CVG767A

I went to the CVG roadshow yesterday; it was the best attended ALPA meeting I've attended since C96. Tim O at the center, flanked by the four members of the Negotiating committee, as well as the (I believe) legal counsel from ALPA national. Not really much information that hasn't been seen/ posted before, but a lot of misinformation dispelled. A lot of the background information that ACL has posted. A few notes in very random order (with my comments in parentheses):

-Cost of this contract is $420 million. This was vehemently challenged by several in the group, citing the Detroit rep's widely known assertion that this is a cost-neutral contract. Tim stated that the cost-neutral statement was mostly for Wall St., and that a cost neutral claim would have to include the added revenue from both the CRJ900s and the 717s. There would be no other way to get to that number.

-Airtran pilots with 717s? NO, says Tim O. He said we're getting the planes from Boeing; they don't have many pilots... He also said that we will get the same number of pilots with the 717s as we got with the MD90s.

-The time sensitivity of the deal is being driven by major maintenance on the CRJ200s. Once Delta puts the money into them, they'll be around for a while. They had a chart with the RJ counts, both with and without the TA.

-Re caving on the number of 76 seaters: This is seen as the only way to get rid of the 50 seaters ahead of schedule, given the contracts we have with various regional carriers. Large RJ outsourcing is a part of Smisek's proposal at UCAL, Parker's proposal to the AMR guys, and AMR's 1113 term sheet.

-As far as ALPA knows, no deals have yet been inked with any RJ manufacturers regarding a large RJ. (I can't imagine that we don't have agreements in principle, though.)

-We will not be seeing any survey results. First, we may be entering Section 6 negotiations. Second, we don't want to let management see our playbook, even after the game.

-35% of new hires from DCI? New hires have been nearly 50% of our most recent new hire classes. This item required no negotiating capital, and was thrown in there in the hopes of getting an improved hiring policy for our furloughees from regional carriers. It will also provide a means of mitigating the effects of the unemployment among regional pilots that our agreement will cause. (I'm a little fuzzy on this one still. They may need some follow-up questioning.)

-250 early outs are being targeted by the retirement program. (While they assured us that management's feet would be held to the fire if they try to shut off the program with too few retirees, I would prefer firm numbers in the TA.)

-ALV +15. This is primarily to allow greater reserve utilization in categories that have mostly long international trips. (...but will crew scheduling run with this for all categories? Of course they will.)

-Surprisingly (to me, anyway), was their contention that the new reserve rules will not translate to less pilots on reserve. Scrappy (negotiator/ former scheduling committee) explained how higher reserve flying will increase numbers of reserves required under the manning formula. (Greek to me.)

-During the Q&A, a lot of anger in the group that MD88/90 pay wasn't raised to equal A320 pay (despite an 8% pay increase to MD90 rates). Tim countered with a discussion about a line with seats vs. pay, and some aircraft sitting above or below that line (i.e. 747, 757). This one wasn't even on the negotiators' wishlist, which upset some of the crowd.

-The handout section regarding pay shows monthly pay at 87 hours. This item was noticed by the audience, and the BS flag was (rightly) raised. They assert that the average monthly credit is 87 hours. (This has got to be caused by some outliers in international categories, that are able to really run up their time. I hope they change this in future handouts.)

-The last thing on the table was more seats on the RJs (Tim said 80 seats; did he mean 82?). The company offered to give all of the projected revenue to us in the form of pay.

-A wide body aircraft order is not under discussion at this time.

-If we turn down the TA, they have no idea where things will go from there. If we enter Section 6, we can expect fairly strong headwinds. The Section 6 process is, by it's nature, more friendly to management. We will be negotiating against a backdrop where UCAL, AMR, and USAirways make less than us already. The NMB will not be sympathetic to us.

-Q&A session was very contentious, with 90% of the pilot angst focusing on the proposed pay rates. (I left after 2 hours of questioning; I'm not sure what was discussed afterward)