given to company Dec 09

Expected result=
Company counter proposal sometime this Spring
back and forth this Summer into Fall into Winter.

Another round of proposals next Jan-Mar 11
Mediation board Spring 11
Cooling off period beginning Summer 11

last round of talks end Summer 11
strike in Fall 11
Contract vote Nov-Dec 11

Expect contract to go through 31 Dec 2014 instead of 2013

Just talked with J.B. today and I can confirm what you said in this post as being accurate.

 

[skywdriver]

DAL/JAL will force a merger. CO and UAL will be forced to merge to protect the pacific. Otherwise AA could make a play at the Pacific routes owned by UA leaving the combined UA/CO without a hub in Japan currently enjoyed by UA. Losing JAL from "one World" will hurt AA. My opinion only. Obviously a whole host of things could happen but I do believe DAL/JAL will get the mergermania going.

PS. This makes the guessing of who's hiring when a complete mystery.

Until Delta starts posting much better financial results than CAL, I don't think there will be any mergers. There may be merger talk to scare the labor groups, but I am pretty sure the CAL mgmt team believes that mergers are a thing of the past and alliances/JV's are the wave of the future. Ultimately for the pilots, who knows which is more dangerous, but the industry will evolve regardless of what the pilots have to say. CAL knows that to have a successful merger, the labor unions will have to be on board or you will end up with another America West/US Air disaster.

If CAL can use the alliance and get almost as much benefit as Delta/NW without a merger, it only makes sense to do that. Wishful thinking maybe, I guess we shall see.

I am sure ANA will go after every profitable piece of what JAL is leaving on the table. JAL still has the crapshoot decision of leaving AA and hoping that they will get DOJ approval with a huge fight from AA. Who knows if they will be willing to take that risk. Should be interesting as it always is!

 

[whymeworry?]

You are correct in that a merged CAL/UAL would not hire for some time due to-
1) Possibly 1300+ pilots on the street (if it happened today)
2) UAL's 70 seat RJ feed which would negate the need to call back the furloughees IF-
The new airline did not have some sort of scope protection like CAL has currently.

On the other hand, if a merger is not announced in 2010 then expect to see recalls and hiring this year because-
Since bid 10-02 came out, we have leveled off on our aircraft numbers yet looking at bid 11-02, we show less pilots (4098 v. 4190) yet our fleet numbers are starting to increase. And as Furloughed80 states, we will have an increase in widebodies in 2010 and continued increases in 2011. Plus, in 2011 we start to bring our 737 numbers up to make up for the loss of the 737-300/500's these past 18 months.

The company will continue to manipulate the numbers for Wall Street but the reality is-
we will have more than 4 pilots retire this year.
we will have increased utilization of our current fleet.
we will have added flying, ie charters, mil and new routes.
we will melt down on a few occasions this summer based on current staffing!
At some point, even they will have to realize that.

One thing that still amazes me is that they are playing these games when the cards are in the pilots groups hand (along with maintenance).
If we make no headway this year, we can expect to be released sometime in 2011. Right when the 787's are coming, the economic recovery should be in full swing and best of all...
If we haven't come to an agreement by the summer of 2011 then expect to see chaos while at the same time Delta will be kicking all our collective asses! Star Alliance and Lufty are gonna love that~

Of course, if a merger were announced sometime this year, next year would be a mess but for other reasons...

Oh and one last thing. At some point this year/next year we will see changes in FAR rest regulations. This may change how we use reserves and also affect some of the other scheduling rules. While I would expect a 6-18 month time period for carries to implement the new rules, it should also help us in the long run~

motch

You are aware that we lost the GUM mil contract to Delta simply because we failed to get our bid in by the close date? With that kind of mgmt (or mis-mgmt as it were) I highly doubt CAL will gain any MIL flying in the near future. Remember we were suppose to get that Ramstein-Kuwait mil contract right before the furlough? We all know how that turned out. We don't have enough WBs to service our existing routes. The military has no interest in carting around their troops in 737s for the time being. DAL wins this round yet again.

 

[tie1on]

there is a fleet plan? oh yea the 50m rj to the world. m they have the most incompetent mgt team out there. delta will kill them.

 

[nimtz]

there is a fleet plan? oh yea the 50m rj to the world. m they have the most incompetent mgt team out there. delta will kill them.

RJ?!? What you think we are some classy airline? Bring on more Q400's! Who cares if Colgan runs it's operation on a rubber band, look at that cost per seat mile!!!

 

[motch]

Latest Fleet Plan out-
As of 18 March 2010.
CAL expects to have 350 mainline aircraft, an increase of 3 aircraft from the 21 January 2010 plan.

3 737-500's being added.

Sad thing is, we are now back to the fleet plan of Jan 2009, and just 4 shy of the fleet plan that was put out in Oct 2008. When CAL took 147 hostages.

Since Oct 2008, we have also seen a reduction of 201 pilots on it's seniority list yet we have increased our LNB fleet...
At the same time, CAL management planned on 40 retirements- we actually had 4 times that amount!

We need the 147 back yesterday~

Gonna be an interesting summer.

 

[ForgedBlade]

Latest Fleet Plan out-
As of 18 March 2010.
CAL expects to have 350 mainline aircraft, an increase of 3 aircraft from the 21 January 2010 plan.

3 737-500's being added.

Sad thing is, we are now back to the fleet plan of Jan 2009, and just 4 shy of the fleet plan that was put out in Oct 2008. When CAL took 147 hostages.

Since Oct 2008, we have also seen a reduction of 201 pilots on it's seniority list yet we have increased our LNB fleet...
At the same time, CAL management planned on 40 retirements- we actually had 4 times that amount!

We need the 147 back yesterday~

Gonna be an interesting summer.

Adding 737-500's back, great! More dart-throwing in Houston...

 

[motch]

I hear ya.. but it's better than losing airplanes or staying stagnant!

Got to be good for a few more Captain slots too....
That, plus the retirements (more than 4!) that will hit us at the end of summer/fall...
How we can't recall and maybe even hire, you got me!

 

[BID]

I can't believe we are not recalling. I guess they expect every single pilot to work well over 90 hours this summer.

 

[Furloughed80]

Can anyone confirm if there will be an April system bid or not? I was hoping there would be recalls this April. We are re-starting ATH, adding MUC, going 5 daily LHR, increasing service to OSL, added OGG out of SNA, increased HNL. Combine that with the normal increase in block hours for the summer and the spike retirements we see every November. It makes no sense that we have not started a recall.