I find that type of attitude a sad premonition for the future of your merger with XJT

[Nevets]

After all these days of letting you air everything out, most of you are still hung up on the writer or me trying to make it personal. Typical ad homenim argument. The point is that your MEC is not doing its due diligence. Have they even polled you? Have they written any blastmails explaining their research? Have they shown you any evidence that documents ANY research? Supposedly they looked at it two years ago. I'll call bs on that unless someone can produce a document that shows the supposed extensive research that went into looking at smartpref. And then show me where this document says why it's not good. This letter shows that your guys were just pretending to look at it this last time only after months of dragging their feet. And to this day, they have not done anything other than what this letter says. Which is to say, nothing. They won't even give our MEC the professional courtesy to give smartpref a real hard honest look.

 

[sweptback]

Nevets,

As a former rep, you have to know that the pilots elect the LEC representatives to represent them. A good rep has his or her finger on the pulse of the pilot group and does not need to poll the membership just to see how the winds are blowing. The only poll that they work off of during contract time is the contract survey, and you and I both know that if a MEC "goes rogue" and starts negotiating for things not ranked highly in the survey, that MEC will not last long.

Now, I am not privy to this information, but I can infer from the lack of action by the ASA MEC that the contract surveys did not rank "changing our PBS vendor" as a high priority, or even a priority at all. If the ASA pilots are not interested in changing, then why on earth should we change?

I support my reps, and I support my MEC. As the ASA pilot group is familiar with PBS, a better bidding system would sell itself over here. The fact that, as a whole, we are indifferent to negative on SmartPref is pretty telling from our side.

You can try and convince us, even call us names, but the bottom line is, our MEC, our choice. It's up for those on the MEC to duke it out between the two airlines.

 

[j3tdr1v3r]

Sweptback,

That's nice and all, but the reps also have a stake in the pilot group as a whole, and in the process of obtaining a JCBA. Wanna guess where "keep our line bidding" ranked on our polls? So should they just ignore the process of joint negotiations and say screw you, we're keeping what we got!

 

[jetfueljunkey]

Nevets,

As a former rep, you have to know that the pilots elect the LEC representatives to represent them. A good rep has his or her finger on the pulse of the pilot group and does not need to poll the membership just to see how the winds are blowing. The only poll that they work off of during contract time is the contract survey, and you and I both know that if a MEC "goes rogue" and starts negotiating for things not ranked highly in the survey, that MEC will not last long.

Now, I am not privy to this information, but I can infer from the lack of action by the ASA MEC that the contract surveys did not rank "changing our PBS vendor" as a high priority, or even a priority at all. If the ASA pilots are not interested in changing, then why on earth should we change?

I support my reps, and I support my MEC. As the ASA pilot group is familiar with PBS, a better bidding system would sell itself over here. The fact that, as a whole, we are indifferent to negative on SmartPref is pretty telling from our side.

You can try and convince us, even call us names, but the bottom line is, our MEC, our choice. It's up for those on the MEC to duke it out between the two airlines.

"as a former rep" were you only listening to the loudest pilots in the crew room or did you really have the pulse of the majority of your pilots... my guess is you listened to the loudest .03 percent in the crew room and based your "pulse of the pilots" off of that..

 

[nerjdriver]

And, soft time (vacation touching with pay) will be the first thing to get whittled out of any contract. The ONLY reason you guys are getting more flying is because you undercut OO and EV/Crj on crew costs. When that's no longer the case, well, "Have a nice day."

We aren't pay protected for the trips that are dropped because of vacation. Wrong again!

 

[Nevets]

Nevets,

As a former rep, you have to know that the pilots elect the LEC representatives to represent them. A good rep has his or her finger on the pulse of the pilot group and does not need to poll the membership just to see how the winds are blowing. The only poll that they work off of during contract time is the contract survey, and you and I both know that if a MEC "goes rogue" and starts negotiating for things not ranked highly in the survey, that MEC will not last long.

Now, I am not privy to this information, but I can infer from the lack of action by the ASA MEC that the contract surveys did not rank "changing our PBS vendor" as a high priority, or even a priority at all. If the ASA pilots are not interested in changing, then why on earth should we change?

I support my reps, and I support my MEC. As the ASA pilot group is familiar with PBS, a better bidding system would sell itself over here. The fact that, as a whole, we are indifferent to negative on SmartPref is pretty telling from our side.

You can try and convince us, even call us names, but the bottom line is, our MEC, our choice. It's up for those on the MEC to duke it out between the two airlines.

As a former rep I can tell you that what you said is BS. You have hundreds o pilots. There is no pulse to take by word of mouth, email, crew room visits etc. Regardless, the point is that you don't know if there is a better PBS system! Your MEC won't let it sell itself! That's my only point.

 

[Tarzan]

Look here for Nevets wavering left and right but never getting anywhere.

 

[IBNAV8R]

As a former rep I can tell you that what you said is BS. You have hundreds o pilots. There is no pulse to take by word of mouth, email, crew room visits etc. Regardless, the point is that you don't know if there is a better PBS system! Your MEC won't let it sell itself! That's my only point.

Why, if it's such a great system, weren't the jungle jet drivers using it already? Obviously, this awesome, fabulous, omnipotent system has been out there a while. If it's so great you'd be saying something like, "We've been using it for years and it's the "bomb".

Instead, the vocal minority is trying sell this unproven system to people that are happy with what they already have.

 

[79%N1]

None of this really matters, does it? First the DAL side is about to be gutted of 40%+ of their flying.....and who knows what the UAL side will bring when they get a joint contract. Nobody will give a sh!t how they bid when they are looking for work in the insurance business! I'm shifting my focus to get as much pay now out of this as can be in the next 2 years, as most 10-12 year guys on the old ASA side will be FO's again, depending how much hiring mitigates job losses here. The single list fight will be a doozy considering the new Delta TA which will gut our airline.

 

[JumpersAway]

None of this really matters, does it? First the DAL side is about to be gutted of 40%+ of their flying.....and who knows what the UAL side will bring when they get a joint contract. Nobody will give a sh!t how they bid when they are looking for work in the insurance business! I'm shifting my focus to get as much pay now out of this as can be in the next 2 years, as most 10-12 year guys on the old ASA side will be FO's again, depending how much hiring mitigates job losses here. The single list fight will be a doozy considering the new Delta TA which will gut our airline.

I'm not subscribing to the doom and gloom just yet. There are several huge factors at play here. It's to the point that our company management isn't even negotiating with us anymore. They're just waiting on the MEC to give them a number for a signature. Does this sound like a panic move by the upper tier for rapidly developing business strategy???? I'd say so. AMR is our life ring, and we're going for as many of the 76 seaters as we can get our hands on with DCI. We're going to be ok, as long as we don't go spastic and panic, or push for something that bumps us out of the running. AMR will be be looking for cheap 50 seat feed to replace Eagle- when the contracts with DAL don't pay, we simply won't provide feed for them anymore and will buy our way into another carrier.

35% of DAL hiring from the DCI ALPA carriers is huge! It doesn't sound like a lot, but it means PCL and ExpressJet will be the getting the lion's share of attrition and movement. That's just the minimum, and I'd suspect to see more than that. ALPA DCI carrier pilot's are essentially "plug and play", in the aspect that we already know the system. Just give us training in a new airframe and send us on our way- ATL, JFK, LGA.........we alread know the drill.