Originally Posted by
bitter
I have to respect your extreme loyalty to CCIA. Good for you.
Please do not give that same undying loyalty to your new owners.
They will chew you up and spit you out. Look what they have done at both ATI and Abx. Pliots are a commodity just like jet fuel and tires.
Your loyalty is a one way street and totally pointless.
They would fire you on Christmas eve if they could find a cheaper heart beat and never look back.
The pilots within ATSG are not people with familys. They are a dollar figure, the end game is always to drive this dollar figure lower and lower.
If you don't beleive me, just ask any of the 1000 guys that have worked as pilots for JH over the years.
You need to understand and solidify your new position within this brave new world.
While i know you won't agree, Abx was the aquiring airline in all of this mess. Yet they have felt the most labor pain, both internally and with the ATI transplants.
This is and was always about money. It was never about retaining long term loyal employees.
Abx has more guys on furloughwith over 10 years of seniority than the entire pilot group at CCIA/ATI.
It doesn't take a calculator to figure why.
Let me ask a couple questions, serious no BS,
You are now in an ACMI environment you are competing for contracts. How has ATI and Capital hurt ABX when you have ATLAS sitting on the ramp flying the same planes as you ?
I've grown up in this ACMI world. At one time in Miami we had ARROW, FINE, MILLON, SOUTHERN and CHALLENGE all competing for a handful of contracts. The people that made out was the brokers who had the contracts. If you didn't cut your cost you lost contracts. I watched pilots literally fly DC8s at fine, lose a contract, get furloughed, get hired at ARROW to fly the same contract at a different rate.
BAX did the exact same thing with the 72s. We were always in competition with CAT, KITTY HAWK, and EXPRESS NET to stay alive. If you didn't play ball you went out of business. Even at ATI (correct me please but this was the way it was told to us) BAX was a small cash flow compared DOD work. Who made out BAX did.
When ALPA opened up Capitals books they acknowledged they had no money to be had. It's a bare bone operation that got beat up constantly by BAX.
Can't you see DHL doing the exact same thing, yet you blame capital and ATI and Hete. Why don't you blame who the real person that's DHL.
I had one of the ABX MEC in the JS he even acknowledge the next contract is gonna be a disaster. Because of the DHL model that's set up.
Your at the bottom of a seniority list where your competing 1 aircraft and 1 contract at a time. How much job security do you really think their is ?
Like I said maybe its because I grew up in the ACMI world. But it's really tough to stand your ground and pound your fists and make demands when your not moving your own freight and passengers.