SunCountry

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• Petters allegedly has $10M gambling losses

• Friday: Sun Country warns of shutdown

• Project: The Tom Petters fraud case

Sun Country Airlines, battling to survive a cash squeeze, filed for bankruptcy protection Monday in a move that separated itself from its majority stockholder, Tom Petters, whose other businesses have been taken over by a court appointee as part of a massive fraud case.
"We're not in bankruptcy because of our business model being broken," Stan Gadek, Sun Country's CEO, said in an interview. "We are in bankruptcy because of the recent events at Petters Group Worldwide."

Airline leaders say they expect to survive a cash crisis but warned of layoffs or a shutdown as early as Dec. 1 to comply with a 60-day notification law.


this is a Oct 6th article

10/6/2008,over a year ago

 

[General Lee]

General, What are you talking about? I said nothing about 5 legs a day and you just pull it out of thin air. When will you give it up and realize that Hose is right, we do our own feed. You don't. Enjoy your RJ's.

RF

Do you mean you "fly like a regional?" Sure, you aren't paid like one, but you sure fly like one. One 3 day trip to Europe can give me 22 hours, whereas you have to "earn" it.(maybe 3 legs into ELP out of 14---that would be horrible) Go enjoy that. You guys love to try to force people to believe your way is best, without the help of arbitrators of course, who might disagree with a lot of what you say. You won't do it, because you are scared. Now, go sip some water from the hotel bathroom faucet in MAF and then proceed to see what happens. What you ask? It all DEPENDS.


Bye Bye--General Lee

 

[General Lee]

General,

We did not say "take it or leave it". We said "comeback tomorrow and lets work a compromise".

They did not show. So in essence, they said "take it or leave it"

Oh come on, I just don't think that is how it went. Your SWAPA guys sound soooooo niiiiiiiice...... riiiight. Maybe they said "hey fine gentlemen, let's all meet for tea in the Orange Room and we will discuss the finer parts of a possible agreement...?" Whatever. You are GULPING the Koolaid.


Bye Bye---General Lee

 

[General Lee]

And about LBB, MAF, AMA and the less desirable overnites...

The reason we have them is that we do not outsource domestic flying. Its even in our contract now.

The reason DAL does not have them is that about 20 yrs ago a bunch of senior guys took payraises in exchange for giving away flying to "smaller cities" in "commuter planes". Enter the "regional jet" and now DAL, AA, CAL, UAL, USAIR, and now F9 are having much of their flying transferred to smaller jets flown by "C" scale pilots on another seniority list. DAL let the "cat out of the bag". They could have kept the flying for their own pilots, but then they might have had to go to LBB in a commuter plane. The existence of companies like RAH who create alter ego airlines to whipsaw against one another, and buy out "major" airlines only to sell them off piece by piece, transfer the flying to cheap labor, and leave the original employees jobless (Midwest, F9?) can be laid squarely at the feet of these pilots and their short sightedness. That is quite a legacy they have left. And now you, me, and everyone else with more than a few years to go in this industry will pay for it. But, hey, a least they didnt have to go to Lubbock.

You are right on a lot of that, I remember hearing about our 737-200s flying to MAF and LBB well before I got there. That is too bad, but at the time we also didn't go to half the INTL destinations we do now. We have expanded elsewhere (we now fly Worldwide thanks to the NWA merger), but at the same time we have lost marketshare to a lot of LCCs like yourself to places I guess we don't deem that important. It is great you do think MAF and LBB are important (you are pretty much the sole mainline sized plane operator at those places). I just don't want to go there myself. I prefer Europe. Would it be nice to recapture some of the flying we lost? You bet. Will we try to stop that erosion from happening AGAIN? I hope so. We are parking quite a few of those nasty 50 seaters, 100 last year and another 100 in the next 2-3. A good start I say. Also, we are bringing good ole DC9s to ATL to recapture some of the flying we lost to RJs that have been losing a lot against Airtran 717s. At least someone up high has realized a mistake and is willing to put some larger metal out there. But, if we don't go back to LBB or MAF on the mainline, I won't be too sad.


Bye Bye--General Lee

 

[General Lee]

Its my fault. I took that General guys bait. I apologize profusely.

Took the bait? You decided to try to "DE-BATE" me. So far you are doing ok. Not everyone can be a MASTER DEBATER like myself....


Bye Bye--General Lee

 

[General Lee]

well since APC is stating the 12 year Capt is topped out at $127 an hour I guess they will have an interesting argument trying to justify a jump to SWA Capt pay. Career expectations, pay, QOL...the fact that the company filed for CH 11 in October should be a good one.

You sound pretty sure of yourself. I am sure an arbitrator would agree with you----a straight staple----you betcha. Try it then with a group of 3 neutrals and see what happens.


Bye Bye--General Lee

 

[General Lee]

So if Delta decided to buy Sun Country, would you be okay with some SC pilots coming in senior to you, General?

For everyone else, I know I shouldn't feed the troll, but I really am curious about his answer.

I could easily hold Captain on some of the planes we fly, so I doubt it would get that far. I have a feeling no arbitrator would allow a straight staple. They would see some reason to speckle them around the lower half of the seniority list. They actually fly planes larger than yours, and they would be contributing to your bottomline(Via an ETOPS certificate---am I right here? You betcha!). You just can't staple them to the bottom, you can't, unless you are really cocky.


Bye Bye---General Lee

 

[bravodude]

You sound pretty sure of yourself. I am sure an arbitrator would agree with you----a straight staple----you betcha. Try it then with a group of 3 neutrals and see what happens.


Bye Bye--General Lee

Well lets see what about AA and TWA or AA and Reno Air. I guess you think the same of the AA pilots union that you do of SWAPA.

 

[General Lee]

Well lets see what about AA and TWA or AA and Reno Air. I guess you think the same of the AA pilots union that you do of SWAPA.

Was TWA a pure staple? Nope. There are actual TWA (now AA) Captains in STL flying 757s in the left seat that are junior to AA guys in DFW, but are still Captains according to the agreement they had. Would SWAPA do the same? Doubt it. How did the Reno Air pilots do overall? I think most are still flying now. And, of course, thanks to the Bond Agreement you can't really just staple one group to the other----and no arbitrator would do that now. Can you understand why SWA said "NO ARBITRATION" when they tried to negotiate with F9? Everyone else can---they are scared to. Give them some respect and give them something fair, and it will all turn out fine, and they may not hate you when you fly with them. (Redflyer doesn't care anyway...)


Bye Bye---General Lee

 

[RedDogC130]

As for the article....yeah I did not notice the 2008...thanks for pointing that out. Maybe they are in a better place $$ wise than I thought....