I've stayed off these forums, especially since the announcement of the AIP, so I could form my own conclusions without the inevitable outrage the forums will have no matter what the deal. That being said, whatever Tumi verison we are on, this definitely seems to be one of them.

Before I start, let me preface by saying I know this TA will pass, the pilot group has waited too long and is too eager to vote in the first deal in front of them. I still firmly believe if Tumi 1.0 didn't have the massive amount of concessions and was basically a pay raise for a contract extension, it would have passed.

As for the new TA (Tumi 4.0?) I don't quite understand how we got here. We are still in the best negotiating environment this industry has seen in decades, and yet our TA is still riddled with concessions. Let's get the big one out of the way first:

1. Direct Entry Captains. United has slowly been becoming a regional mentality airline with (sometimes) higher pay rates. We've see for years how direct entry captains and the ability to displace first officers into captains have kept regional pay and QOL pathetically low until very recently. Now, we are the first major/legacy carrier to allow this. Worse yet, we were not even polled or surveyed about this huge change. It seems like this was a final item deal done at the last second to get an AIP out the door. The company can see the current TA is not good enough to get pilots to upgrade, so why can't ALPA?

2. Reserve rules. While there was some decent movement on reserve rules, how did we get to the point to agreeing to allow the company to sit on them until August 2024? Besides computer based reserve to reserve day trades, reserve assignments are mostly manually built and assigned. There is no logical reason why it will take 10 months to implement the reserve package. As far as I can tell, this is not even a hard requirement, there is just additional add pay required after August 2024 if they are not implemented. Basically, reserves only get a 3 year deal.

3. Sick time. 1 additional hour of sick time, especially with min day increasing to 5:15, is absolutely pathetic. It is worse when you combine this with the fact we can no longer credit over 95 hours in a month with sick leave. Additionally, the company is allowed to mark an entire reserve block as sick if you use an advanced sick call.

4. LTD. We still have to pay a premium for our LTD insurance that is capped, while AA and Delta pay no premiums, and have no caps. Our retirement portion of LTD will also only be going into the market based plan, not a 401k, like AA and DAL. On top of this, our pilots currently on LTD will see no increase to their monthly benefit and will not receive a retirement contribution, again unlike AA and DAL received. I would gladly pay a little more each month to take care of the pilots on LTD, and hope to receive the same treatment if I ever needed to use this benefit.

5. Working on days off. This does not seem to have been addressed at all. No caps or limits on working on a day off for lineholders or reserves, just a bit of add pay here and there. Reserves don't even get the 50% add pay for working on days off, just 5:15 a day (which doesn't have to be implemented for 10 months).

6. The coverage pool. No firm language was made to address the issue of manipulating the coverage pool for trades and drops. There is some language saying the company will meet with ALPA to discuss/implement changes, but still give the company unilateral control to manipulate coverages.

There are also other smaller concessions that add up, such as contingent reserve assignments becoming the new airport standby, unused AV days counting towards minimum days off, and doctor's note requirements for blocking rollable days for global reserves.

I'm pretty satisfied when it comes to the payrates and retro. It's slightly above inflation, and we are still well within the top 3-5% of earners. Besides that, this TA seems pretty poor overall. We had so much leverage and absolutely gave all of it away. We were always starting negotiations a step back with the Tumi 1.0 fiasco, but after over a year of waiting and delays this TA is very disappointing.

I already know the TA will pass, but I know how I will be voting.