Alan, I don't even know where to begin. I can write an entire essay on your quoted forcast alone. Plus the forcast doesn't have anything to do with productivity, if AA is to survive, it must become more productive. your group is so hung up on hourly rates, that you forget that total compensation is simply not just hourly rates, other forms of compensation can be added to bring total compensation up, ala SWA and Jetblue. Your group continually talks about how AA pilots have one of the lowest hourly rates currently, somehow tying that up with lower costs. It's simply not true, because AA is so unproductive, it takes more AA pilots to do the same job. For example if it takes one company 8 guys to pave a driveway at $6/hr, and another group does the same job with 4 guys but they get paid $10/hr, then company A's total costs are $48/hr and it's employees are lower paid, whereas company B does the same job for $40/hr, and has higher paid employees to boot. This is where AA is at, lower pay and unproductive, where we need to get is higher pay, and high productivity.
your position on the A plan, simply put, the A plan must go, and it will benefit pilots if it goes. Let me give you another example, Pensions are funded based on assumed rates of return, which presents a huge conflict of interest for the company, if they get THEIR actuary to assume a high rate of return, then they have to put out less money to fund the plan, i.e. AA was still assuming a 9% rate of return well into 8 months after 911 when the entire market was down in the negatives. Then all of a sudden they start screaming that they are severely underfunded, it was their own doing. To top it all off the A plan is never safe, any time a company visits Chapter 11, it could all go away, just ask the US Air guys. A better choice would be to have the company put the equivalent of 15% of our salary(thats in addition to our salary, not from our salary, just to make it clear) into a DAP type account where it's our money and AA can't touch it, and it's BK proof, it's in our 401K and can't be touched by the company, nor can it be used as leverage to extract anything. These are just some of the things. Now as you respond, it might be a while before i read and respond to you because I leave tomorrow for work, but I will respond.