Originally Posted by
beech2jet
This surprises me, considering Delta doesn’t have Domestic crew meals or middle seat deadhead pay and American doesn’t have a minimum calendar day pay, meaning there are 3 day trips that pay 10 hours and 4 days that pay less than 20. Seems like you’d have to work quite a few more days to make the same money at AA. Does AA have Domestic crew meals (not that they’re anything to write home about). There must be other aspects of UAs contract that fall far behind the others. ALPA put something out at one point with overall contract values that I thought had DL/UA pretty much tied and AA right behind. But of course, that was total monetary value.
I was surprised too. It’s also an opinion but it’s an informed opinion by a union guy who studies contracts.
You mention middle seat DHD pay. Most AA agents ‘work’ with DHD’s in my experience. So how often (valueable) is that portion of a contract? The guy reviewing the different contracts might have given it a different value than you did.
UA’s contract takes 12 years to match AA’s second year vacation value. It lags AA’s vacation hours until the 20th year. UA’s vacation exceeds AA’s after 20 years but it takes until the 33rd for UA’s vacation value to exceed AA’s. DL’s contract hours lag AA’s on an annual basis until the 20th year and equal AA’s total vacation value the 52nd(?) year(early 2017 contract comparison).
Maybe it’s all of the details, like the vacation difference, that had the contract SME say he’d choose AA’s contract over UA’s contract (disregarding pay).