Originally Posted by MarineGrunt

When some of you folks talked about sub-regional work rules, I really didn't realize where you were coming from until I have been here a while...

SOMETHING FOR UAL/DAL PROSPECTS TO CONSIDER..... I came from a non-union regional and we did not have ANY of this BS below...

I ran into a buddy (767UAL FO) the other day. He said he made $30,000 last month and only flew 60hrs. I asked him how the heck he did that.... he said he had a few canceled trips and just picked up a posted trip from another pilot, plus a couple of premium trips... this kind of ticked me off, because we can't do anything like this at AA. Why? RECOVERY OBLIGATION. If you have a cancelled trip for whatever reason, you cannot do anything else within the footprint of that trip. Oh, but you ARE on the hook by the company to get assigned another trip and must be contactable every afternoon until your original trip footprint has passed. Oh, and you don't get paid extra if you do get assigned another trip (unless the new one exceeds the credit for the original). Also, I flew with a West captain who told me some of their FOs would get close to 300k/yr, even with their old crap pay because of the same thing (not sure I believed him but, still).

Want to call in sick? Ha... with what sick time? This is a funny thing because none of the Captains I fly with realize how incredibly slow we accrue sick time (most have 500-1000hrs from the OLD work rules). If you call in sick for one 4 day trip, that is pretty close to all the sick time you spent a year accruing. I'm trying to get to around 400-500hrs eventually, so I can cover about 6 months sick until LTD kicks in, in case of some health issue. This will probably take most of my career to do.

Do you commute? At my NON UNION REGIONAL we could post/trade partial trips... i.e., last turn of a trip, last leg, etc. Not at AA. We now have a gazillion pilots based in LAX that live in PHX. Probably many LAX trips that end in a PHX turn. Want to end your trip at home and give that leg to a guy going to work? Won't happen at AA. The trip is all or nothing.

Oh, I almost forgot about IMAX. If you plan on crediting an average of 90hrs a month, go elsewhere. At AA, you are limited to 1080 credit hrs a year. That's not FLYING, that's CREDIT. The only exception is any extra credit accrued through premium trips. So... wife/kid gets very sick and you need to work your butt off to pay medical bills... or did you lose everything in a hurricane?? Well, just as long as you don't avg more than 90hrs a month, ok!

Oh, speaking of premium..... lol (this is mostly where my buddy made the $$$). This company will do anything they can to avoid paying it. My last 4 day went premium for the CA. Guess what they did with the trip? Broke it up into a million pieces so the only thing that paid premium was the first turn. Unless there is a trip going somewhere where they can't swap out a crew member, you probably won't see very many full trips go PM. And even then, they'll probably just DH someone and break it up anyway.

Minimum calendar day... again, something we had at my NON UNION REGIONAL. Love red eyes? I hope so, cuz yer getting paid garbage to do them... example... calendar day 1: JFK-LAX... calendar day 2: mostly sit... calendar day 3: red eye LAX-JFK. What's the credit? 10:20rs for 3 days. What would it be if we had an industry standard min cal DAY? 15:30hrs. I'm sure there are many Intl trips that this would affect too.

The next thing is that our union is a total clown show. Leave it to them to always try to find a way to 'stick it to the man' and drive a wedge right between the pilot group at the same time. They pat themselves on the back with the lastest pay raise, but as some have mentioned on this forum, its obvious the company did it to be competitive with UAL and DAL new hires. I'm sure they got tired of folks bailing out of training for 7% more hourly pay, better work rules and profit sharing that will dang near buy you a new car every year. But APA says it's all because you didn't float. Sure. But at least they drew a line in the sand and STOPPED trying to improve our contract over something that effects a small fraction of the pilot group. I'm sure management were busting their guts on that one! Another wedge...

Other airlines have their complaints, sure, but we are so behind an industry standard contract it's laughable. And what's scary, is that most of the pilot group doesn't even realize it. This is were I finally came to the conclusion that we need to flush all these turds and bring in ALPA or someone who knows what a contract should look like. I don't know how APA can go from where we are, to a decent contract. There is so much ground to reclaim and you always have to give to get something....

The best thing we can do to make improvements is to point out these items that keep AA in last place among legacy airlines, is to keep encouraging prospective pilots to go elsewhere and rightfully so. The more mgmt sees folks bail from week 5 or training because so much of the contract is better at UAL/DAL, they might finally wake up. Mgmt even showed their hand by the 8% raise.

I'm sure there are more things that are egregious, but I'm still on my first cup of coffee, so I'm a little slow today. Yeah, I know, "if it's so bad, why don't you go somewhere else?" Well, I would, but that ship has kind of sailed for me. I live in an AA base and have been here 5 yrs. If I were 2yrs in and lived elsewhere, I'd be renewing my UA/DL app daily.

But the good news is that "I'll be senior someday" and I guess none of this will matter...

Originally Posted by johneybrasco

600+ vocal pilots who sued to fight the SLI award (and lost their lawsuit) have now politically intimated APA into stopping all negotiations until they get there pay adjusted to 12-year pay steps.

Read resolution 2017-38 for your self: https://apaservices.alliedpilots.org...KWRNsFaKLXc%3D



To make matters worse, many of these pilots bypassed recall and now say they were harmed by 911 when they choose to bypass recall while flying elsewhere to try and wait out the SLI award. These pilots already received a two-year pay bump of unearned LOS and would be at seven or more years of longevity pay rates had they not spent years bypassing recall. There were over 400 of pilots on furlough in late 2016 after AA had been hiring/flowing since 2013. Worst of all, these pilots did not want LOS recognized or weighted in the SLI award, but now it has become a holy subject?

Furthermore, these pilots invoke 911 to virtue signal some special status of victimhood when all airline pilots were affected by those events. But there are other factors beyond 911 such as economic corrections in 2001 and 2008, excess scope relaxation and the age 65 retirement change that hurt the entire industry. Flow through pilots were especially harmed when they pilot flowed down into their American Eagle. Regional and Military pilots also lost out on length of service because of these same factors. Should all of these people get 12-year pay also? Is "LOS Now!" willing to fight for them?


Length of Service is earned time. We respect senior pilots and AA inherently gives greater remuneration to pilots with earned longevity. We are not entitled to tomorrow and should not demand tomorrow today via impatient and unearned self-serving schemes. It is hazardous to disrespect the Length of Service system by disregarding the personal responsibility of these pilots who themselves bypassed recall.

APA should move forward toward outcomes that help everyone. Items such as Min Day Calendar and others pointed out by MarineGrunt above are more important than a few hundred pilots saying stop everything and only negotiate for my unique interests going forward.