With all due respect to each pilot group, was Jet Blue to “strapped?” Wasn’t it really a brilliant example of driving up the cost, forcing Alaska to pay a huge premium for VX?
The music stopped and Jet Blue sat down first.

Dude you're trying a bit too hard here to justify Alaska overpaying for Vx. Everyone with perspective knows this.
Good luck to all of you at Alaska- hope it works out.

If they cared about culture they would have stayed away from VA.
“Proudly flying Boeing” on the nose of those 60 A320s

Holy mog, I almost agreed with one of your earlier posts and then I saw this. The entitlement reached a new level. Together my wife and I have gone through 8 airlines, 6 of which were the place to go, and are gone now. What exactly makes you better, you managed to get hired by northwest regional airlines AKA Alaska, and a other people who lost their job while VA was hiring? Your current contract, that “legacy” (for lack of 4 letter word) AAG pilots signed is probably worse than wath VA pilots would have agreed to seeing as they were the fastest union drive in Alpa history.

I know it deeply offends some AS guys to read this, but while I do like some things that we got as a result of the acquisition, for pilots with the same longevity, VX's combined hourly rate, scheduling and QOL provisions WITHOUT A CONTRACT was actually better than AS's WITH A CONTRACT!

Legacy in name only.....Think about that... smh

Is this guy a troll? Dude before you go insulting everyone get auto-correct, grammarly, or better yet learn how to write. When you have so many writing mistakes you are completely discounted.

P.S. Nobody at VX thinks they are saving AS, we just along for the ****ty ride.

Were those scheduling and QOL provisions already in place when VX started up? Who fought for them? Maybe it was to counter balance the lower pay rate. Who knows, it’s a moot point now. I’ve talked with a few VX guys at the SFO hotel and many talk of the extra pay for picking up extra trips. I hope we don’t have a bunch of VSA/premium kings to enable the Angle Lake crowd. As stated before this “You Suck....No You Suck” sh$t is getting old. This list intergration is going to burn like the clap for a while. But we have to live with it and move on with “Maybe being a united group.” Just be glad someone bought you, to bad it was us. The more sh#t we sling at each other just adds to the shi#$& ride. By the way welcome aboard!LOL

You're wasting your time, this is a nameless internet forum. Zero accountability, so something you don't have the balls to say on a crew van you can say here. These tough guys should sign up for the in house Alaska forum with your name attached, repeat what you said here and stop being keyboard tough guys.

Wow. A windfall. Really? Lets see, living and driving to the NYC airports, here's my upcoming windfall: all likely NY base closure. Forced to the next closest bases which are all 2,200nm commutes. Or pack up and move and disrupt family network, connections, friends, relatives. At the same time losing PBS to go to crappy line bidding work rules that have no trip-touch pay protections and add back up 75 hrs. And losing the transcon network to be re-deployed as a up/down west coast regional airline, which will mean less efficient schedules, lower block/day, and having to work a lot more to get the same credit. All for $36/hr more. I would gladly give that back and just keep what I had, but you know we can't change what's happened, and we can't change that one company purchased another company.

It was absolutely to counter balance the lower pay rate, with just enough regular, incremental increases, to keep us from "rioting". We were under no illusions about that.....

Most of these provisions were in place from day one and there were tweaks and additions as we the pilots agitated for improvements.

Management did string us along, and they played us beautifully. That is why we had our first union drive (VAPA) only 2 or 3 years after we started up, as I recall.