Originally Posted by
ImSoSuss
Nobody here is talking about fleet simplification during COVID and certainly nobody is blaming the Union for that so not sure why you are even bringing that up since I think everybody agrees with you. The unions at UA and DL negotiated contracts during the last cycle that required each company to hire more pilots to cover the same amount of flying due to QOL gains realized through the whole seniority group. APA was not able to do this and as a matter of fact made it much worse. They caved on a RAS system which is much more efficient for the company without scoring a comparable gain for the pilot group. This also allowed the company to back off on hiring new pilots last year and this year thus far. All that combined is unforgivable in my book hence my strong support for a complete overhaul of our union. Bring on ALPA.
I am brining it up because it’s widely considered they aggressively reduced the fleet.
They had to operate the remaining simplified fleet at 110% because of delivery delays and making the mistake of parking too many planes. So from 9/21 until contract signing the consolidated fleet had more block hours to staff.
As planes show up and hiccups in demand happen they operate the consolidated fleet at 95%, but some how you have it on fact that there are years of data of 4 fleets and staffing required and the dip in staffing started only with the RAS.
You are just not explaining RAS separate from demand swings or prematurely parking aircraft and throwing the workload on the remaining aircraft.
U and D do have an advantage because a complex fleet helps lower reserve utilization, APA can’t just demand 7 fleet types then give it away and apply the savings elsewhere in the contract.
If AA gets identical language it won’t move the staffing needle nearly as much due to 4 fleets. It’s actually possible we would need even less reserves if we went 100% LC and paid conversions per block of days.