There’s no direct limits on Eagle manning in the AA contract, so there is nothing, other than economics, to keep Eagle from recalling pilots and/or hiring new pilots – at least nothing that I could find in the sections on furlough and “commuter air carriers”. In theory, we could bring everyone back if we could find flying for them to do – but practically speaking that’s where the ASM lock becomes a problem – eventually EGF would reach a point where there is no more available flying.
On that idea of finding more flying, I heard an interesting rumor from a “well placed source” in the union that ALPA and the company had talked about constructing lines below guarantee in the spring. I don’t know how likely anything is to come of this but it’s a start. I imagine it would take an agreement of some sort for us to fly to a lower guarantee, and I don’t know how likely the union membership would be to accept that – we seem to have a very non-cohesive pilot group, so getting any agreement might be tough. Still, it would help.
One thing that has been done, so far, is to avoid training the AA flow-backs – Eagle’s been paying most of them to stay home, though a few have finally started training. The company claims a couple of reasons, such as avoiding the expense of training pilots that might subsequently themselves be displaced by more senior AA pilots – but whatever the reasons, it has also kept a bunch of our jet captains in their seats, and when it’s all done, prevented displacements back into the company and furloughs at the bottom of the seniority list.
We’ve lost, unfortunately, about 25 pilots from the seniority list since the furloughs – so there are a few more vacancies there.
We’ve also heard from the planners at AA that in a general sense they’ve reached a stable position, even though they’re still losing a lot of money – there was a post on the ALPA board that they expected to be back up to a 90% schedule by the summer, and back to a 100% schedule no later than the summer after that. One problem though, is that the parked aircraft included all the B727s, (I’m not sure about the DC-10s) which means there are extra pilots (the FEs) in comparison to the number of planes, everything else being the same, so even with retirements, military leave and other things like that it maybe a while before they really get the recalls going.
I guess we’re looking at all this and, without getting our hopes up too much, figuring that maybe we’ve sort of reached the bottom – if nothing else goes wrong, and that maybe things will start to bounce back soon.
On that idea of finding more flying, I heard an interesting rumor from a “well placed source” in the union that ALPA and the company had talked about constructing lines below guarantee in the spring. I don’t know how likely anything is to come of this but it’s a start. I imagine it would take an agreement of some sort for us to fly to a lower guarantee, and I don’t know how likely the union membership would be to accept that – we seem to have a very non-cohesive pilot group, so getting any agreement might be tough. Still, it would help.
One thing that has been done, so far, is to avoid training the AA flow-backs – Eagle’s been paying most of them to stay home, though a few have finally started training. The company claims a couple of reasons, such as avoiding the expense of training pilots that might subsequently themselves be displaced by more senior AA pilots – but whatever the reasons, it has also kept a bunch of our jet captains in their seats, and when it’s all done, prevented displacements back into the company and furloughs at the bottom of the seniority list.
We’ve lost, unfortunately, about 25 pilots from the seniority list since the furloughs – so there are a few more vacancies there.
We’ve also heard from the planners at AA that in a general sense they’ve reached a stable position, even though they’re still losing a lot of money – there was a post on the ALPA board that they expected to be back up to a 90% schedule by the summer, and back to a 100% schedule no later than the summer after that. One problem though, is that the parked aircraft included all the B727s, (I’m not sure about the DC-10s) which means there are extra pilots (the FEs) in comparison to the number of planes, everything else being the same, so even with retirements, military leave and other things like that it maybe a while before they really get the recalls going.
I guess we’re looking at all this and, without getting our hopes up too much, figuring that maybe we’ve sort of reached the bottom – if nothing else goes wrong, and that maybe things will start to bounce back soon.
