Originally Posted by
WillieF15
Disclaimer up front: I envy the WB fleet of our bros and sis's at UAL and AAL.
But mind if I ask a devil's advocate question on scope for all of us? Why should we force our management team to fly more WB aircraft if that's not profitable on a given route based on their access to information that you and I do not have? If you and I have more long-term pay stability (hopefully) than our brethren at UAL and AAL because we are managed differently, is that not a good thing?
Things I think I understand:
1. The more WB, the better the opportunities for progression (whether you want to stay NB and get seniority, or jump to WB for other reasons)
2. WB flying is a source of pride
3. The company doesn't really care about us, they just want us to work harder and be away from our families more
How about this: what if our contract required the company to boost our profit sharing % (by a significant number)if they were out of compliance? Is that a good idea, or even possible?
-Willie
Let me ask you this:
Why should we force the company to fly 717s to certain locations when a 96 seat RJ flown by a lower-paid pilot would be smarter from a business standpoint?
It will also increase profits if we all take a pay cut.
I know this sounds flippant, but I'm not trying to be rude to you. I get your line of reasoning. Here is the deal. The company can reduce as much flying as they want to any theater they want if they are not in a JV. But because we are in a JV, where as pilots we have agreed to share some flying out of our scope because we set limits to what can be flown and how much and by whom, the company has limits on the flying. This protects us from having all of our international flying outsourced to a lower bidder.
If the flying is not profitable, it should not be hard to convince the JV partners from reducing their flying. Or, the company can end the JV. There is nothing preventing the company from purchasing more planes and meeting their JV obligations (CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATIONS TO US) and benefiting from the profitable flying in other theaters.
The 650,000 hours is a baseline of hours that matches our flying a few years ago. Since then, we have added thousands of pilots to our company. That means, if we stick to the same number of hours of international WB flying, we are actually shrinking our WB flying almost every day a new class starts. Has our NB flying grown?
SCOPE is important. The company entered into an agreement with us. We have every right to demand it live up to its end of the deal. If we desire to let the company out of that deal, I will not be agreeing to it for an industry-standard pay rate. The company can unwind the JV to free up its international options or it can adhere to its commitments to us.
These are our jobs, upgrades, pay raises, QOL being given away out from under us.