UALjan15
Uniform Swapper
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2002
- Posts
- 257
You're not the first to notice the bottleneck of guys that would have retired in the next 10 years (now +5). When the merger was first announced, I knew the integration would get ugly, but I took some comfort knowing that at least I could outlast most of the guys on the east list. I still think there could be good times ahead in perhaps 15 years when most of the cancer has been cut out. Still, there is a ton of risk hitching up to this wagon, and you may not want to get real comfortable or stop updating your logbook--you know what I mean? Here are some of the things that will be troublesome until most of the easties are off playing shuffleboard:
- Union decert drive--this is a very devisive ploy that I'm afraid will poison the waters for years to come. Even if it fails, it's going to be hard to get to a good place from here.
- Poor contract for years to come--we had a window of a few months last year to get a decent joint contract together, but someone didn't show up at the table. Now we're into a downturn with permanently high oil prices going forward. If we have USAPA running negotiations, we'll be lucky to even keep the crappy contract we have now.
- Consolidation--Notice how none of the merger buzz this year includes US Airways. We are apparently radioactive. If we do end up with 2 megacarriers, then AA and SWA doing their thing, it sure looks like we're on the outside looking in. It would be one thing if we had a solid route map with no weaknesses and great hubs with lots of O&E traffic--but no...we're weak internationally (no asia yet), weak in NY and DC, non-existent in the midwest, and spoke-only service to all of CA/OR/WA.
- Performance--The airline struggles to pull up the rear of all of the DOT performance stats, and lip service is paid to improvement, but 80% of the employees don't really care. I don't envy management's job of trying to motivate the battle-weary east operation, but so far they don't seem up to the task.
- Scope--I've lost track of how many small jet providers we have flying our paint around. Much of in E170s and CRJ900s, too. The east handed the scope over during the last 2 BKs. On the west side we've got CRJ900s galore as well. At least we are flying the E190 (but not at anything remotely resembling mainline wages).
