[QUOTE=rickair7777;3992318]Yes you can have SOC first, we've had it for months, still working on JCBA. Unless a current CBA specifies otherwise. AS is enjoying most but not all of the synergies, while enjoying the lower rates on the HA side, plus any scheduling/soft time benefit they have with the AS CBA.

I think one of the issues with SY and G4 will be managements greed. Even though we have little overlap now what we’re doing is so similar any changes post SOC could be seen and contested as disparate growth or alter ego flying. Just a myriad of scope, RLA, and MB issues. They are gonna want to announce new routes quickly after the SOC that’ll be challenging, and if any of that goes to the cheaper labor group I think management is going to run into a lot of issues. That’s also why we need ALPA here, the Toonster truck driver lawyers are completely incompetent when it comes to the RLA, MB, or pretty much any other sort of legal expertise pertaining to the airline world.

with AS and HA at least there is more distinction in the flying with the exception of the Hawaii routes but changes in that would be pretty visible.

 

I think getting a 50% savings on 2/3 of your pilots is gonna outweigh whatever “synergies” management misses out on by having separate operations. Company is telling Wall Street there are synergies just on the revenue management and loyalty side.

Doesn’t your retention bonus mou extend until another agreement is reached? With that are you still 50% lower costs? I got a brief look at that on a commute and was thinking that was a decent bit of leverage. Also there was a sentence that led me to believe you don’t necessarily have to be teamsters to receive that $. The intent was pretty clear. Shouldn’t really matter who bargained it.

 

Yes SOC means single certificate, which normally means bringing the acquired operation under the acquiring carrier's certificate.

Yes that would also need a single OPSPEC but an OPSPEC can and will have differences across fleets. Although in this case it would likely mostly consist of just bringing the SY 737's under the G4 737 rules, except any operationally unique stuff might need to be carved out (and example might be if one carrier had HUDs and the other didn't.)

The acquired carrier's SOP/FOM would be adjusted, typically in several phases. Training would likely be via CBT or maybe just during recurrent. In some cases, such as for flows/checklists, you'll just get a memo to learn/practice a new way of doing things, which will be effective on a certain date... that would be a good week to take vacation, while people unfluck themselves

At or prior to SOC the acquired carrier's flight ops will be on the common OPSPEC, FOM, SOP, etc. The company can operate out of a single HQ and control center at that point, and I would expect that with just 737's to integrate.

At that point the company has achieved a lot of synergies, but crew admin, pay, contract admin etc would still need to be handled separately until JCBA. They would likely keep the 737's segregated, because the CBA workrules and scheduling would be different... they wouldn't want an entire G4 crew to time out because, if for example, the SY FO has better workrules in his CBA.

All of that can and likely will happen before JCBA and SLI. Not sure where the union merger fits into that but it would not be a holdup for SOC.

Everybody is locked into their original fleet(s) until SLI. There is the potential for painful pre-SLI adjustments to flying and domiciles as the company sets the table for SLI. They might also take advantage of a lower-cost pilot group by shifting flying from the higher-cost group. There's nothing to prevent say G4 planes from getting flowed through MSP, and also nothing to prevent them from opening a G4 737 crew base in MSP. Not saying they will, just something to be aware of.

We actually got the company to agree to some limits on block hour changes in the TPA, but some AS pilots were sure surprised when the company opened a 787 base in SEA, crewed by HA pilots.

I don't know.

 

I can’t speak for HA cargo ops,but if it is like SY cargo ops where crews intermingle between cargo, charter and pax ops they almost definitely operate under 117. Everything at SY is 117.

 

It's possible.

AS definitely shuffled some mainland-HI flying around, and some AS pilots were really unhappy when their long OGG layovers turned into short GEG layovers.

Long-term, all the HI flying will be on HA branded airplanes, but for now they don't really care about the paint job. The company can do anything they want with paint and branding... some HA aircraft now have an AS paint job.

The TPA protections we got were on total block hours IIRC... the company can and did shuffle block hours amongst the bases, as long as it stayed with the original pilot group. They're also opening and shrinking bases pre-JCBA/SLI.

 

HA cargo ops is a separate category and only does freight flying. There is no inter-mingling of pax and freight flying. That said, the cargo op is done under 117 and contractually required to be that way.

 

Well you bring up a good point about TPA and that will be another battleground for us. I spoke to one of our Eboard members and they were clueless that you actually negotiate these provisions and they are still operating on the idea that IBT will just be the de facto representation since G4 is larger. I haven’t had any experience with TPA negotiations under separate representational groups but both unions will have to sit down and figure this out prior to the SOC or I doubt it’ll happen (the TPA).

 

Well at least it sounds like our new Eboard is on-top of things.

 

You may have your expectations misaligned considering your newly elected union president was previously a trustee and secretary treasurer for over 2 years leading up to the emergency trusteeship.

 

Yeah and he was trash in those roles too lol 🤣