Originally Posted by Al Czervik

This solidified my no vote (I stole this from an internal forum)
Sorry to the author: Too powerful not to post.


After speaking with my rep today I’ve changed my position from leaning yes to most likely no. To be clear, I’m still going to hear out the roadshow and make my final decision. My chair had some interesting information that changed my perspective and most likely my vote.

First off he made it clear that he thinks there’s enough meat in the TA that he had to send it to the pilots to decide. He said that even though he voted yes as the board member, he will most likely vote no a pilot. He said the reason for this is because the company has put APA between a rock and a hard place. He said they were very disingenuous and several things that were promised with the AIP did not make it into the final language of the TA. Things such as language regarding a two pilot crew for job security and medical freedom such as Delta got to name a few. He said if we got an AIP twice and the board votes it down twice, it will put us in a less favorable position regarding mediation and how mediators typically rule. His belief is that it’s better the pilots vote this down than the board at this time. I can respect that.

He continued to explain that he’s extremely perplexed as how the company can throw over $8billion dollars at this and still fail so horribly. The company had made it clear that they were worried about this passing without fixing real time trip trading. He said he spent lots of time arguing how it was possible we didn’t have this language in our TA when the company wanted it as well. He claims once this passes the company has ZERO incentive to fix this. He’s very upset with no improvements to reserve and not being able to return to your trip after calling out sick.

Bottom line is that we left several improvements that are very beneficial to our pilot group on the table that are at zero cost to the company. I really don’t think there’s one pilot here who’s complaining about the money. The money is there but we do have to factor in lost time from voting this down. That’s something we have to put in the cons column. The reason why he’s torn as well is because his experience back in 2000. We voted (down?) Delta + 1 but after 9/11 we’re happy with a 23% pay cut and happy to keep our jobs. To pretend like we couldn’t have another terrible world event outside our control, when we’ve had 3 in the past 22 years, would be silly.

Based on this information I believe I will be a no vote. It’s his personal opinion that if we vote this down and it’s a close margin, the company will quickly throw some or all of the zero cost items to push this across the finish line. That being said, it’s only his opinion and it could be another 18 months until we have something.