The future of "NEWCO"

[Flyinisforbirds]

Last I heard Continental is trying to modify the pension legislation to make it more difficult to terminate a pension. Could be bad if it forces you to liquidate, but good if it forces a company to negotiate on a fair playing field instead of just being able to default on a whim.

An article yesterday gives an update on this
http://www.amfa33.org/strike/battle_pensions905.htm

 

[Flyinisforbirds]

"In its Friday presentation to creditors, Northwest said, it is considering opening a subsidiary which would operate smaller aircraft with 70 to 100 seats. That could be an attempt to get around its contract with pilots, which requires all flights of 70 or more seats to be flown by mainline captains rather than lower-paid regional pilots.

Air Line Pilots Association spokesman Will Holman said the union believes flying by a subsidiary would also fall under its contract.

The pilots union would consider a lower pay scale for flying those smaller jets, but would oppose shifting those flights away from Northwest pilots, said Northwest ALPA head Mark McClain on Thursday."

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/050930/northwest_creditors.html?.v=6

 

[Winged Sig 599]

Allow me....

To save the NWA folks some time and suggest a few names for this so called "NEWCO". Here are a few:

1.) HOJET
2.) NOJET
3.) SCABJET

Any other suggestions??

SIG

 

[Lear70]

Correct me if I’m wrong, A vote was cast by M/L pilots long ago to keep the commuter/regional guy out of their ranks, and off their seniority list. Even ALPA supported the separation. This generated the “A” / “B” scale flying groups. This is something that I heard from an old crusty dog. Any truth to it?

Fo Shizzle, Tank Daddy, someone told you correctly, but it wasn't done that acrimoniously.

More accurately, NWA pilots many decades ago decided that the "Regionals" were a bunch of turboprop aircraft that they wouldn't WANT to fly, so they signed for a LOWER hourly wage and other items (gave up some concessions) in order to get SCOPE.

This effectively locked any regional red-tail guy or gal from ever getting directly to Northwest but, at the time, it was thought these were purely 3-5 year transitional jobs anyway, so no one was really concerned about it. (That's why you'll repeatedly hear a Northwest guy say "We paid for scope YEARS ago, we got it and should have the right to keep it".)

Just another case as you were saying in another thread a while back that management was thinking DECADES ahead in terms of strategy. Who KNEW that RJ's would be the future of half the ASM's in the industry? Maybe they just got lucky, but I'm willing to lay bets that, even then, management was drooling over the bigger and better aircraft in design phases at the time.

 

[TinGoose1]

The funny thing is that Duane Woerth still thinks were at a cross roads in our industry. Makes you wonder just how far ahead management really is. When our union president is 5 years behind the industry, it makes me want to puke. ALPA national is just as much at fault as management for the shift in our flying. Fortunately for us he's going to change our rest requirements, or was that pension reform, or illiminating the whipsaw? I'm sorry, I get confused sometimes about what he's doing.

 

[Halo_RJdriver]

Don't forget that NWA ordered the B787 in April of 2004, but kept it a secret until after we agreed to concessions in Dec 2005...NW will be the N. America launch customer. For all we know, they already have 100 EMB-190's on order. These guys are sneaky bastards.

SkyPest pulled the same bow sheott on us 2 years ago and they are trying like hell to do the same thing right now.