HAL hiring

[waveflyer]

Hahaha
I'm good my man

I'll stop trolling and say I'm sure you'd be great to fly with brother

 

[Microclimates]

Hey Dan
Not to be too pessimistic but unless we solve this Ohana thing, and reabsorb the turboprop flying, I am not at all sure that it is going to go down that way... The Debbie Downer in me sees, as the 717s reach a venerable old age, that inter-island flying will be done by a combination of NEO, during peak hours, and Ohana on off-peak schedules... Methinks that there is a real risk that the NEO will be, at best, replacement, and not growth.... Any fee-for-departure company, like empire, will always make the case (on paper) that they are the cheaper option, whether that is actually true or not.

I can't see any other reason why we would have started an entire operation to serve just 2 destinations. it makes no business sense... start taking the long pessimistic view tho and things change...

We need to get a turboprop payscale and take control of that flying.

 

[Junkflyer]

Too late to take control of Ohana. That was given up in the current contract and management will never give it up.

 

[waveflyer]

Too late to take control of Ohana. That was given up in the current contract and management will never give it up.

Wtf is this^^^??

I actually wish swa would start up a Q400 op for the markets we miss out on as well.

 

[Jim]

We have pretty tight scope clauses for interisland flying by Ohana and code shares. I don't see non-seniority list pilots flying the four big interisland city pairs (HNL-LIH, HNL-OFF, HNL-KOA, HNL-ITO) unless we give it up and that's not going to happen.

Ohana was started for a variety of reasons to include unreliable code share partners to those destinations affecting our customer satisfaction especially the Japanese tourist bureaus, increasing our market share, keeping the lid on the growth of the other interisland carriers (then Go! and Island Air, not just Island Air) and filling the holes in our schedules.

Hawaiian owns the Ohana planes and does all the leg work, Empire just provides pilots and FAs so I wouldn't call it an entire operation. There are eventually supposed to be 4 Ohana planes flying other city pairs that either can't be flown by the 717 because of runways or that would not fill a 717 even with minimal frequency. Further during the last contract negotiations Dunkerley said that if it grows much beyond that it would be time to start folding them completely into our operation (yeah I know, negotiation promises not in writing...but in this case probably true).

We also have contractual minimum interisland 717 flying or Ohana has to go away. I also believe that the 321s were specifically designated as not part of this interisland minimums in the LOA.

So while I wish it were Hawaiian pilots flying the planes I'm not really worried about Ohana taking any jobs away from us and I'm pretty confident the vast majority of 321 flying will be growth.

 

[FurloughedAgain]

Wtf is this^^^??

I actually wish swa would start up a Q400 op for the markets we miss out on as well.

Flown by SWA pilots I sincerely hope. The lesson of the 1990s should not be lost on SWA. As the mainline carriers parked DC9s, F100s, F28s, BAe146, 737-200... an armada of RJs flown by the lowest priced contractors darkened the sky. Once the toothpaste is out of the tube it is exceedingly difficult to put back in. I don't care what they choose to fly, so long as they choose to do so with our pilots at the controls. Scope = jobs and there is no job... no airplane... that we should be too good to fly.

Sorry to intrude upon this HAL thread, but I felt the need to comment. I hope you understand.

 

[Dan Roman]

Hey Dan
Not to be too pessimistic but unless we solve this Ohana thing, and reabsorb the turboprop flying, I am not at all sure that it is going to go down that way... The Debbie Downer in me sees, as the 717s reach a venerable old age, that inter-island flying will be done by a combination of NEO, during peak hours, and Ohana on off-peak schedules... Methinks that there is a real risk that the NEO will be, at best, replacement, and not growth.... Any fee-for-departure company, like empire, will always make the case (on paper) that they are the cheaper option, whether that is actually true or not.

I can't see any other reason why we would have started an entire operation to serve just 2 destinations. it makes no business sense... start taking the long pessimistic view tho and things change...

We need to get a turboprop payscale and take control of that flying.

Exactly what Jim said. There is no scenario that could see Ohana replace any of our inter island flying now. Our scope covers it. Inter Island needs the seats Jets provide and it has to be high frequency The NEO's are not a cost effective inter island jet. We are paying for an airplane that can fly transpac and creates a lot of potential for new markets, Orange County, outer island to the west coast, etc. iIt wouldn't make sense to use it as an 717 replacement.

 

[Dan Roman]

Also Micro, from a business sense, it means Hawaiian touch's all the inter island flying ( interesting Island Air pulled out of MKK as soon as we went back there).
As far as trying to do that flying on our seniority list, it really wouldn't be realistic to freeze people on it while new hires went to the jets.
Again, I think our current scope covers us correctly in that it's good to have that flying done for us by Ohana but I really don't see it as any threat at all.

 

[Junkflyer]

Ohana will be doing OGG to the Big Island routes (they've already done some proving runs to ITO)and possibly to LIH in the future. That flying is currently done by the 717 and nothing in the contract precludes Ohana from doing it.

 

[...Lost]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ohana-hawaiian-expands-network-maui-232700490.html

 

[Dan Roman]

Well I misstated about ANY flying we do with the 717. My bad as I confess I've been away from Inter Island for awhile. I still say Ohana supplements and feeds Hawaiian, it doesn't take jobs away.

 

[waveflyer]

Flown by SWA pilots I sincerely hope. The lesson of the 1990s should not be lost on SWA. As the mainline carriers parked DC9s, F100s, F28s, BAe146, 737-200... an armada of RJs flown by the lowest priced contractors darkened the sky. Once the toothpaste is out of the tube it is exceedingly difficult to put back in. I don't care what they choose to fly, so long as they choose to do so with our pilots at the controls. Scope = jobs and there is no job... no airplane... that we should be too good to fly.

Sorry to intrude upon this HAL thread, but I felt the need to comment. I hope you understand.

110% agree- well said

I would fly the hell out of a Q400
I don't know when legacies understood their history of dc-3's to now being too good or experienced to fly a Q or a Brasilia, but it shouldn't be that way

 

[waveflyer]

Well I misstated about ANY flying we do with the 717. My bad as I confess I've been away from Inter Island for awhile. I still say Ohana supplements and feeds Hawaiian, it doesn't take jobs away.

That's how it starts Dan.

And usually with the support of some well meaning but out of touch senior wide body pilots

 

[Microclimates]

Well I misstated about ANY flying we do with the 717. My bad as I confess I've been away from Inter Island for awhile. I still say Ohana supplements and feeds Hawaiian, it doesn't take jobs away.

not YET it doesn't. just give it a few years when the 717's start being due for retirement!

 

[Jim]

not YET it doesn't. just give it a few years when the 717's start being due for retirement!

And our current scope covers that. We would have to give it away and I don't see that happening.

Also during the 321NEO presentations it was projected that it would be at least another 15 years until they started looking for a 717 replacement. While something to think about long term, this is not an immediate concern.

I'm the sterotypical "the company's going to screw us" guy and have a rep of being vocal about it. But in this case I'm not worried.

 

[jea]

Its not taking our jobs away (yet) but it DID stop the "need" for hiring on the HAL seniority list for more interisland pilots. Turboprop flying makes more sense on the routes published and the loads on those routes now- that's a given. But it is weakening our ability to stand as a group when a majority of the group doesn't know what the minority is losing- to the benefit of an outside entity.

I'm not even going to get into the 7 more "N" numbers registered for Ohana flying....

 

[Junkflyer]

The fact is the pilot group gave up scope on the last contract. It was sold hard by the MEC and really nothing was gained by doing so. Hopefully the leadership and entire group will put a little more thought before agreeing to the next contract. We should have already learned the lesson about scope from the other legacies.

 

[nethan]

And our current scope covers that. We would have to give it away and I don't see that happening.

Our scope is laughable at best and really only protects HNL to the 4 big neighbor islands airports. The 29,000 block hour minimum provides for about 5 hours of flying per 717 (assuming the normal 16 aircraft schedule, way less if we fly all 18) per day. Currently they are doing considerably more than 5 hours of flying each day.

I would fully expect the company to dangle some nice carrot (commuter clause?) to entice the widebody guys (who way out number the 717 guys) to vote on relaxing scope to allow "off peak" flights out of HNL on the ATRs. Also, I would expect the OGG-KOA and OGG-ITO flights to go almost exclusively to ATRs in the future. Additionally, with the 321s doing west coast to neighbor island flights, the need to shuttle some visitor traffic around (LAX-HNL-LIH) will go away, further reducing the need for 717 flying.

I'm far, far from paranoid, but it ain't looking good for us inter island guys long term.

 

[fly4surf]

I also think the big unknown Interisland is the 717 retirement.

Scope has it's limits that only we can relax, which I don't think anyone in their right mind will do.

 

[Jim]

When we allowed Hawaiian to own a subsidiary, we did not give up scope we actually tightened it.

Prior to the last contract, the only protection we had was any code share had to fly turboprops less than 69 seats and 69,000 lbs, and no code share flying between the four pairs (HNL-LIH, HNL-OGG, HNL-KOA, HNL-ITO).

The only thing contract 2010 changed was instead of this type of flying having to be done by a code share partner, Hawaiian could have a subsidiary do it. In exchange for this, we gained a minimum interisland block hour requirement of 29,000 hours/year where if pilots on the HAL seniority list did not fly this minimum hours, any code share or subsidiary flying had to cease.

At the time of the contract, we were flying approximately 29,000 hours a year interisland or an average of 2416 hours/month. For July 2014 we have 3283 hours of interisland flying but if you talk to the crew planning people, you will find that the 3 summer months and Christmas have approx. 15% more flying then the other 8 months of the year. So we now fly (3283 x 4 months = 13,132 hour) + (2791 x 8 months = 23,328 hours) or 35,460 hour/year interisland. Which is about 6500 hours above the minimum. But some points to consider:

- The 29,000 are hard interisland hours flown by HAL pilots. When the 321 NEOs start flying mainland to outer islands, some of the current 35,460 hours will go away due to less need. But the 29,000 is still a hard requirement.

- If we had not agreed to the change, the flying Ohana is now doing /will do in the future would have been done by a code share partner anyway and we would have no hours protection.

- Interisland is a fixed market, there is no real growth other than by gaining more market share. We own 90+% of the market and Ohana is filling in the gaps we otherwise would never be servicing. By doing so, we also discourage someone such as Alaska/Horizon from entering the market which would only reduce our market share/interisland flying. We would quickly be back to the 2010 29,000 hour level or lower. If this happened, the Ohana flying would have to be done by HA pilots and since we own the planes, this would not be a hard change to accomplish.

- Anything the 321NEOs fly other than strictly interisland pairs do not count as part of the 29,000 hours. So even if the 321NEOs replace the 717, they would still have to fly 29,000 hours of strict interisland pairings for Ohana to continue.

Like you, I wish the flying were done by pilots on our seniority list but this is not/was not going to happen. HAL ALPA realized this, tightened our scope and provided more job protection in contract 2010 by allowing a subsidiary versus only code sharing. Not the ideal solution but better than we had before.

As far as the international majority hurting interisland minority, this is inevitable anyway. There is no growth interisland and HAL ALPA recognized this as far back as the 2000 contract. That is when they started building international work rules and increasing the pay differential between international and interisland. As Hawaiian continues to grow, interisland as a percentage of flying and pilots will only continue to shrink. Further it is not HAL ALPA's place to demand any type of flying (i.e. HA must have dedicated interisland), it's the company's. If the company wants to get rid of dedicated interisland planes/pilots with the 321NEO then they can. It's HAL ALPA's job to make sure the changes have appropriate pay, work rules and job protection. (This hearkens back to HAL ALPA's position in the early 2000s when the west coast bases were being closed.) I would hope everyone who wants the current interisland lifestyle would get to keep it, but that's the company's call.

If you are a Hawaiian pilot it's easy to figure out who I am. There are only a couple of 767 Captains named Jim. If you were here for the last contract you would know I don't trust management or their promises at all, and I have been vocal in my criticisms of both management and at times our union. I'm the guy that sent the mass e-mail out at the last contract calling for a NO vote. So me defending something like Ohana is a big difference from my normal "management's going to F' us mode". I really don't believe Ohana the threat people are thinking it is.