Pinnacle is Going Bye Bye!

[ohplease!]

officially posted in the pairings for march of 08 in the bid packet......ATL to TLH.....13 minutes in the air with a 15 minute turn in ATL.......yeah thats realistic on a 76 seat jet with a company who has only had a 900 program in place for less than a year.....I would LOVE to see ASA pull this off out of the C concourse....management is incompetent everywhere, not just here...but in all fairness these block times and pairings were flat out not fair and unrealistic....this is bullcrap, this company does not deserve to be classified at a Mesa level....the pilot group is trying everyday to get a contract contrary to popular belief....things are going to get ugly on Nonconnah......just hope we arent forced to cut anyone.

Let me preface this by this:
I don't want to see any PCL (or other) pilot furloughed.

However, PCL couldn't cover its NW flying and chose to take on setting up an entirely new program/base/code share. Like I said somewhere else; an argument can be made that ANY airline mgmt is inept (with the exception of maybe Southwest and Virgin) but, PCL taking on this task was just plane (I know , I know) dumb.

Its not the pilots fault and there was nothing you could have done to stop it. BUT, it was ALWAYS a temporary situation for DL. Same as Freedumb.

I hope you guys swap some of your 200's out for the 900's you have and paint them gray and red. But, you shouldn't have been in ATL to start with.

 

[DTWFO]

When you get a chance, google the Ford sitdown strike. That's how a union should operate, "law" be damned.

Amen!!!! I'm so sick and tired of this "that would be an illegal work action". WHO CARES at this point!!! So they fine the union and put some of the heads in jail for a couple days. WHO CARES!! Get what we want and pay the fine....move on. It doesn't matter if it's legal or not. I'm so sick of these ALPA chest-thumpers. We're just supposed to follow your "negotiate" forever ad naseum to our own graves. BS! Close it down and then see how fast things change.

 

[PCL_128]

When you get a chance, google the Ford sitdown strike. That's how a union should operate, "law" be damned.

I think you need to do some of your own research. First, the famous Flint "sit-down" strike was a strike against GM, not Ford. Second, the strike itself was not illegal. UAW workers can wildcat strike whenever they want. The law doesn't restrict their rights to strike. What was illegal was the supposed "trespassing." Rather than the usual picketing, they simply "sat down" inside the plant and refused to leave. The judge's injunction was later found to be illegitimate anyway, since he was a major shareholder in GM at the time.

None of this is analogous to our situation at all. The fledgeling GM was really risking nothing during the Flint strike. The individual strikers risked getting thrown in jail for a short time, but the union couldn't be fined into oblivion as we can be. If we engage in illegal strikes, then the courts will fine ALPA into bankruptcy in short order. The union will cease to exist before your illegal strike is even over, and you'll be left with no protection.

 

[Stifler's Mom]

officially posted in the pairings for march of 08 in the bid packet......ATL to TLH.....13 minutes in the air with a 15 minute turn in ATL........

Is TLH in the Central Time Zone? How about 1 hour and 13 minutes of block time?

 

[SaturnPilot]

Amen!!!! I'm so sick and tired of this "that would be an illegal work action". WHO CARES at this point!!! So they fine the union and put some of the heads in jail for a couple days. WHO CARES!! Get what we want and pay the fine....move on. It doesn't matter if it's legal or not. I'm so sick of these ALPA chest-thumpers. We're just supposed to follow your "negotiate" forever ad naseum to our own graves. BS! Close it down and then see how fast things change.

I see your point and I wish it would be this way also, but I think if we asked our fellow pilots in union leadership to go to prison for us, we wouldn't have anybody volunteering for union leadership. Plus, I don't think the fine would be very small.

I do think, however, that if all pilot groups grew a pair and acted like NW, ASA, etc pilots did by running a safe operation, the scales would lean more in our favor. Either way something needs to change if we're to make this any bit of a career worth having again.

 

[Lear70]

Is TLH in the Central Time Zone? How about 1 hour and 13 minutes of block time?

Doesn't matter... the point is that it's a 15 minute turn in ATL. With ASA gate agents.

No offense, but the ground crews and gate agents there can't run an on-time operation to save their life.

EVERY TIME I get on an RJ in ATL, I can count on it being late. These days it's as a paying passenger, and I tell our dispatch to just plan an extra 30 minutes onto the arrival time.

Now add a company that ASA directly competes with (no incentive to hurry), plus a 15 minute turn, and there's no WAY they're going to make on-time. Just not realistic.

As far as ASA's go, I bet this one goes the way of Mesa; DAL will have to pay for the operation since Delta didn't meet the requirement to have the schedules "mutually agreeable". Won't help the downsizing of the ops on the pilot and f/a side, but PCL will still make money off of it for a while...

 

[spudskier]

Doesn't matter... the point is that it's a 15 minute turn in ATL. With ASA gate agents.

No offense, but the ground crews and gate agents there can't run an on-time operation to save their life.

Just to clarify, it's DELTA gate agents and DELTA ground handlers... DAL took control over that about 6 months ago in ATL.

 

[JoeMerchant]

Doesn't matter... the point is that it's a 15 minute turn in ATL. With ASA gate agents.

No offense, but the ground crews and gate agents there can't run an on-time operation to save their life.

EVERY TIME I get on an RJ in ATL, I can count on it being late. These days it's as a paying passenger, and I tell our dispatch to just plan an extra 30 minutes onto the arrival time.

Now add a company that ASA directly competes with (no incentive to hurry), plus a 15 minute turn, and there's no WAY they're going to make on-time. Just not realistic.

As far as ASA's go, I bet this one goes the way of Mesa; DAL will have to pay for the operation since Delta didn't meet the requirement to have the schedules "mutually agreeable". Won't help the downsizing of the ops on the pilot and f/a side, but PCL will still make money off of it for a while...

Delta handles the gate and the ramp in ATL for everyone....We all have the same disadvantage there...

 

[flyboyike]

I think you need to do some of your own research. First, the famous Flint "sit-down" strike was a strike against GM, not Ford. Second, the strike itself was not illegal. UAW workers can wildcat strike whenever they want. The law doesn't restrict their rights to strike. What was illegal was the supposed "trespassing." Rather than the usual picketing, they simply "sat down" inside the plant and refused to leave. The judge's injunction was later found to be illegitimate anyway, since he was a major shareholder in GM at the time.

None of this is analogous to our situation at all. The fledgeling GM was really risking nothing during the Flint strike. The individual strikers risked getting thrown in jail for a short time, but the union couldn't be fined into oblivion as we can be. If we engage in illegal strikes, then the courts will fine ALPA into bankruptcy in short order. The union will cease to exist before your illegal strike is even over, and you'll be left with no protection.

I think you missed my point. Those folks went on strike (legal or not) despite death threats, nightsticks and police dogs. IOW, they didn't care whose side the law was on.

As for "our situation", do you really think the guvmint will jail thousands of people at a time?

 

[PCL_128]

I think you missed my point. Those folks went on strike (legal or not) despite death threats, nightsticks and police dogs. IOW, they didn't care whose side the law was on.

Yes, and the history of organized labor contains many such examples, some of which are a lot more violent and deadly than the Flint strike. None of that translates to our situation, however.

As for "our situation", do you really think the guvmint will jail thousands of people at a time?

They don't have to. They'll simply fine ALPA $100 million and the union will cease to exist overnight. As soon as union protection disappear, the pilots will start crossing the lines in droves and your strike is over. Welcome to reality.