Jet Blue

[MajorAv8r]

As there is a fair amount of restructuring among the major carriers to reach the labor costs of the new starts ups, I am curious to Jet Blue's "contract." I realize there isn't one, but don't know a better term, nor do I know someone who works there.

I know the pay. But, would someone please fill me in on your work rules. Are your duty limits just the FAR limits? Do you have rules that keep them from rerouting you into off days? Do you feel a line holder remains productive, or lots of sits? Sick time? Vacation time?

Jet Blue is used as the comparison that the major carriers are negotiating "down to", I am just curious how bad it really is. Most seem happy there.

Thank you.

 

[IB6 UB9]

This should be good. If you are serious send me a PM.

 

[Skank]

As there is a fair amount of restructuring among the major carriers to reach the labor costs of the new starts ups, I am curious to Jet Blue's "contract." I realize there isn't one, but don't know a better term, nor do I know someone who works there.

I know the pay. But, would someone please fill me in on your work rules. Are your duty limits just the FAR limits? Do you have rules that keep them from rerouting you into off days? Do you feel a line holder remains productive, or lots of sits? Sick time? Vacation time?

Jet Blue is used as the comparison that the major carriers are negotiating "down to", I am just curious how bad it really is. Most seem happy there.

Thank you.

Your purported questions reveal that you need to do a little research before you post such loaded queries. Most of the issues you mention have been discussed here ad naseum. As far as "negotiating down" to our contract, United seems to have significantly overshot the target. You might also consider that with bankruptcy, it's not negotiating that's happening. The copy-cat style managers that ran United into bankruptcy are now determined to have a labor cost advantage over us and everyone else so that they can continue to try to run us out of their markets. It appears that Northwest will now attempt to follow the same stragtegy. Before the United bankruptcy we had gotten one large raise and another seemed imminent. Now the whole industry can forget about raises for a longtime. American, on the other hand seems to be willing to try to run their Airline without destroying their labor. If you still feel like we can blame the ills of the whole industry on one airline with 80+ airplanes, while dismissing the actions of the largest few airlines, then I say good luck to you in whatever you do, because you're going to need it.

 

[GVFlyer]

As there is a fair amount of restructuring among the major carriers to reach the labor costs of the new starts ups, I am curious to Jet Blue's "contract." I realize there isn't one, but don't know a better term, nor do I know someone who works there.

I know the pay. But, would someone please fill me in on your work rules. Are your duty limits just the FAR limits? Do you have rules that keep them from rerouting you into off days? Do you feel a line holder remains productive, or lots of sits? Sick time? Vacation time?

Jet Blue is used as the comparison that the major carriers are negotiating "down to", I am just curious how bad it really is. Most seem happy there.

Thank you.

The JB'ers don't seem to be too forthcoming with the answers to questions such as yours and I'm certainly not qualified to respond. But, I've noticed that some pilots are very happy there, others are not. In the last six months, Gulfstream interviewed two JetBlue pilots looking for a position there. They said that some of their colleagues were going to FedEx, UPS, and Southwest, while others are returning to the airlines that furloughed them.

I like JetBlue, after observing that Neeleman abandoned the Herb Kelleher model by buying route specific aircraft, creating mini-hubs and spending $125 million in capitalization, I started shorting their stock and that strategy has been very profitable for me.

GV

 

[Rez O. Lewshun]

Your purported questions reveal that you need to do a little research before you post such loaded queries. Most of the issues you mention have been discussed here ad naseum. As far as "negotiating down" to our contract, United seems to have significantly overshot the target. You might also consider that with bankruptcy, it's not negotiating that's happening. The copy-cat style managers that ran United into bankruptcy are now determined to have a labor cost advantage over us and everyone else so that they can continue to try to run us out of their markets. It appears that Northwest will now attempt to follow the same stragtegy. Before the United bankruptcy we had gotten one large raise and another seemed imminent. Now the whole industry can forget about raises for a longtime. American, on the other hand seems to be willing to try to run their Airline without destroying their labor. If you still feel like we can blame the ills of the whole industry on one airline with 80+ airplanes, while dismissing the actions of the largest few airlines, then I say good luck to you in whatever you do, because you're going to need it.

Doesn't your non-airmanship analysis also apply when times are good? Wasn't the DAL industry leading contract leveraged off the UAL industry leading contract?

American not trying to destroy labor? The Evil Empire? Are you kidding. Anti Labor is ingrained in AMR Corp Culture. American is just in a reasonable position right now... thier pain will come....

Look- the US Airline business model is broke. Right now, there is no leadership from the CEO's. (what about the ATA? [which JB is a member of]Shouldn't they be exercising some leadership.... After all they do represent the Airlines)

All the CEO's care about is carving out their non performance compensation packages and raping labor. That is thier [short term] solution to the problem. There is no long term solution.

What is the real solution? I'm not that smart. I'm trained to fly airplanes. I could speculate the European and Asian Airlines are doing just fine. Why is that?

Your comment, coming from a JB pilot, that UAL/DAL/NWA BK is not negotiating with thier pilots, is noted. Generally, it goes like this...

Company: We need concessions or we'll furlough big time.
Pilot Representation: Send us your books. We'll analyze and get back to you.
Company: We need cuts now.
PR: We have a process, its democratic. You'll have to wait.
(analysis complete)
PR: Ok, our pilot reps have voted to engage (negotiate) in concessionary bargaining.


Can you imagine what the contract massacre would be at UAL/DAL/NWA if management had unilateral and unchecked reign to make pay and work rule cuts?

The LCC carriers maybe next as the Legacy carriers get incredibly lean.

How do the JB pilots work with managment on negotiating (concessionary or leading)???

 

[klhoard]

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JB pilots will never, ever be subject to a concessionary deal. Their individual 5-year contracts are guaranteed with the full force and benefit of the Government of the United Nations. . . .
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Never, ever, question that. . .
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The power of ONE . . .
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[Blue Dude]

As there is a fair amount of restructuring among the major carriers to reach the labor costs of the new starts ups, I am curious to Jet Blue's "contract." I realize there isn't one, but don't know a better term, nor do I know someone who works there.

I know the pay. But, would someone please fill me in on your work rules. Are your duty limits just the FAR limits? Do you have rules that keep them from rerouting you into off days? Do you feel a line holder remains productive, or lots of sits? Sick time? Vacation time?

Jet Blue is used as the comparison that the major carriers are negotiating "down to", I am just curious how bad it really is. Most seem happy there.

Thank you.

First of all, if you want information, you can ask, but you sound pretty condescending. "Just how bad is it for you poor schmucks anyway" is one message that comes across.

Second, there is a contract, in the classic sense of the word: a legal agreement between two parties. However, one of those parties is not a union, so it's not a collective bargaining agreement. That seems to get some people on this board a little hung up, but it's a contract, not a "contract".

Third, there are work rules, a pretty extensive set, but I'm not going to cut and paste a 40 page document in here. The work rules are incorporated into the contract by reference. That would seem very naive to pilots from most other airlines, but it works for the same reason we don't have (or need) a 500 page contract: there is a level of trust between management and the pilots. That level of trust is also what keeps management from changing rules at will - it would be a betrayal. And a betrayal would make a collective bargaining agreement both necessary and inevitable.

You can learn all the details of JetBlue's contract and work rules to your heart's content. But the contract is completely unsuitable for a unionized airline. There simply aren't enough layers of protection in either direction. There's no history of bad blood and bad faith so the whole elaborate specificity isn't there. Besides, for many quality of life issues, the pilots run the show, particularly in scheduling. A non-management pilot team builds the pairings and shapes the monthly bid, so you don't see a whole lot of sitting around or deadheads. So we count on our own pilots to keep from screwing us over, rather rely on slippery contract language to do it. It would never work in another setting. Too much contract gamesmanship going on. But it works for us, which is why most pilots are reasonably happy with the arrangement.

 

[Midnight Mike]

The JB'ers don't seem to be too forthcoming with the answers to questions such as yours and I'm certainly not qualified to respond. But, I've noticed that some pilots are very happy there, others are not. In the last six months, Gulfstream interviewed two JetBlue pilots looking for a position there. They said that some of their colleagues were going to FedEx, UPS, and Southwest, while others are returning to the airlines that furloughed them
GV

Happy people & unhappy people in the same company, I think that would apply to every company in the world...

 

[psysix]

Do they have a west coast base?

 

[FlyBoeingJets]

Third, there are work rules, a pretty extensive set, but I'm not going to cut and paste a 40 page document in here. The work rules are incorporated into the contract by reference.

...You can learn all the details of JetBlue's contract and work rules to your heart's content. But the contract is completely unsuitable for a unionized airline.

We could, but no one posts the contract. So we really can't learn about it.




MajorAV8tor,

We've asked the Blue folks for this info before and we can't get the source document. It has nothing to do with a perceived "condescending attitude" on your part.

Regards.

 

[Blue Dude]

The "source document" is 10 or 15 pages of contract, not much of which is relevant here. I've got a copy around here somewhere, but I almost never refer to it. The pay rates are the important part, and they're in the public domain. What exactly is it you want to know?

 

[A350]

If you want to see the contract....apply. Maybe you get to see it, maybe you don't.

Ask specific questions, and you will get specific answers.

A350

 

[FlyBoeingJets]

If you want to see the contract....apply. Maybe you get to see it, maybe you don't.

Ask specific questions, and you will get specific answers.

A350

From the thread starter:

I know the pay. But, would someone please fill me in on your work rules. Are your duty limits just the FAR limits? Do you have rules that keep them from rerouting you into off days? Do you feel a line holder remains productive, or lots of sits? Sick time? Vacation time?


Thank you.

Are there lots of sits? Translation: How do the bid packs look? Min pay per day?

Sick time? Translation: Are there any policies about sick time?

Vacation time? Translation: Any info on vacation time?

Duty limits? Translation: Does your scheduling shop have any limits? When do they exceed self imposed limits?

Does a line holder remain productive? Translation: Does a line holder remain productive?

 

[Blue Dude]

Are there lots of sits? Translation: How do the bid packs look? Min pay per day?

Thought I covered this. The pairings are built by a team of pilots, the details of which vary all the time. Sometimes there are sits, comes with the territory, but they are kept to a minimum. I haven't seen many. If there is one, it's usually for an hour or two, just long enough to have a meal and get started on the next leg.

Sick time? Translation: Are there any policies about sick time?

Sick time, vacation and paid time off all come from the same pot, but they are paid slightly differently. Sick time preserves premium pay, to ensure that there's no financial penalty for calling off sick. Vacation is bid in 7 day blocks in November for the following year, and pays 35 hrs for the week. Two weeks of vacation will get you pretty much the whole month off. Paid time off is bid on an ad hoc basis. The rules there are pretty complex, and I'm not going into the whole thing, but suffice it to say that you can drop trips for pay, manning permitting.

Vacation time? Translation: Any info on vacation time?

See above.

Duty limits? Translation: Does your scheduling shop have any limits? When do they exceed self imposed limits?

Yes. FAR limits apply, but in practice further restrictions apply. Most of them come about when pairings are built, but things get a little weird when irregular ops occur. There are also quite a few unwritten guidelines that are in place, but aren't binding. I told you this wouldn't fly in a union shop. I anything, this is the weakest part of the work rules. A rewrite is in progress and we ought to learn more later this month.

Does a line holder remain productive? Translation: Does a line holder remain productive?

On average last month, line holders flew 5.5 to 6 hrs a day, were paid about 84 hrs of credit, and had 16 days off. There is some variation, namely that junior pilots got less flying and fewer days off, but even they got about 82 hrs of pay and 14 days off. So you tell me: is that productive or not?

 

[FlyBoeingJets]

Thanks Blue Dude. A pleasant response to my surly posting. I shouldn't be on flightinfo after I argue with the wife.

Thanks again.

 

[wndshr]

i don't know...my opinion...the litmus (sp?) test to determine if it is a fair "contract" at jetblue is....

is there a union so far? with over 1000 pilots and no union, yet, seems like an ok place to be considering the rest of the industry. of course i would expect to see many disgruntled IF we were enjoying record profits industry-wide!

 

[klhoard]

..><snip>. . of course i would expect to see many disgruntled IF we were enjoying record profits industry-wide!

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You've hit the nail right on the head, Sir!!!
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[wndshr]

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You've hit the nail right on the head, Sir!!!
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now 32000 hours!!! LOL!

 

[GVFlyer]

Happy people & unhappy people in the same company, I think that would apply to every company in the world...

Mike, if you think about it for a minute, I bet you can come up with several companies where everybody is unhappy.

GV

 

[MajorAv8r]

Thank you Blue Dude for the last post with answers.

I realize that Jet Blue takes a lot of heat for perceptually being the "bottom of the heap" and bringing everyone down. I know that it is mismanagement that has done this, not any specific pilot group. Duh. But your airline is listed by others in backruptcy as the target point for contract reductions, like it or not, it is a fact.

And if it isn't moving down, then why say we are going cut $325M or $500M by shooting for another carriers contract. A cut in the contract means loss of QOL, pay. So it is a move down. I don't think poorly of your group, you all are doing what the rest of us try to do, put food on the table, bottom line.

I guess a better question is where will the others have to go to be "cost competitive" in relation to issues, other than pay? I thought that the work rules at a so called major would not be worse than a regional, just curious to see if that holds true.