It's common practice for airlines to optimize their manning and schedules during contract talks. Here at UPS the company did an excellent job of slowly turning up the heat for the past three years to where we have negotiated work rules to make our schedule look like they did three years ago! The company doesn't even like to operate at such a minimum coverage level, but that's what all the airlines do at contract talks.

The big question is, how do we dig ourselves out of this staffing hole? Our schedules will continue to be optimized, and the company will EXPECT the pilots to step up to the open time trough if this TA passes.

All of this behavior continues to degrade the pilots life at even the most profitable of airlines. Coupled with the typical "I need to work on my days off" mentality, means slower upgrades and slower hiring.

Wow, what will the company do if the TA doesn't pass? Everyone's already maxed out and all the management pilots are flying FAR max time now for management emergency flying.

By the way, the MD11 staffing will become even more critical now that the training center is spooling up again, and the instructors are not flying the line anymore.

Merry Christmas everyone.