Originally Posted by
John Pennekamp
You shouldn't talk about things you don't understand, Brasilia Boy.
First off, why don't you give us the numbers on ASA "losing flying". Tell us how many routes ASA has lost since the acquisition. (I'll help you, we're only ENTITLED to 80% of ATL by the Delta agreement). Oh, and do you HONESTLY believe you will get the Comair stuff?
Second of all, it's not about what Jerry WANTS to pay his redneck stepkids, it's about what our union will MAKE him pay. And you should be praying to the deity of your choice that we top your current pay or you can expect to bend over and lose flying to us.
I'm here to tell you, the ASA pilots are getting tired of hearing the high and mighty Skywest pilots speak ill of us. With one stroke of a pen we could undercut you and take YOUR routes.
That's a very dangerous attitude...for all of us. Most SKW pilots don't want ASA flying and are pulling for you guys on the contract. A few new hires are falling all over themselves, but what do you expect? They are not representative of the group as a whole, and will learn soon enough.
SKW has enormous growth opportunities, so it makes no sense to expend all of our training resources to replace pilots from another SKW owned unit! I would much rather replace mesa in the west rather than ASA in the east.
I did overhear some ASA guys in airport restaruant a couple months ago...the conversation went something like "I sure hope SKW votes in ALPA...then we can merge lists with DOH and all the ASA FO's can come west and be captains"
That certainly got my attention, and I repeated that conversation to about 100 SKW pilots. Situations like this cannot help the two groups come together.
Maybe ASA alpa and the SKW alpa comittee should get together and hash out a fair integration plan, and then publicize it. That would take away one of the major uncertainies with the SKW alpa drive. I want to achieve unity and equitable integration with ASA, it's the only way in the long run. But I'm a rocky mountain homeboy, and I sure as h#ell don't want to be sitting reserve in hotlanta...alpa scares the heck out of me in that regard. If I wanted to work for an east coast airline, I would have done that a long time ago.