April 18, 2012

I can’t help but think the that pretty much the only people having a worse week than the CAL pilots are the Secret Service agents who are trying to explain to their wives how their Cartagena trip went and why they are home early.

This morning I tried to give you some detail to the current PBS bidding fiasco that we are dealing with. As is often the case when communications are rushed, I believe that I may have created more questions than answers with this morning’s blastmail. The hundreds of very angry emails I received today would certainly indicate as much. For those that sent me emails, please accept this as my reply. I take full responsibility for the fact that our communications came out after management’s soft-peddling CCS bulletin and that our message did not answer your questions adequately.

I want to say with all sincerity that I completely understand and respect the anger and frustration that you feel over this situation. It is bad enough that in our understaffed situation our schedules during the month are tenuous at best. To not even have a schedule to try and plan day care, doctor appointments, spouse’s schedules, etc, is completely unacceptable. Simply rerunning the bid and delaying your schedules can not be an acceptable outcome to this.

It seems to be a norm that issues of complexity and magnitude do not occur during normal business hours. I learned that there was a potential issue yesterday afternoon as I was entering a meeting at 1500 with Jeff Smisek to complete our BOD briefing. Following that meeting I went to ORD to catch a late flight to SNA in order to attend the LAX LC meeting this morning. While at the airport I learned, via a conference call at about 1830 with the Scheduling committee, that the problem was more extensive than originally thought and that the only solution was a complete re-run of the bid. This was due to the fact that management’s errors not only affected upwards of 200+ pilots directly, but would also potentially indirectly affect hundreds of other pilot’s schedules as well. I asked the committee to come up with a message for the pilot group explaining the issues and got on the flight to SNA. Upon arrival at the hotel in SNA at around 0100 I reviewed the blastmail, made some adjustments and approved its distribution. In the morning management beat us to the punch and put their CCS message out. We adjusted our message once more and sent it out this morning.

I have received literally hundreds of emails expressing legitimate anger and frustration over the rerun. I want to assure you, this was not a case of the union capitulating to management’s requests or the union carrying the company’s water. This is a case of the union trying to ensure that pilots’ schedules are completed and processed properly. The run that would have resulted had we not done the re-run would have resulted in hundreds of pilots having their scheduled mangled through the dispute resolution process and suffering from potential pay degradations. Hundreds more would have received schedules that bore no resemblance to their bid choices or preferences. This would not have been a seniority within feasibility issue, but rather “infeasible no matter what situation." In addition, our pilots have consistently communicated to the Union that we should insist that management rerun the bid as set forth in our contract in situations like this. In this catastrophic case in which no other choice was available (clearly nearly every pilot was affected in one way or another), we felt as though we needed to honor seniority and have management abide by the contract.

I want to again recognize that this situation highlights one of the very core issues we must fix in our JCBA. The work rules that generate our schedules must be corrected and the core PBS production issues we have faced all too often must be addressed. The pilot group will not continue to suffer the consequences of IT failures, programming errors, complacency or ineptitude.

I am working to see that recognition is given our pilots for this failure. But in the long run, we have to protect ourselves contractually and demand that the bid respects seniority.

As I implied above, this has been a busy week with lots on our union plate. In addition to dealing with this PBS bid issue I have called a special MEC meeting on Friday to discuss negotiations, the latest proposed initiatives from the UAL MEC and our PBS issues. Both topics will take center stage and I will communicate the MEC’s thoughts on these matters in my Friday brief.

Good evening,

CAL MEC Chairman