Originally Posted by
RJTPA
Easy. I just went to recurrent. Spoke with the union and have spoken with sim instructors and other union pilots. ALPA national estimates AQP will save the company $1 million a year. That’s it. And that’s just for the AQP program itself, not doing training in MCO which will obviously save the company more. My understanding is that AQP is outside of the cba and can be implemented with or without an LOA. 169 seems to think we have leverage. Boy I wish that were true, but it’s simply not. At best we can hope to get some work rules for the Sim instructors, that is all. There will be no financial gain from this LOA for us. So having said that since the company can implement this with or without us, we might as well be involved so we can be a part of the process of the training program.. I’m never in favor of doing LOA’s while we’re in section 6 but in this instance, it seems stupid not to be a part of it. I would love to ask for a 10% raise with this LOA, but it’s just not happening. Where our union has really failed yet again is communication. We’re all getting secondhand information and hearsay instead of constant communication from the union that we pay a lot of money in dues to.
The company cannot implement AQP without the LOA because they don’t have the sim capability in Denver. The only training allowed outside of Denver is for new hires. The AQP LOA offers significant cost savings to the company: flexibility to lease sims outside of Denver, no hotels during recurrent training, no deadheads, no per diem, no transportation cost. They can hire in-base instructors. Again, no DH pay and no hotel pay, no per diem.
If you’re a commuter it’s not a great deal.
I agree with you that the leverage won’t get us any kind of immediate pay bump, but I do believe that issues like these can speed up our timeline to a new contract. And don’t get me wrong, I want AQP, but I also don’t want to continue giving things away if they can be used for our benefit.