I see many of you have stumbled on what I was in the process of posting, but I'll post my opinion anyway.


I'm sure I'm going to get flamed for this position, but there are a lot of assumptions being thrown around here that just aren't factual. I'm not telling you how to vote, just that many of your ideas of what a no vote means to the company are not as devastating as you suggest. We don't get to vote it down and everything just stays as it has been.

The notion that a no vote puts all the iPads back in the closet is nonsense. It is a huge gain for the company regardless of how we vote, that ship has already sailed and there's no getting her back into port. You will be getting an iPad, and you will be doing part of your recurrent training on it. The company does not need union approval, or our ratification to implement this program. They need only consult with the association before any change to the training curriculum, which this LOA shows they have. The only questions this LOA needs to answer is how much will you be compensated for additional distance learning and how to mitigate our liability for carrying a company owned device.

The company is responsible for defining the training program, with FAA approval, to include the curriculum, the medium in which it's presented, and the location in which you will do it. Take a look at the FOTM revision 14-02 from last October, they added the FLL crew room as an approved training facility. If this gets voted down, mark my words, all the other crew rooms will be added to the FOTM list of approved facilities, and you will be required to come do your CBT guided training on the iPad in your base crew room. The CBA only says ground training must be done in a classroom or any place approved by the FAA. Ask the LAS based crews how their training credit has been affected since we added the LAS sim. This will be the same thing, except it just won't be a sim, it will be an approved facility to do your self-guided recurrent training.

Our CBA doesn't say we have to go to FLL to do our training, nor does it stipulate it needs to be instructor-guided training, it doesn't even require it to be scheduled on days on or restore lost days off unless you will go below min days off. Believe me, I agree it sucks we will lose out on potential credit from training conflicts, but a yes or no vote isn't going to change that now. They finally commited to the EFB program because they found a way through this new technology to save money by utilizing it as a training device as well. Unfortunately, I'm afraid the old way of training, and getting huge training conflicts is gone, regardless of the LOA vote outcome. The only things you need to decide, do you want to do this training on your own schedule, in a location of your choosing? Or do want it to be in your base crew room on their schedule? And how much do you want to be paid, the current 8 hours per the CBA, or the 10 hours per the LOA?

Again, vote as you will, but do so on the merits of the LOA, not what you are used to crediting when it comes to recurrent training, because, unfortunately those days are soon to end, one way or another. Also, it's up to each person to decide how a no vote would impact section 6 negotiations, that's a whole different discussion.