Originally Posted by
Mink
Good info - thanks ef. Regarding this paragraph:
For those furloughed AAers that bypass the first recall offer and instead take the three year holding pattern (that is an option, yes?), if they then return on the second (and final) recall offer, their seniority remains intact, as if they had accepted the first recall offer, right? Basically, no penalty for taking the three year wait-and-see option?
Yep.....no penalty AFAIK, but I'm just a pup at AA and someone saltier should confirm.
Originally Posted by
Mink
General question: What's the history of the F/T arrangement? How/why did APA ever agree to it? I don't see the benefit to the APA pilots. Sure, a relative handful got to flowback, but not many. The only benefit to AMR I can see is a small savings in application/interview costs, but that can't be much. F/T's still need all the training and other stuff a street hire would need.
There were some good F/T dudes in my class back in 2001. Not trying to be a tool to the F/T crowd, just wondering how this all happened. It was probably explained to me at some point back in 2001 at AA, but that was many lost brain cells ago...
The original Suppliment W/Letter 3 (as termed in each pilots contract) was an agreement by 4 parties (AA,APA,AE management, AE ALPA) to allow 67 RJ's at Eagle (42 EMB-145/25 CRJ-700). In exchange for allowing this the APA demanded furlough protection should AA shrink as a result of it. This protection involved an equal number of RJ captain slots at Eagle for AA furloughees displacing those who accepted the flowthru (known as CJ captains), i.e., it was the ability to bump those flowthru's completing their company imposed 2-year lock-in.
On the Eagle side, in exchage for getting the RJ's and giving up their seats to AA furloughees in the event of furlough, they got not only a seniority number at AA, but were assigned an actual class, but then withheld from that class (freeing up that seat for a street-hire) for 24 months, to allow AMR to recoup their training costs and ensure an orderly transition.
Several things then happened. First, AMR slipped both sides a rusty musket, by making an end run around the agreement and convincing Embraer to build smaller RJ's that could be placed at Eagle freely as they were under the LOA seating/MGW language and they started hiring at AA IMMEADIATELY, instead of the claim they wouldn't hire at AA for 2 years, allowing AE pilots to accrue senioirty at AA. As such, AE ended up with hundreds of the pesky little buggers........and well, I could expand for hours on that.
Next, was the TWA acquisition and then 9/11. The whole agreement then became nuttier then squirrel turds. about 150 flowthru's actually went to AA by 2001 before the music stopped and subsequently perhaps 400 or so AA furloughees came back to Eagle. With the latest 215 to flow, it has directly benefitted close to an equal number of pilots on either side who actually took benefit of its provisions, but my numbers admittedly aren't exact.