Originally Posted by
Mason32
The blast definately had a concessionary tone about it; I agree. Personally I do not think APA should give up anything at all. It may be time to go for a shorter term contract than usual, since gettign anything in this economy will be very difficult, so having a shorter term new contract would let the APA ride the storm out a little while the economy recovers.
That being said, I would suggest a short term contract that comes due in 2013 to match the end date of Eagle's pilot contract. It would allow the two groups to work as one.
As others have said, if there is to be a scope concession of any kind, it needs to be rewritten from the language AMR posted. They wanted larger jets at any commuter carrier. A middle ground would be to give AMR the larger jets, but only at Eagle - and in concert with a 2013 contract expiration date.
In an ideal world this wouldn't be an issue, and APA pilots would be doing ALL flying for AMR; and scope would never have been let out of the bag...
If you can get both pilot groups on the same contract schedules you will go a long way toward helpoing them both work together instead of always being at odds with eachother.
Look at it this way; will the APA be better off in 2013 with just the APA and EGL ALPA flying for AMR, or with APA, EGL ALPA, CHQ, CAPE AIR, TSA and Mesa all flying AMR routes and ALL ready to take work from both Eagle and AA at a moments notice... The enemy of my enemy is my friend; it's time APA and EGL started working together...
Agreed. However, APA is going to have to define itself. When EGL won their right to a single carrier status, I recall the then APA president Jim Sovich lecturing the memebrship about why we don't want EGL part of APA. While I don't recall a movement inside APA to discourage EGL from going with APA, we didn't exactly encourage their enlistment.
EGL is now part of ALPA, and I don't think ALPA national will concede anything less than than a full seniority integration (regardless of what EGL pilots might want).
Conversely, the debate at the national level is whether APA should negotiate pay rates for RJ's at market levels (carve out a commuter supplement) and offer some 1800 furloughed pilots a chance at that flying, or liberalize scope in exchange for more $$$, or some combination thereof.
Whether it's APA that doesn't want EGL, or EGL ALPA that doesn't want APA is unclear to me. One thing for sure, since APA can hardly remain unified, I don't see any agreement with ALPA over integration with EGL, especially in light of the fact that APA is still coping with 1800 plus furloughs...