Do you actually KNOW what The Company initially offered? Or are you guessing, or speculating, or repeating a rumor you heard? I would really like to see what The Company initially offered, because I think it would provide some valuable insight as to what The Company might try to do if we reject this LOA. I'd like to see the choice we're making. As it is, we're left to choose between this and the big, bad, litigation-producing unknown.


The argument has nothing to do with pay rates relative to another airline. It has to do with pay rates relative to our own pilots.

Suppose for a moment that The Company is standing up TWO new wide-body aircraft fleets, a fleet of B-757Fs and a fleet of A330s. Suppose that there will be in identical number of aircraft in each fleet, and they will fly identical legs. Everything is identical except the type rating required to fly the aircraft.

Now, how does The Company man the aircraft? They must somehow calculate the number of bodies to assign to those aircraft in order to fly them every time they need to be flown, but to not have too many pilots sitting idle. In the lean, off-peak months, they will have more people sitting reserve, or getting lower RLGs, or both. In the fat, peak months, they will use higher BLGs, fewer reserves, and build lines with more carry-over and count on Vacation Buy-back, draft, and volunteer to meet the manning requirements. Taking all those variables into account, they decide they will need X number of Captains for the A330.

However, for the B-767F they won't need that many Captains. They will need fewer B-767F Captains because they have another resource to fall back on when the assigned number of B-767F Captains isn't enough. They can dip into the pool of B-757 Captains to fill the shortfall. The B-767F will only need Y number of Captains.

The difference between X and Y constitutes a band of pilots who would be wide-body Captains but for the fact that they can be called out of the pool as needed to fill the seat. That band of pilots are essentially working as wide-body pilots until the need arises to fly a wide-body, and they're doing the work of the narrow-body pilot when they would have been otherwise idle wide-body pilots. In fat months, they come out of the pool and play wide-body Captain. In lean months, they go back to the pool and swim with the narrow-body Captains.

Now, this doesn't constitute a "B" scale in the same sense that American Airlines did. There is not a specific seniority number range of pilots to which it applies, and there is not pay rate published in Section 3 of the CBA. However, there is a group of pilots whose progression through Section 24 Filling of Vacancies is delayed, and there is a group of pilots who are essentially part-time wide-body pilots.

The Company realizes efficiencies by using part-timers to fill full-time seats.



Raising pay rates is a goal, but it will not erase the differential paid to the band of "purple B-scalers".


I think that's what we should be doing now. Let's get busy hammering out a full CBA.






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