Item 9: E-Mail Ooopsie

Due to the miserable failure of your council’s Secretary/Treasurer, the e-mail address of Vice Chairman Tara Cook in last week’s BlastMail contained an error. Only the sharp eyes of about 2000 of our council’s pilots caught this incredibly obscure mistake. Her correct e-mail address is: [email protected].

The Secretary/Treasurer will be made to “kiss the gunner’s daughter”. Tickets are on sale now for this exciting event.

Item 10: Vice Chairman’s Editorial

Since being elected as the EWR First Officer Representative, I have been asked many times by our senior pilots: “How can we count on you to fight for the proper funding of our A-Plan when more than half the pilots you represent don’t have a stake in it?” My answer is simple and is always the same: “I’ll fight for proper funding of the A plan because I believe management’s cavalier attitude toward the future security of our longest serving pilots is a clear indicator of the lack of dignity and respect with which they view all of us.” The lack of the promised and proper funding of our pension plan is a symptom of a larger problem- one that affects every pilot, no matter where they fall on the seniority list. Other symptoms include harassment of military pilots, extensions of probation for putting your family first during a natural disaster, releasing reserves to rest well into a call period to “legally” fly an international red-eye flight later that night, changing ACARS times, working junior pilots like slaves in the months prior to sending them to the unemployment line…need I go on?

The fact is that management views the pilots as simply beans to be counted—and nothing more. They conveniently forget that the pilots are at the tip of the spear, flying thousands of hours in all kinds of weather, ensuring the safety of our passengers and the efficiency of the operation, EVERY DAY! We do so because we are professionals and we are proud of the job that we do. We do so whether we are number one on the seniority list and ready to retire or a new hire, working uninsured and underpaid. We are the life’s blood of this airline and deserve to be treated as such. That treatment must include industry leading compensation in pay rates and soft pay for all of our pilots, work rules that are the envy of the industry, the recognition of Captain’s authority, staffing that is adequate to cover scheduled flying AND irregular operations, and the ability to count on a comfortable living in retirement—starting with a fully funded A -Plan for those who have earned it! Let’s not forget that today’s new-hire is tomorrow’s retiree and how I am treated down the road will be determined by how I allow our senior guys to be treated today. The only way we can successfully fight to be treated as more than counted beans is to stand together, junior and senior, Captain and First Officer, International and Domestic, and fight the disease—let’s not get distracted by our individual symptoms!


“Continental feels that there is no contractual reason to pay the lump sum.” – Fred Abbott, Vice President of Flight Operations, March 16, 2009, during a pilot meeting in Guam.

Captain Jayson Baron, EWR Council 170 Chairman
[email protected]

First Officer Tara Cook, EWR Council 170 Vice Chairman
[email protected]

Captain Kaye Riggs, EWR Council 170 Secretary-Treasurer
[email protected]