I don't like to be negative for the sake of being negative. Having said that, pairings this summer are the worst I've seen. Amazon and short staffing contribute, but some of it is completely self inflicted. I can look at a lot of July pairings and say, "if I were trying to build a fatiguing pairing, this is exactly what I would do." There is no excuse for that. That kind of behavior is self-destructive, and it must stop if there is to be hope of this company being successful. Secondly, we might be short-staffed forever (i.e. until we inevitable shrink in furlow in the next deep recession). The company doesn't seem to have any desire to implement measures to get us to a good staffing level. This is also an area where the company is to blame. You can't attrit so many F.O.'s and then cry about being short on upgrades. It makes you look like an idiot. Sorry, boss-man, not even trying to be negative, but some things you have to say how it is. There is a paragraph on the earnings call where this question was brought up, and the answer is every bit as disappointing as one might expect. Upgrades is an industry-wide problem? Yeah, right. I give management credit for doing a lot of things right, but this kind of thing is inexcusable. So in the end, yes, I think Amazon is a factor that helped us initially and is something of a drag on us lately, especially in busy times like this summer, but I think other management decisions, namely the two I described, are bigger factors than whether we have Amazon flying in our pairings. Personally, I would like to see amazon stay, because where I am in seniority, the trips (when not fatiguing) can offer better QOL than what I might otherwise be bidding. Depending on seniority and QOL goals, I can see where others would adamantly want it to go.

Not overly pleased with the MEC at this moment, either. I would be willing to bet that if you asked the pilot group about the long trips they would have overwhelmingly agreed to keep them for now and negotiate the problems (vacation conflicts, 1/2 more days of work for other pilots, etc.) at a later date. Not renewing an LOA like that looks amateurish to me.

I would love for others to weigh in on the upgrade situation, industry-wide. I'm pretty sure places like Alaska and Southwest don't have upgrade problems. United does, but that has something to do with the fact that all of the former SY F.O.s over there need to become eligible. I'm confident that the new contract will alleviate their upgrade problems. I'm not at all confident that we are doing anything to help with ours.

Hawaiian, JB, American? idk, don't have a pulse on the upgrade situation at all those places. I bet if you picked places with crappy management and poor contracts, they all have upgrade problems! So where does that put us?