TWAER said:
Hey, maybe ACA will do it. You know they are about to take a 3% pay cut for the RJ. Oh, I forgot, surplus, you only hate Mesa and CHQ. Hell, Comair could take concessions and you would still be bashing Mesa and CHQ for "lowering YOUR bar". And get it straight. ANY more flying done by Comair, ASA, CHQ, ACA or SW will be at the expense of mainline.
Actually TWAER, I don't hate Mesa or CHQ, just as I didn't hate TWA for flying for next to nothing. If you check my posts you'll see that I personally haven't spent any time bashing your airline or Mesa either. As you point out you made substantial improvements in your contract just about everywhere. Even Mesa didn't actually take a pay cut, they just didn't get a raise.
You are not the one's that started the pay cut spiral and I know that. If I have an axe to grind on that score it would be with Skywest first, ARW second and ACA third. Those are the three that were bluffed into concessions by UAL.
The complaint I have with Mesa is not pay rates, it's their acceptance of J4J, which forced you and TAS to do the same. For J4J, I blame the entity that created it, i.e., ALPA.
One thing that does bother me about your new contract is your explanation of the FO rates. You say it's in part because of J4J, but I don't get your logic. That 4-year scale may be low enough to keep the USAir pilots out of your FO seats, but it won't prevent them from taking 50% of your captain seats. Since every captain seat they take will keep one of you in the FO position longer, your logic escapes me.
You point out that you don't have any 4-yr FO's and apparently you don't expect that you will. That means you expect to grow fast enough for every new hire to become a captain overnight. My question is this: If you don't grow at the rates you anticipate, how are your FO's going to upgrade? Into what? Personally, I've never liked a contract that favors captains at the expense of FO's in the same airline. Whether you like it or not, I think that's tacky.
I suppose a bunch of you all think that as soon as you get this magic 1000 PIC you're all going to be hired by some major and the FO's can move up to the vacancies you leave. I can't help but wonder which major you think is going to do that hiring.
You all are talking about JBlue and AirTrain and SWA. I guess those carriers will be hiring, but you seem to overlook that there are thousands of furloughed mainline pilots ready and able to take those slots. Do you really believe that a guy who's already been flying a 320, a 737 or a 9, doesn't have a chance compared to an EMB driver with a thousand PIC? Given your experience level (as stated here), it's hard to grasp your logic. As Fourloughed Again says, there are a lot of unrealistic expectations going around these days. Guys with 8, 10, 15 even 18 years at U are on the streets. Tons of people from TWA (AA) are on the streets, and from UAL, NWA, CAL and DAL.
At Comair we are being told that the growth will go elsewhere if we do not concede and that it will be 83 aircraft. We are also being told that the value of the concessions we were asked to give is about $8 millions a year. How do you suppose we're going to "buy" 83 RJs, with eight million dollars. It would take 20 years of that. Any pilot group that believes it can buy growth with pilot pay is letting someone blow a lot of smoke where the sun don't shine.
Face it, you're all being played like the proverbial fiddle. If it continues, we will be facing furloughs too and eventually the concessions will come. At that point you will be threatened in the same way. It will continue until we are all so cheap that the job isn't worth having. We will lower the costs until the airlines lowering the costs find their fees for departure lowered again and they themselves become unprofitable. Just like the big guys.
First the big guys price themselves out of profitability on the high side, then the little guys price themselves into unprofitability on the low side. Brilliant.
How long do you really think Delta can hold out, when American and UAL have gone where they have? CAL is already very low and will stay there, U is as far from recovery as they can get. Look at AWA's new "miracle". Reality will soon come to NWA. When Delta eventually matches JBlue and AirTran, what will they do? Lower their costs to continue growing? You can bet on it. Who will pay --- the flight crews. If Spirit can fly for those wages, so can JB and AT. Before too long we'll all be on a par with Aeroflot and LOT.
I don't blame management for trying this. I blame us all for letting them get away with it. We are so stupid that we can't even figure out that we have put ourselves into a bidding war that benefits no pilot anywhere.
BTW Don't expect any concessions from CHQ. We didn't take em in the new contract, and this pilot group will not take em now. Sorry to disappoint.
The day will come when your management will be telling you exactly what our management is telling us. Make concessions or the growth will go to Shuttle America. Give up what you just got if you want to coninue your "growth", or we give the jets to them. When it does, we'll see what you do.
