Originally Posted by
oldgb
My question is this, does "aircraft acquired and placed into revenue service" mean only aircraft that we have in our possession, and are making money with? If so, how does deferring planes to a later date (not cancelling the orders), when we should have pilots available to fly them, violate the contract? I didn't see any dates in the contract, but may have missed something. It just seems to make sense to me, from a money standpoint, that having five jets sitting on a ramp somewhere not making any money, is a bad idea. None of this will change overnight; it takes time to train check airman and new pilots.
Also, with the "No Strike" section in the contract, is the only recourse for violations of the contract through arbitration and re-negotiation of the entire contract?
The company has told us on several occasions that the aircraft are simply being deferred, and that we will still eventually receive them once we have the pilots to staff them. I don't think too many people have any issues with that, since we can't even staff the flying that we have (we're still canceling dozens of flights per day due to lack of pilots!) There is a lot of doubt here as to whether the aircraft are being deferred and not simply transferred permanently to SkyWest.
We have language in our contract that prohibits the permanent transfer of the orders, rather than just swapping order slots, hence the reason why the company is stating that they're simply deferred, and will still arrive at Horizon eventually. Since this sort of thing has occurred before, most everyone here is very skeptical of this, especially since the company refuses to share any documentation that would support their claim. We have language in the contract that requires the company to provide related documentation about the order to allow the union to monitor compliance. THE COMPANY AGREED TO THAT LANGUAGE!!! Yet here we are in a lawsuit with the company to get that very same documentation!