What's the Plan?
 

Right now, ALK seems like a ship without a rudder. They're getting pressured in the north by Delta. They're getting pressured in the South and Hawaii by Southwest.

Every other airline is making big steps in growth. Southwest wants 25% in 3 years. Frontier just ordered 130+ airframes.

What is Angle Lake's plan? I'm not seeing it. All they've hinted at is a mild restructuring and retreating from markets. They're walking away from the premium transcon market. They want to "reinforce" the destination network from SF and LA, but they're way too slow to market and Southwest is going to eat their lunch.

The airline industry is and has been feast and famine. Right now, it's feast time. And Alaska seems dead set on missing this window, losing market share, and squandering the benefits of the acquisition.

Help me feel better about this. Where's the big order?

I'm not holding my breath for any order, much less a big one. Angle Lake is who we thought they were. There is a definite lack of vision on their part. They have bungled up the buyout/merger to boot.

There is no leadership in our management. They are just CPAs and are good with spreadsheets and pinching pennies. That's all they know.

I'm seeing it too. We're getting our butts kicked. Our operation sucks and we are alienating our customers.

Nothing much we can do about it, since they don't value us or our opinions. Just watch this place fall apart. If we're lucky, someone will buy us out and put us out of our misery. That's they only way we can be rid of our ineffectual management team and our BOD, which seems to be out to lunch.

It’s mind boggling how out of touch they are. Everyone else is growing like crazy and we are reducing and losing customers. Yay!

The plan? Simple. Stay as low cost and lean as possible. Mild growth for the next 12-18mo and then... BAM! Another merger, acquisition, buyout, etc. (JB, SW, AA, DL, hell who knows) Point is there's no way we stay competitive in this industry at our current pace without being bought or merging. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride. Go to work, do your job, nothing more, and go back to our families. Stay informed and unified and maybe we can knock out a great CBA in 2020. Or as I mentioned previously, were bought or merge.

Well said.

Just as an observation, Delta appears to be doing REALLY well in ANC. That should scare the Bejesus out of the Anglers.

So who's out of touch? US airline growth is about 4% for 2017 (http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/Documen...s-jun-2017.pdf)

Most of that is airlines just flying bigger airplanes (Southwest and United). (https://www.routesonline.com/news/29...-in-the-world/)

Delta and United might be moving seats on to Alaska's routes--but not much growth in the US.

Sit back and relax. Worry about the things you can control.

I'm unsure how nearly 8% growth annual projected is a "ship without a rudder." And why get into the costly "arms race" of a maintaining dedicated sub-fleet chasing after premium transcons against companies like AA, UA, and DL that benefit from huge corporate agreements? The course AS is plotting isn't as high-yield on a per-customer basis, but it's a MUCH bigger market segment they're going after in transcons.

But part of that is keeping costs low to remain competitive when AA/DL/UA/B6 try to fight with fares that trash yields for everyone.

AS took a knee this past quarter due to the QX fiasco, definitely - but barring that, I doubt there'd be anywhere near the hand-wringing that appears to be going on right now. And lest we forget, PBP is STILL projecting a payout in the 7.5 to 8% range; it may seem low since we've been spoiled by record payouts of over 9% for the past 5 years, but it's still healthy.

Take this one milestone at a time and you'll see things improving. QX is already righting their ship. 12/31 is the last day for Elevate. Then SOC in January, and single PSS on 4/25/18. Along the way, you see the first Airbus leave the paint shop in AS livery, followed by everything in the fleet getting retrofitted into the new interiors.

It's going to be an interesting ride, and I think, a very rewarding one.

Management Troll.

It is not a rudderless ship...none of us are on their ship(excluding the troll). Their ship has nothing to do with being in the airline business. Their ship is a boutique investment firm. It has been sailing the same course for at least 20 years. Straight and true. It’s purpose is to deliver signifigant returns to those aboard...Make no mistake....No one that actually produces the profits is invited aboard. The Firm spends more on marketing/employee mis-information and lawyers then they do on critical operational items.
In doing so they have created a very loyal work force with significantly depressed expectations....That is the “Secret Sauce” of Alaska Airlines. If you bother to scratch the surface, the only “culture” you will find will be similar to the fine coating of mold that grows on everything in King County....Certainly come here for a job...But dont make a comparison between this job and a job at an airline company...It will help if you depress your expectations before you apply.......If you are already here and overly vested in the myth of the PNW and staying then relax. Nothing has changed in the last 25 years and it certainly wont change in the next 25 years...

8%?? Where is the number coming from? The delivery schedule sure doesn't correlate with this number.

So unless you're being funny with the numbers by including Horizon in those figures, 8% is just a fantasy.

And if you start parking Airbuses, then you're just plain lying.

OMG. You are too funny. If you want to try and send marketing folks out to mitigate the bad press your pilots are putting out there and hurting your recruiting efforts, you should start with not quoting company email talking points. Perhaps report back to your overlords how unhappy we are and how dissapointed we are our managment group. No-one takes you seriously. Please stop embarrassing yourself and frankly the rest of us that are actually Air Group Pilots.

For God's sake, if you are going to pretend to be a pilot, at least try and talk like one.

Who said I was a pilot, or even pretending to be one? This is a public forum and anyone can join. I'm simply sharing my opinion. If it differs from yours, great - tell me why you believe I'm wrong and we can discuss it.

Or, you and others can go back to saying LALALALAICANTHEARYOULALALALA and calling me "troll," but that doesn't mean what I'm saying is wrong merely because you happen to not want to hear it.

Well there is your answer............this is actually quite pathetic.

Gas Lamping is not an opinion. Giving your B.S. a forum of response is allowing you a path to continue the spread of crafted lies and misinformation. The Alaska management group made this bed. Your own fearless leader testified in the arbitration that you were willing to threaten the relationship with your pilots to maintain your cost advantage. Enjoy the results. We will be out in the world, in every airport, in every hotel, on every van, on this site and at job fairs telling the truth of what it is actually like working for this company. We don't have to tell them to not apply here, they will see the strife you have caused. They will see the God awful schedules, the below standard living and pay conditions, the lack of job protections and the absence of commitment to the employees that enrich them and their share holders. They will hear of the operational collapses, the lack of proper staffing and resources, the safety programs that are disgarded for the sake of ontime, the plan that is spoken of but never revealed and obviously is not working.

The quality applicants will flee, the left overs will only fuel the collapse of the crafted persona you wish to maintain to the outside world.

I will not engage you, and I encourage other to do the same.

Greedy Bastages. 😂

MODERATOR INPUT: Anyone can participate, but if you're injecting yourself into pilot business you need to conduct yourself like the guest that you are and be clear about what exactly you are.

Thank you!!

EA CO AS, at least identify your roll.

Why don't most share your "facts"?....... because history hasn't been good to this pilot group with the way B squared has treated labor groups, and as BM stated, they are happy to have bad relations. Hope is all speculative and forward looking in a very competitive market, with management more concerned about satisfying Wall St than being aggressive in an unprecedented growth market. Reading the arbitration hearings tells a much different story than yours, it's not all rainbows and butterflies, and the demise of QX is an example of how things are going and how much their egos can hurt AG.

If our speculative "growth" is tied to our regional feed, it's not looking promising. More likely, future growth will be tied to the next merger.

As one person has said... lay off the "Hope-ium".

I didn't know it was possible to be "spoiled" by a sub-standard profit sharing plan.

What was Delta's percentage again?

Even virgins was 14+%

As a co-worker, I’d suggest that whether or not we maintain a cost advantage or have a cost structure that renders us unable to compete is my business, pilot or not. And unlike others here, I’ve not resorted to ad-hominem attacks because my opinion differs from that of others. Also, with due respect, I’ve not seen anywhere in the rules of this forum where identifying yourself is a requirement to exchange ideas. If it is, please show me where, and I’ll be on my way. If it’s not, also with respect, I’d ask that the moderators only interject as a mod when or if forum rules are violated.

Change name to EA CO AS POS

Rules include no flamebait, non-pilots interjecting into airline pilot business very quickly reaches that threshold. Your interests are not our interests in every case. You're welcome to identify yourself (by what you are, not necessarily who you are) and address shared areas of interest. But in this conversation you are a guest, and that's the way it is and always has been (hence Airline Pilot Central, vice Airline Employee Central). I'm sure you have your own forums to engage in heated debates with your own peers. Same for 15-year old pilot wannabes, tolerated but only a little bit.

We're all pilots. What are you, a FA? MX? DX?

-We are cutting routes and frequency while other airlines are rapidly increasing out put.

-we have a management team who believes the right course of action is to provide a far inferior product while other airlines race to provide better amenities

-we have a management team who is too short sighted to see what's on the horizon (no pun intended) in terms of pilot recruitment and detainment (auto corrected from retention but detainment is actually more suitable.)

-most new flying is being given away hand over foot to regional carriers while we have nothing in place to protect our jobs and trust our product to be flown largely by an external non controllable entity

-a far inferior profit sharing plan.. and a joke of a monthly incentive plan that in order to trigger a payout would have to hit unattainable metrics in the airports that are our hubs

-a management team who somehow does not see that they are losing the California battle and quickly. Virgin customer numbers are down and will
continue to plummet because our product has gone belly up since as took over. Nothing is ever fixed, catering has been slashed, and metics are so important that we strive for on time more than getting people onboard... alaska will not "bear the fruits of this merger" if it does not change course quickly, all of our customers are going to JetBlue, not AS. That's because alaska is a boring old regional airline that killed off virgin, people do not know Alaska airlines exists, or now that virgin is going away are going back to Expedia and becoming fare shoppers again.


EA CO AS, maybe you're right about this not being a rudderless ship... I think this ship very much has a rudder... a rudder being steered by a blind skipper that's too stupid to admit he can no longer see and is driving the ship right into a rock jagged shore. Hope you have a life raft, because a much larger percentage of this pilot group than you think has applications out to other (much better) legacy carriers in attempts to secure our own life rafts. The sooner that you and management realize that without us, the company will crumble (faster than it already is), then the sooner you can steer the ship away from shore.
-

This has got to be the first time in APC history that a shill management troll unashamedly admitted to being such!

You guys have a very bold management group over there! I hope you all continue to stand strong, and eventually prevail for all of us in the industry.

Sad to see VX killed off. Probably their biggest mistake. Should have gone the other way. VX was a national brand. AS has a long way to go.

Didja ever wonder why people hate airline pilots? Yeah...that's why.

This thread is not a popularity contest, it's a business discussion.

A business discussion...you can't be serious Rick.

Let's be honest, this is a pilot ***** board...nothing more. It is a place where the angry elves and malcontents at each airline come to vent about their unhappy lives when they are done beating off to midget porn in the hotel room, wannabe airline CEOs who barely made it thru Riddle with degree in "Aeronautics" or Chico State with "Business" degree come to tell everyone how to run an airline, the poor military guys come to get a clue, a few witty souls come to crack jokes, the creative guys come to troll the jackwagons who are too f'ing stupid to know they are being trolled, and the rest of us drop by from time to time to eat some popcorn and watch the circus.

A business discussion...please. Don't make me laugh. You guys do a fine and thankless job moderating this sh1tsh0w but let's accept it for what it is, eh?

The Plan
 

The plan.

https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/a...what-pwow.html

Rickair,

If it please the court, in support of my previous post I submit people's Exhibit 1 listed above.

+1.

"Fly the contract."

I didn't say it was a great business discussion. But there's a lot of info get's tossed out on APC, once you learn to read between the lines and adjust the gain on the signal strength. The large majority of APC visitors lurk, but don't post.

++++1 Good response. It's disingenuous to say that there's anything "businessy" being discussed. It's not like a board meeting making serious decisions. It's a B*****ing board, lets be honest. Anyone who says otherwise takes himself/herself too seriously.

:D Well played, sir.

Just to be clear I was in no way supporting the idiotic post of that PWOW silliness. I was using that post as an example of why a pilot b1tch board can't be taken seriously. Nor can it ever be confused with anything remotely related to a "business discussion" when you have morons that write anonymous little rants and manifestos.

A boob like that is the airline industry's equivalent of Ted Kaczynski.

Whoever penned the PWOW thread is an imbecile.

I couldn't agree more, and based on that, I'd propose we keep it in that realm, rather than condescendingly referring to someone with a different opinion as merely a "guest" and implying they have no right to discuss issues impacting pilots.

Speaking of business decisions, it occurs to me that management's decision to seek pay rates that were less than the Big Four was actually in the best interest of the business, and also the pilots. Assume for a moment the pilot group were offered industry-best pay; that results in costs potentially being higher than the other carriers, making competition difficult, if not impossible.

This results in stagnant growth, meaning fewer upgrade opportunities or even poor job security if the company had to resort to cutbacks. While those at the top of the seniority list would still be ok, particularly those nearing retirement, the rest of the membership would be in jeopardy. And lest we forget, there are thousands of other non-pilot employees whose careers would be in jeopardy as well if the company agreed to a contract that was so generous it made competition impossible.

So while BM could have possibly chosen his words more carefully, the fact remains that simply saying, "Sure, here you go," and handing an industry-best contract to the pilot group would have made them all happy, there'd be no point in doing so if it means the long-term survival of the company was placed in jeopardy by doing so. In fact, it would have been irresponsible to do that.

Again, I know my opinion won't be popular here, but these are called "collective bargaining agreements" for a reason; neither side gets 100% of what they want, and that's a good thing. Management getting all their asks could potentially result in every member of the pilot group being unhappy, and no one wants that. ALPA getting all their asks could potentially result in the company having to shrink, being sold, or going under entirely, and no one wants that either.

At least I hope not!

I'm with you. As a clarification, you can't pick and choose the sections of the contract you approve of. As long as any pilot operates legally within the scope of the contract (as opposed to making individual deals with crew schedulers) he/she must be allowed to do so.

Don't like certain sections? Get in touch with your LEC rep and have him bring it up at the next MEC meeting. Until then....

"Fly the contract."

You are completely out to lunch. You have zero idea what you are talking about, none of it makes any sense. We all have the facts on the entire arbitration. You are attempting to spew management based propaganda.