More and more domestic routes will collapse to the regional levels and regional airline equipment will get larger and cheaper -- and so will regional labor.
Nothing can stop management now...except one single unifying idea: National Seniority List.
Management, union, government loathes this idea about as much as the senior pilots who perch atop everyone’s list.
Someone make it happen: The date you received an ATP with a jet type rating on it for starters? Add a few fences here and there to make the old goats happy.
National Seniority list, fine. The ATP idea, no way.... in fact thats a terrible idea. Some sort of weighted ratio would be the only way to do a single seniority list.
Regardless, that's not even an issue now.... how do we reverse the scope trend?
Position: Trying to remember "Thrust Normal", "Checks", and something else besides "How are the rides today?"
Posts: 117
Quote:
Originally Posted by acl65pilot
Most just do not want to see it go farther. Many of the CA's I fly with do not want to use the negotiation capital to reverse the trend.
And herin lies the problem. While speaking in generalizations there are a lot of Captains at the legacy carriers that do not see the need to fight this battle. They are in their exit years, trying to get as much money back as they can to regain losses in retirements and pay. By the time that this issue is addressed in a serious tone by both ALPA MEC's and ALPA National most of these Captain's we now fly with will be taking their perscriptions of DetroilLA and arguing over tee times with there buddies. We have all heard it on this board, Pay decreases close to 50% and loss of Pensions. ALPA and its decision making capability is heavily weighted towards the top end of "their senoirity list". These top enders pay the most towards dues amounts and ALPA courts their policies towards these people. One only has to look at their movement on the Age 65 Rule to see that.
A lot of the same widebody Captains that you talk about went through UPT, Squadron training, and Company Indoc and/or Initial with our MEC representatives at each respective airline. They have the ear of these people and will continue to have a disproportionate amount of influence on the direction our Union's go as long these pilots are on property.
I do not want to sound like too much of a misanthrope but look at something that is very disturbing. Did we realize that an MD-88 Captain at Delta is making approximately $6.00/ hour than a USAir DC-9 Captain made back close to twenty years ago! Only $6.00 more!!!!!!! YGTBSM.
Yet we at Delta are exstatic that we are getting pay raises and hoping that we don't go through another bout of furloughs starting in 2010.
ALPA National is disfunctional. I am a firm believer that there is a conflict of interest when I pay dues to Union that supposedly has my best interests in hand while at the same time attempting to "Raise the Bar" or trying to stop the "Race to the Bottom" for carriers that are subcontracted by my company to do flying that I used to do.
There has to be complete transparency between the MEC's of OUR UNION and its members when it comes to what our goals for the future are for this profesion. Until that happens, all this talk about National senoirity lists, restricting scope, "Taking it Back" (Anyone ever figure out what "It" is?), and all the other mantras or rally cries I have heard in the past are completely futile.
As a whole, the widebody Captains of today could care less about scope and how much the careers of those behind them get degraded by subcontractor companies like all of the DCI carriers. They will be long gone when the difference between Mainline and regional is completely dissolved.
I wish it were different and hope for the day that it is but until then I remain very pessimistic about this career and the direction we are going. And before anyone starts, I have volunteered in the past and have given up countless hours of family time to try to make a difference helping the Union to no avail. So don't go there.
Amen! Even though I'm a former student of what some might call a "pilot factory" (UND) and a current lowly RJ pilot, the blinders came off pretty quickly for me. What I once thought would be a quick, neat stepping stone to the promised land is quickly becoming more of a large, flat, dank, moss-covered, dead-end boulder. I just started my 4th year in the right seat and I have no illusions about the fact that I am going to be stuck in RJ purgatory for many years to come largely because the scope genie got out and mainline jobs have been suffering at expense of growth at the regionals.
My company (ExpressJet) is restricted to 50-seaters and has one of the "better" contracts in the regional game and all I've seen is this company get bent over by CAL and whipsawed by other regionals eager to fly larger airplanes for less money. It makes me sick that year after year we out-perform nearly every other small-lift carrier out there only to be brow-beaten and scolded by Momma CAL to lower our costs. I just hope and pray every day that the CAL bubbas hold the line on scope.
If I had it my way, I wouldn't be flying my shiny, sleek RJ on 3.5 hour near trans-cons, at least not working for a "second-tier" operator. If mainline wants these things flown, they should be flown by mainline pilots. If that means I have to bounce around Texas or the Northeast in a 19-30 seat turbo-prop for a few years, fine. As long as it means there are more mainline jobs waiting out there. I would be fine making what I make now doing what I do now if I knew that the last 4 years (and probably the next 5) were not just a waste if that illusive career or mainline job materializes. But this is the world I was born into. The ball was set in motion long before most of us at the regional level ever showed up at the game. And in the same way that we can't go back and foresee the peril of addiction to fossil fuels, we will have a hard time stuffing the scope genie back into his bottle. It's not the lost opportunities of the past that are important, but rather what we do going forward that makes the difference. And from where I sit, the first step is to stop the backward movement on scope.
PS
The only reason I posted this is because I am happy to see this topic getting kicked around by the "big boys". I get looked at like I'm the crazy one whenever I object to someone here (RJ land) saying that we need to be flying bigger airplanes.
UND, ERAU, Perdue, Indiana State, and Auburn are NOT pilot factories but rather fully accredited and respected universities. Don't sell yourself short.
UND and ERAU are not the same as ALL ATP or Frank's Flying Service.
Position: Douglas Flight Test & Work Around Engineering Field Representative
Posts: 2,449
SelCall:
Good post.
However, it is likely that recapturing compass could result in a BENEFIT to the pay of the Captains. Unions increase their bargaining power by the number of pilots and percentage of flying they represent.
Delta leaves money at the gate every time a 90 seat jet leaves the gate with less than 90 people on board. Certainly those 16 seats would have some revenue that would pay a mainline crew.
... and we need to add $1 an hour for the 737's Captains who take the "I've got mine, screw everyone else..." approach to scope. They too, need to see the BENEFIT to unity.
Position: Douglas Flight Test & Work Around Engineering Field Representative
Posts: 2,449
Quote:
Originally Posted by Deez340
UND, ERAU, Perdue, Indiana State, and Auburn are NOT pilot factories but rather fully accredited and respected universities. Don't sell yourself short.
UND and ERAU are not the same as ALL ATP or Frank's Flying Service.
Deez, how about a pilot is a pilot?
While your point has some validity, one reason our union is so divided is because military was better than civilian, no the universities are better, no, screw Air Force, I like Cargo guys sorts of bigotry.
Frankly, management sees a pilot as a pilot and does not hesitate to outsource us at the first opportunity.
We are pilots. We need to stop finding ways to separate our ranks and join together.
UND, ERAU, Perdue, Indiana State, and Auburn are NOT pilot factories but rather fully accredited and respected universities. Don't sell yourself short.
UND and ERAU are not the same as ALL ATP or Frank's Flying Service.
Actually they are exactly the same!!! The only difference if any lies within the individual pilot. Good and bad pilots come from all resources.
We will see what happens with the latest issue. It appears that DALPA knew nothing about the increase in MGTOW for these 175's. Well at least the LEC reps did not.
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