Originally Posted by
sailingfun
Pilot ignorance is amazing. The contract required we maintain 316 departures out of Narita only if the company maintained one small code share into Narita. That code share was generating about 250,000 a year in revenue! If the company dropped the code share we had zero protections for the Narita flying. Zero as in none. We were able to trade that for Pacific wide protections. Even Bill Bartels was touting that agreement as a significant acheivment of the Roberts administration. Strangely however he voted against it while touting it as a great deal for the pilots.
"""The existing Section 1 E. 2. prohibits code share on Fifth Freedom flights from Japan to Asian cities beyond Japan unless 316 weekly NRT slots are utilized. The 316 slots protected 80 percent of the slots that were in use when this provision was negotiated in 1998."""
You may be amazed by pilot ignorance but this was not communicated effectively and in the opinion of some was an inadequate trade. I fault the previous administration for their lack of transparency and poor communication about the lowered protection and metric conversion used in that theater. They operated in complete isolation and darkness to avoid oppositional voices until the deal was done and it was too late.