It's generally not a good idea to play your hand and show the minimum you are willing to accept. I find it entertaining to see all the beaten down senior folks at AA complaining about the "entitled millennials." I can't wait for the entitled youngsters to outnumber the beaten down senior contingent that just wants a few dollars more before they ride off into the sunset. The "at least I don't work for a living" crowd has been an anchor to our profession. We have historic leverage, it's time to use it.

 

I haven’t seen this at all. Where have you seen this? “The line” appears to be 95% against this proposal and that is mostly older pilots. What is your source?

 

Define “legacy.” Looks to me like it’s mostly 6-9k seniority guys that couldn’t get in the door under the old system. I’d bet there are few, if any, BTL new CKAs.

These new CKAs to me are our worst representatives right now. Clearly going against union guidance for personal enrichment. I see many justifications and excuses but fact of the matter is that if the company didn’t get those 100+ bodies as new CKAs our leverage would be through the roof. Training is an absolute disaster right now as far as scheduling goes. Imagine how it’d look with 100+ fewer CKA.

Gross.

 

This is the part I don’t understand. What is the benefit of being a CKA? 96 hours a month? You could fly one PM trip and be over 110 easily. The job? It’s a tough job and you’re always being stretched super thin. Nights in the DFW training hotel during your Sim month and non stop OE during your flying month. Again all for 96 hours? Its a hard pass for me even if we weren’t in contract negotiations. Work harder for less money. Brilliant!

 

Pretty much my point. These guys are taking a worse job, screwing everyone else in the hopes they get large improvements in the new contract. That, or they are ego maniacs. It's disgusting and there should be union consequences. I saw one guy on the internal forum claim he was heavily involved in union work but at the same time "never saw" the guidance to stay away from CKA jobs.

 

I'm not looking for a simple pay raise to keep up. I'm looking for a huge pay raise to try and bring this profession back to where I feel it should be. I'll be pulling the rope toward one direction and you'll be pulling it another. You can thank the people like me that came before us for pulling it upwards.

 

Didn’t we see what the company’s proposal was for improving the CKA job already? IIRC it was like one more day off per month (making it 13?), and a few other very insignificant improvements from what I could tell. And that’s the section the company actually has interest getting right!

These guys are in for a rude awakening. Our negotiations are going to last a lot longer than most believe. And if we go to mediation, we’re probably looking at years. All the while these new CKA are going to be run ragged for 96 hours in a constant training environment. Then when a TA is finally reached, they’re going to be very disappointed with the gains in section 12. Again it’s the one section the company wants to enhance asap and yet their last proposal included minor improvement for the CKA. Some people have to learn the hard way I guess.

 

The line is not an accurate representation of the pilot group. The line is a group of 50-100 of the 14,000 pilots.

 

I hate to say this but the longer negotiations last, the odds of getting any kind of full retro pay become more difficult to achieve, especially if you were to believe we are heading into recession. I’m a realist, I believe odds are growing for a slowdown. So if your thesis is anything close to this, then it behooves the union and management teams to come to a settlement asap. Negotiations are going to involve finding neutral ground. Employee wages going up a huge amount will likely lead to higher ticket prices and in a recession this will cause demand destruction and could put us right back into quarter after quarter of losses. If your belief is that things are rosy and profits will be sky high next year, sure, drag it out for top dollar. I’m a bit bearish right now for the near term. I want to go into this recession with a decent wage increase, I’m not sure I want to ride it out for the hopes of a grand slam. With that said, I expect 17% DOS minimum.

 

Agree.. personally I think 15/5/5. Retro of 3% for each year we worked under an expired JCBA. I don't think that's much to ask... especially when AA is cutting $40K annual retention checks at the 3 WO.