JB pilots say no to alpa/Barely

[Lake Alice]

The whole argument is moot at this point.

As per the conference call yesterday with Maruster the DR is now in charge. New committees will now be formed to study the relationship between the pilot group and management. The PVC has to be re-evaluated and possibly redefined. Retirement is "at the top of their list" to address but it won't be discussed until the PVC structure has been completed, elections have been completed, benefits enrollment has been completed, a committee formed to study the disparity in benefits has been completed. IMHO their is absolutely no rush to bring Jetblue pilots to an industry standard retirement.

Now my truly honest opinion. The pieces of sh!t who voted no have saddled us with a relationship that is absolutely, positively controlled by management. We have no recourse, no ability to negotiate and no chance of EVER getting an industry standard benefits and retirement package. The company heres us "loud and clear" but that doesn't mean SH!T. Look at the applicants and the pilots being hired. We are not attracting the quality pilots we need and that corresponds directly to direction our company has taken.

 

[Skank]

Seems a little over the top to indict all new hires as lacking quality, and anyone who didn't want ALPA as a POS. Maybe you should take a step back.

 

[pilotyip]

We are not attracting the quality pilots we need and that corresponds directly to direction our company has taken.

Knowing a few that went there, I find this surprising. Could a quality pilot only be a pro-union pilot? If I am wrong please define quality pilot?

 

[Lake Alice]

The failure rate or requirement for additional training is above 10% and the school house admits it's a reflection of the quality of our new hires.

I don't have a mil retirement and the 5% we receive isn't helping much either. Keep in mind our peer set receives 13-16% guaranteed on a monthly basis. As someone who does relatively well with my retirement planning I can tell you our retirement is a joke and not nearly enough. I can also tell you that without a CBA our retirement isn't changing. First, the operating budget for the pilots is fixed and second, without the CBA jetblue can't legally separate us. So, yes, if you voted no you are a POS because a CBA was our only avenue to fix the retirement issue.

 

[$$$4nothin]

The whole argument is moot at this point.

As per the conference call yesterday with Maruster the DR is now in charge. New committees will now be formed to study the relationship between the pilot group and management. The PVC has to be re-evaluated and possibly redefined. Retirement is "at the top of their list" to address but it won't be discussed until the PVC structure has been completed, elections have been completed, benefits enrollment has been completed, a committee formed to study the disparity in benefits has been completed. IMHO their is absolutely no rush to bring Jetblue pilots to an industry standard retirement.

Now my truly honest opinion. The pieces of sh!t who voted no have saddled us with a relationship that is absolutely, positively controlled by management. We have no recourse, no ability to negotiate and no chance of EVER getting an industry standard benefits and retirement package. The company heres us "loud and clear" but that doesn't mean SH!T. Look at the applicants and the pilots being hired. We are not attracting the quality pilots we need and that corresponds directly to direction our company has taken.

As a recent new hire I am going to assume you are just ranting and am not going to take this coment personally. As I am going to be spending a lot of time in JFK in the near future on reserve I would be more than happy to meet up with you and after we have a beer or two you can make these statements if you still feel the same way.

I can assure you that the recent new hires want the same things you do. Not to mention anyone hired on July 13 (My class) or after was not able to vote anyway so how could you possibly blame us for anything other than trying to better our careers.

One more thing. If you don't have the balls to call the guy sitting next to you a POS to his face don't get on a message board and do it. It doesn't make you a tough guy.

 

[$$$4nothin]

The failure rate or requirement for additional training is above 10% and the school house admits it's a reflection of the quality of our new hires.

So, yes, if you voted no you are a POS because a CBA was our only avenue to fix the retirement issue.

I just left the school house and of the 11 guys in our class not a single guy failed. So I am not sure where you are getting your info, but it is not correct. Nor did anyone from the two classes prior to mine.

Again. If you don't have the balls to call someone a POS to there face, doing so on a message board only hurts your ability to convince anyone of your point of view on a message board.

If you are relying on an airline retirement to support your years between 65-100 whether it be 5% or 20% match you should probably reevaluate your retirement plans. Just some advice givin to me from a couple thousand current airline pilots that WERE getting better retirements than we ever will.

 

[Lake Alice]

I have no problem calling anyone a POS to their face so don't worry about that.

Next time you are down in the school house ask them about the failure/retest rate. Re-read the post. 10%!!! not everyone in every class is failing. Some classes have no issues at all. Some of the pilots being hired are simply not qualified. This is not an attack on anyone specifically but it is a reflection of the candidates applying.

 

[Lake Alice]

I just left the school house and of the 11 guys in our class not a single guy failed. So I am not sure where you are getting your info, but it is not correct. Nor did anyone from the two classes prior to mine.

Again. If you don't have the balls to call someone a POS to there face, doing so on a message board only hurts your ability to convince anyone of your point of view on a message board.

If you are relying on an airline retirement to support your years between 65-100 whether it be 5% or 20% match you should probably reevaluate your retirement plans. Just some advice givin to me from a couple thousand current airline pilots that WERE getting better retirements than we ever will.

Any airline pilot who was relying on their airline pension had no reason to think it would not be there upon retirement. There was no historical precedent for an airline pilot to lose their entire pension. If you aren't relying on some sort of match from your employer then realize you won't have enough to retire. This is not so suggest relying on a pension but rather greater contributions to your 401K or a B-fund. Also a 401K and a B-fund cannot be taken from you in the event of a bankruptcy.
This was one of the major issues during the ALPA campaign. For some reason many of our pilots do not understand retirement or simply do not care.

 

[Flyby1206]

I have no problem calling anyone a POS to their face so don't worry about that.

Next time you are down in the school house ask them about the failure/retest rate. Re-read the post. 10%!!! not everyone in every class is failing. Some classes have no issues at all. Some of the pilots being hired are simply not qualified. This is not an attack on anyone specifically but it is a reflection of the candidates applying.

So are you saying that the stellar Airbus Company training you received way back in the day was top notch A+? From what I have heard, it was a joke and people were just tossed the books and learned the important stuff once they were online. Since then the training department has become more structured. Along with this comes defined pass/fail standards as opposed to the wink/nudge of the good ole days when the company first started.

10% re-train is not an astronomical number in my opinion, but what would be 'acceptable' to you? It is pretty sad that you badmouth the newhires for the failure of ALPA when in fact most of us couldnt even vote.

 

[Lake Alice]

Wow, I'm not exactly sure how you derive ALPA as the source of training failures at Jetblue from my post. Not having a CBA is directly relatable to the failure of our retirement package. We are above the training failure benchmark for the industry. This is a fact. And yes our training was horrible back in the day.

 

[n757st]

Wow, I'm not exactly sure how you derive ALPA as the source of training failures at Jetblue from my post. Not having a CBA is directly relatable to the failure of our retirement package. We are above the training failure benchmark for the industry. This is a fact. And yes our training was horrible back in the day.

Almost all the training failures have been very high time furloughed guys and guys with low time in glass/high automation. Most have been older. Believe it or not very very very few regional/ fractional guys are unsuccessful at our program. Just fyi. I think we can all agree the training at jetBlue is VERY fair.

 

[pilot22]

The failure rate or requirement for additional training is above 10% and the school house admits it's a reflection of the quality of our new hires. QUOTE]

Well food for thought, perhaps it's the training department and not the pilot.
Most flight training departments struggle with standardization. I know for a fact there were changes in the E190 training department

 

[Otto77]

Most of the issues I noticed in training had more to do with instructors that have never flown the line or the aircraft before teaching at JB. All the guys in my class were highly qualified....each could have easily been hired at the legacies if they were currently hiring.

 

[sbav8r]

Deleted...

 

[Whiskerbizkit]

There is a little truth to both sides. When we started hiring instructors, a lot have never flown the bus and also did not have a lot of flying experence, the FAA came down hard on JB for that because they were teaching wrong. On the pilot hiring side, yes we did hire guys that did not have a lot of flying experence. I just flew with one of our senior line CA that does interviews and he told me the pissing match he had with HR,CP with their final eval after the interviews with the people they wanted and he wanted...all the ones they wanted did not have much experence and they wanted to give them a "try". He said there was a lot of re-training goin on.