Originally Posted by
georgetg
ACL, In a rare moment of lucidity you concisely captured the essence of what's broken for pilots in this equation. ;-)
Successful company = shareholders gains = employee gains
Any imbalance in this equation is unsustainable and management knows it...
$1B sustained profit in tough economic times is off-the-chart successful for an airline.
But now Ed is on record at trying to bring cost in line with 2010 because CASM is up, and he wants pay to shoulder more than half of the increase in cost...
The displacements from the top tier equipment just might help accomplish that task by bumping a whole bunch of pilots to lower paying categories. remember it's status quo as you enter negotiations. Setting the bar lower now is a brilliant strategy.
Cheers
George
P-S-P
People Service Profits.
The displacements do not necessarily bother me. That is part of the business. What does get me is the reasons that we are overstaffed on our WB jets. Yes, Europe is down, but one must as if the cities we have opted not to serve are either down, or is it more profitable for the AF/KL/AZ/DAL JV to serve them though AMR or CDG? IMO the devil is in the details.
-Asia is doing very well. Opportunities exist, yet we see limited growth
-We are in a "new" three year measurement period with the North Atlantic JV therefore there is no corrective mechanism until after the measurement period is over. (Starting years two on April 1)
- Our block hrs will be up significantly in 2014 about the same time that the seat mods are done in our WB jets and the enforcement period comes in to play on the JV.
Coincidence? I will let you decide.
As an aside, I will agree that the JV production balance is a good deal for the pilots, but there are a few things that should have been added prior to implementation. As a result we need to play catchup in a few key areas. Of course many will argue that hindsight is always 20/20.
