I remember before I left flying with and meeting in training, both a guy and a gal that had been at ALK 10+. Thought they were nuts, but I was nice and positive about AA. With 20/20 hindsight I’d go Delta first, then Alaska.

 

This merger presents no benefit to the HAL group. It’s destroying our quality of life and upending the entire reason we all came to HAL. We can agree we are all unhappy about this shotgun marriage.

No HAL pilot has ever left to go work for Alaska, however I have flown with a few that left Alaska to come to HAL.

We should be fighting for above industry standard pay rates and work rules.

 

We can go through the basics:

- Pessimism isn’t a strategy. That’s not what’s going on here. Pessimism is what your rather poor interpretation of things is, entirely in your own head.

- Looking at the delivery schedule, delays and a realistic take on the SLI isn’t being pessimistic. It’s being realistic and practical about my career outlook.

- My strategy is to prepare for a downgrade. Due to a reduction bid on the 737. Or a reduction bid post SLI where some HAL pilots who no longer wish to commute bid for SEA 737. That’s what a strategy is.

- Being hopeful this all works out for the best isn’t a strategy. Having a back up plan I don’t want to go through with is.

 

I can not hold short call reserve. I am unstacked every weekend between Friday and Monday and I am always pushed into long call convertible reserve with many circadian flips and red eyes. There is a reason it goes junior. I'd hope that after being on reserve for 2 years I could at lest hold short call reserve but I can not. I bid for it every month.

You can look at the secondary reserve bid award on the pilot webpage. It would take you less than 30 seconds.

 

I can think of a major one for the HAL group. It's that you get to continue to be employed as an airline pilot. Instead of starting over at the bottom of someone else's seniority list, you get to pontificate about how much more deserving you are of our seniority spots than we are. Seems like a big win for you.

 

Other than avoiding impending BK and a management team who knows how to make money sure bro. And now we get to hear how it’s only fair that we are below you on the list 🤗

Wonder why QOL was so good? It was fantasy land. Wasn’t making money. But sure blame Alaska for making things efficient and profitable 😂

 

HAL is the states largest employer and wasn’t going away but thanks for saving us. We have been around for 96 years and were very profitable prior to COVID. None of us wanted this but yet here we are.

I’m not saying what’s fair and how the SLI should go, I have merely pointed out what’s happened historically. The arbitrator will decide whats “fair” and we’ll all be unhappy.

Perhaps we should focus on getting improvements for ALL pilots in the JCBA.

 

HAL wasn’t going away but cool theory.

I’m not pontificating, but rather trying to provide some historical insight after three decades in this career.

There is a reason the JCBA comes before the SLI now. Perhaps we should focus on getting an industry leading JCBA.

 

We have some real "living their best life" dreamers... The rest of us who look at it more rationally know of the life line and potential huge upswing we were just gifted.

After more than a quarter century in the business, multiple furloughs, bankruptcies, pay freezes and CEO's lying, I know the other option wasn't gonna be good. (And given our propensity for taking in the shorts to keep everything "local" we would have been handed something worse than an ULCC contract)

 

It's a small State, that's not saying a whole lot. Our competition routinely supports roughly 10-15x the size.

My guess is we didn't need that many employees but nepotism is strong in HI and we were losing our shorts for 4+ years while everyone else was killing it. Our business would literally continue to be a losing effort as long as Japan (and the rest of that side of the Pacific) is not traveling. Japan hasn't even come back to the 40% mark because they destroyed their dollar. HI still compares everything to 2019 while the rest of the Country has rebounded or never succumbed to the lunacy in the first place. P.I. plan, as a typical accountant does, was to cut routes to profitability. Problem is he wasn't going to cut a route and add a new one. He was going to cut a route and just increase where we already flew to.

Adding one route a year and calling it a win wan't that Earth shattering. Going from "Content" to that 365 thing isn't ground breaking either, but that's what we waste our bandwidth on.