Ahh...ok I see what he's saying. He's saying that "business travel" has increased 10%, but then that means that they have lost somewhere else, because total revenue is flat for AA YOY.

I interpreted corporate as AA, not business travel.

Kirby said the same thing on the earnings call that there has been a "double digit" increase in business travel.

I wonder who AA and UA took that from or if its just business travel coming back.

Capacity was slightly down YoY, so more revenue from fewer ASMs. Higher business travel vs basic economy plus a little more premium from the leisure traveler probably explains the difference.

10% isn't much since we lost some absurd amount like 50% from the failed direct booking strategy. Coming back at 10% per quarter is good but not amazing and means several years to get back to baseline. Hopefully they will keep coming back.

Polishing the financials of the company are not the job of a cockpit crew or a union. Our job is to move passengers from point A to point B in a safe, timely, and comfortable manner. The job of the union is to protect the seniority, pay, and quality of life of its members by not negotiating subpar contracts.

C-Suits and VPs are very well compensated to do their jobs. It is not our job to cover for their inadequacies.

👍

filler

dude, I stuck my head into the AA forum because I have a lot of friends there and I want the best for them.

You are so full of sh$&(. We voted to take a pay cut during COVID? I’ll answer the rhetorical question. We voted to decrease our mpg so that we wouldn’t furlough. Isn’t that what a union is? An organization that looks out for all members? I remember the panic my friends had that were at AA during Covid. Do you?

And Charlotte.

The irony of the bold, highlight, italicized right….

Margaritaville, enjoy your 10 years left 👊. Go listen to some Jimmy and chill from the that toxic Rum Runner.

Isom isn't stupid. They took a gamble and lost. LCC/ULCC's were killing it pre-COVID, and it didn't seem like a bad strategy at the time. They are clearly pivoting and it's gonna take some time to right the ship, but I'm confident we are heading in the right direction.

Leave the man to his crying. It’s funnier that way lol Most of his posts are about him trashing DL and UA. Talking about furlough this and implode that when the reality is we don’t even think about him

Did AA pay down some more of the debt this quarter aside from interest payments or servicing the debt?

It was a poor strategy from the beginning. "Killing it" is relativistic. You were never going to make the billions in profit going that way, you need that premium and business travel. That's like saying Susy's Lemonade Stand is killing it because she made 1000% profit, spent 10$ and made $100. While the supermarket down the street is not because they only made 10% profit for $1,000,000.

They continue to pay it down so someday it will cease to be such a drag on profits. That's why they always include a bullet point about liquidity in the earnings statements. The airline has been on bankruptcy watch for a long time. Management wishes Wall Street will stop thinking that and bid up the stock. Time will tell if that's a good strategy.

Absolutely. Basic economy was the answer to the ULCC model in the US and it's why they are having so much trouble now, their business model was successfully checkmated.

As you say, scale matters. Walmart has margins in the 2% range but when you do hundreds of billions in sales, small percentages add up to real money. We lag Delta and United on margins for two primary reasons, fewer premium seats to sell and debt service. Management has acknowledged this and is working on it but there's no quick fix.

As mentioned earlier it really sucks that Delta and United now have enough free cash flow that they can take aircraft deliveries without financing, that's going to make it much harder to catch them.

More specifically, it was only ONE MONTH of reduced MPG. None of this stopped pilots from picking up trips including Premium Pay trips.

For voting this in we got:
No furloughs
5% pay raises
Stricter limits on RJ flying
1st Class on all deadheads
Pay protection for all pilot displacements (still paid at higher payrate)
Early retirement option for all pilots with 20+ years
Health care of all pilots who took leaves

It was a huge win for the pilot group because just a few months after voting it in the company had to restore us to MPG because they started taking the PSP money.

Near the very top, or at least very close to the top, of the list for me personally why APA needs to go: The way they protected the QoL of senior pilots during covid vs the JOBS of junior pilots. Absolutely disgusting. The 2 clowns that were my reps are thankfully retired.

I was happy to see the DCA VP lose the last election. It mystied me how he got reelected in the last round after his famous comments and emails during that time period.

All that fuel being wasted while we wait at a gate for half an hour or more for someone to park the plane…they got bigger fish to fry than some single engine taxi savings!!!

APA has a very simple philosophy, things must be better for senior pilots and worse for junior ones. If something could possibly be construed as a win-win for the pilot group as a whole it must be modified to skew the benefits to the senior. Once one accepts this, then most of their behavior makes sense. (Following this logic, APA also has more age 67 agitators than all of ALPA combined)

On the other hand I would prefer to be furloughed for a time and return to these pay rates than keep my job at 50% as has happened in the past or worse take that cut, get furloughed anyway and have the cut still in effect when recalled. I hope that lesson from the not too distant past has been learned well.

Safe, customer focused, and economically sensible in that order.
While I agree, $100 wasted every flight is $100m in cash wasted a year. It's a seemingly small amount of money but scales to a large amount, especially when you consider that extra $100m in profit would add 10% to our yearly profit last year.

Also I don't think SET saves any money, really only in certain circumstances.

It's something of a drop in the bucket but it is ridiculous how many times I walk through a terminal and see an airplane halfway into the gate with all 3 running. I get your ****ed and DGAS but for pity's sake just shut one down. You're not teaching the company a lesson or accomplishing anything besides being unprofessional.

Furlough over permanent cuts.

But none of the COVID stuff contained permanent cuts. My regional, our LOA expired every 3 months and needing reupped. UAL had triggers when full contract provisions would come back, etc.

Only APA said, " Nah" to all that and said, " furlough away because I got furloughed as well". And the former DCA VC saying he was done fighting for the junior guy. And in an email to a person facing furlough basically said tough luck, I got furloughed too once, and it will make you a better person, etc.

Show your math on that, please.

Hahaha. Do your own research. Start with your own guys having a lengthy discussion about it on your page lol.

I was actually pretty surprised by the behavior of senior pilots towards me when I was going to be furloughed. Nobody really conveyed sympathy or anything just an attitude of we all get furloughed suck it up. APA made it clear they didn't value me in any way because I wasn't senior.

it’s not just UAL and Delta
Delta made about $7.4 billion from American Express (AXP) last year, "driven by high single-digit growth in co-brand spend and over 1 million new card acquisitions," President Glen Hauenstein said on the company's fourth-quarter earnings call.

American signed an exclusive deal with Citi (C) on co-branded credit cards in early December, sending its shares up 17% that day. The carrier, which said it received $5.6 billion from its co-branded credit card and other parters in the 12 months ended Sept. 30, expects that number to keep growing, eventually approaching $10 billion.

There was never a 50% anything talked about during covid. A temporary 5-10 hour reduction of the LCWs(like everyone else did) and no one would've been furloughed. I was told "LCW has tentacles in too many parts of the contract." That was code for "The vocal minority IMAXers would be upset." That vocal minority along with the "I was furloughed these guys can pay their dues" crowd tipped the scale into letting AA furlough 1500 and ZTL another 1000. Zeeeeeerrroooooo. IYKYK.

The DCA BOD guy mentioned above had an email leaked saying something along the lines of "I'm done expending energy protecting pilots from furloughs. It's time to move on."

O I almost forgot APA's internal grade-school level spat that led to the negotiating committee being dissolved in 2020 during one of the most crucial negotiating environments since probably 9/11. We had no standing negotiating committee for many months and therefore could not engage the company because like 3 dudes at APA HQ were really really mad at eachother.

There are so so so many other examples it could be an entire thread.

I love this job and the seniority that I have makes my life pretty excellent but APA is a complete clown show and needs to go. It's 50% principle and 50% I want ALPA resources, not APA resources, for the next S6.

All that said I'd acknowledge that there are some great pilot and non-pilot people at APA.

This one is simple from an FO standpoint. You get the gist of if CA is going to entertain SET; out or in, or both after the first leg. If theyre not, just time your cooldown/APU spool up to minimize 3 running; ideally Avail (A32F) right when the Brake is set.

I don’t know what the 320 AOM flow guide says, but the company already tells us to do what your recommending: in the 73 after landing flow guide it says “appx 2 minutes prior to gate arrival, APU start”.

One of my friends is an AA 73 captain and he said there's a lot of cultural opposition to taxi on one, and also they have pretty strict taxi thrust limitations that are hard to work with for the 737NG. At Spirit we used to have a 40% limitation, which was removed around the time I became a captain. Definitely made it easier as sometimes 40% just didn't cut it.

But yea, I've been on AA where we had a 40 minute taxi out and they ran both engines the whole time. That's fuel you could have in your tanks and could make the difference between diverting or not later in the flight.

They took out the hard limits in the AOM when SET became a bigger focus.

I SET an NG once when we had that 50 minute taxi. According to the CEFA app, that only saved 100 lb. Now for 2000 flights, 100 lb for every one of those is a lot of fuel saved for the company.

There are zero limitations and the 737 is pretty easy to SET unless it is super heavy. People who never do it are either lazy, have a vendetta against the company, or both.

Frankly, taxi thrust restrictions are ridiculous. It's incredibly frustrating watching pilots practically crawl across a runway or up a slope, all because they're strictly adhering to a low N1% limit. Here's a news flash: Exceeding that limitation on taxi isn't going to trigger an alarm. I do it almost every flight and have never had any repercussions. As for anyone behind you, their spacing is their responsibility—focus on what's in front of you.

i would say it’s important to adhere to on ramps with ops pages stating use min taxi thrust near the gates and in alleyways; which exist at a lot of stations… but hey you do whatever you want so why not stop *****ing about other guys “techniques”??

Yeah, I was just longwinded in saying it. My point I guess is too many bubbas just crank it ASAP and that's not the best.

I’ll crank it ASAP in the summer in order to switch to the APU bleed for cooling during a 20 minute taxi in into DFW.

This is the way. Shut one down, APU bleed.

I'm fairly certain that's even in the book. A large number of pilots reject it because then after you park and shutdown you can smell a little exhaust getting sucked into the APU inlet.

I think that's somewhat silly since we're getting exhaust from other aircraft as we taxi around but it seems to be the primary objection. It's also critical to distinguish between fume events (your own burning, atomized oil) and just stinky exhaust. One is a major health hazard and the other is just an olfactory annoyance.

My technique at shut down is to deselect the APU bleed for about 2 minutes to minimize the smell and then select it on again. Works well, if it's too hot then we deal with the smell

Decent tailwind will blow engine #2's exhaust into the inlet on the 737.

When that happens, I do switch back to normal config and opt for 30% N1 when possible.

But I don't outright object to taxiing out or in on the APU bleed. Will give it a shot and if we start to smell exhaust, go to Plan B. But APU bleed taxi is always Plan A in hot temps.

Solution is obviously shut down number 2 if you decide to SET, but depending on which way you turn for the gate, can make your job fun by always electing to shut down #2.

I am not against SET. I have toyed around with it on the NG. Obviously it is no issue on the Max even when heavy( I have set a Max at 170,000 lb. and it was easy on flat ground at least). Only issue with the Max is just timing the other engine given how long it takes to start the LEAP's. When I had that 50 minute taxi in ORD in an NG, it was a pain to SET. Getting it moving from a standstill required ~50% N1 on the running engine and it was slow to accelerate. Can't recall the weight, but it was less than 155,000 lb. as that is my cutoff on whether I SET at all through my playing around. And as stated the CEFA app stated it only saved 100 lb. Didn't really prevent a RTG or diversion. Now again 2000 flights saving 100 lb on taxi adds up for the company. But just looking at my flight, it was nothing.

When the NG is below 140,000 lb. does it seem happy to SET. 140,000-150,000 lb depends on how flat it is. Even taxing on Kilo on the echo echo route can require 35-45% N1 on the running engine to maintain speed.

Agree, but also...Bid Avoid DFW May-Sep :D

Additional cooling procedures in the 737 work great. Huge difference in the blasting heat.