Originally Posted by
757upspilot
The hotline was carefully crafted to make you uncertain and hopefully cause some of the membership to press the union to give the company contract concessions that they desire. If you have ever spoken to Barnes you know that he couldn't have put that together by himself, pure Coleman directed output.
I maintain that at best, any "savings" we give the company may (and I emphasize may) delay a furlough so as to kick in AFTER peak, but if they have indeed decided to furlough they are going to do so no matter what we "give". One of the pathetic things about this place is that anyone on the line for more than one bid period could give them a laundry list of operational changes that when combined with the other 2,999 or so line pilot laundry lists would save them over $100 million a year (and that's likely on the low side). In the last couple of months for example I had tech stops in KIX on the HKG-ANC segment where based on HKG payload we could have skipped KIX and had ample reserves. I actually got on the SAT phone to dispatch in the blocks in HKG, who (seemingly painfully) talked with contingency who confirmed that we had up and/or downlift at KIX and that we needed to stop. In both cases, not one cargo door was cracked in KIX. Urban legend has it that the landing fee at KIX is $15,000, not to mention the added burn, the extra cycle on the airframe and the potential for an MD11 to be an MD11 and break in KIX. Add up the "savings" that could be reaped system-wide by eliminating this kind of buffoonery and there you have it...
Yet, we all know that this isn't one company with a common goal of making money, but a loosely bound galaxy of independent fiefdoms each almost entirely consumed with their own independent departmental "goals" desperately trying to protect their turf and maintain "control".
But we all know in this case it's not really about the money, but about opening a contract to this, and subsequent guttings because the company knows that in all likelihood the economy will have improved by contract openers in 2012, and how nice to have us waste negotiating leverage to get back to where we once were.