So just a couple of thoughts on senioirty based pay.

It is much less expensive to if you are mostly wide body fleet compared to a mostly narrow body fleet. In other words, if you have 100 777s and 10 717s, how much does it cost to bring those 717 pilots up compared to having 100 717s and only 10 777s?

If you do the math under the current value of our contract, the seniority based banded rate would be just over the 767 rate. No way that is acceptable right? The next statement will be “I meant to move everyone to the 777 rate.” With our current fleet mix, to move everyone to 777 rate would require about a 30% increase in the cost of contract (over a billion dollars) and that is without the pilots on the top pay scales getting any benefit. That would also be problematic for the pilots that have put in their 30 years and then they get zero benefit out of a new PWA.

As far as staffing goes, there is ZERO doubt after the initial shakeout of pilots switching to planes that give them the best QOL, that SBP would require less pilots. Now that is “OK” as long as we offset it with more vacation etc? Jerry even says that is ok? That is hypocritical as crap from the “no concession/trade” crowd considering that they screamed about TA2, yet it did exactly the same thing... any trades were offset with things like increasd vacation.

One other consideration based on OUR fleet mix, there is also the possibility that it drives the casm up so much on the smaller equipment that it not competitive on the routes it operates. This “could” lead to an overall smaller fleet.

Before someone calls me “Debbie Downer” or says that I am unwilling to try something new..... I am not arguing against SBP or pay banding, but although it may sounds good at first glance “yay, we are all getting a 40 percent raise on the 717” there are a lot of things to think about and consider before making that the rallying cry.