Send a soundoff. CT makes sure each of those gets to the appropriate department, such as the negotiating committee. I have a list of relatively minor items like these- vacancy bid frequency/timelines, PBS timelines, etc- that I send in every now and then, if only to annoy the NC.

Problem is, most of our pilots can’t be bothered to do so… and just vote yes to the pay rates we were gonna get anyway.

 

Exactly. There's no longer any technological reason against this. The last teletype was retired at least two years ago.

I find it hard to believe that most of the pilot group hasn't made clear they want this at least once. The company hates change and they especially hate accelerated deadlines.

 

Oh the company likes change. Like how they built a new glass office campus for the admins, and a hotel for $250 million ( a comparable hotel costs about $50m) That's where their priorities are. And when they come back for concessions from your paycheck, that nice glass office will still be there for them to enjoy, and those, oh so ergonomic and expensive, office chairs.

 

So the takeaway from APA limiting the company which makes the company take a long time to issue the results is to...further restrict the company in what they must to.

I dunno, that kinda sounds like when government creates a crappy law to fix another crappy law they made.

I can say with 100% certainty they know what the results are exactly within 24 hours of the bids closing.

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It used to be monthly. Like it or not our 4x a year is industry leading I'm pretty sure.

 

I’d rather them build infrastructure than buyback stock.

 

They haven't bought back stock since before covid, and yes everyone thinks the same way. Unfortunately, they thought they had to do what DL and UA were also doing at the time, and according to Doug we'd never lose money again, and a bad yearly profit was $3b net.

 

The things AA chooses to do to imitate DL and UA, versus the things they decide aren't important to imitate...makes you want to pull your hair out

 

That is part of it. I called the guy, Ken Blessum (sp?), who ran manning for years. They'd announced reinstatements for displaced guys back to S80 CA DFW. First reinstatements after the long post 9/11 drawdown. No awards. Back then they were run monthly. Next month more reinstatements posted in DFW S80 CA...award had no reinstatements. I called Ken and said "you're killing these guys. They've had those reinstatements in for year (5-8?) because they want the job. Posting reinstatements and then not awarding them is like Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown. He said he wanted to put the S80 CA training slots in DFW but unexpectedly BOS and DCA had a bunch of Captains unexpectedly bid out. Oops. "I needed those bodies more in BOS and DCA then I did in DFW so I used the training slots for those two months to refill BOS and DCA. But the DFW S80 CA manning is a higher priority now. I have to fill DFW first so if guys try to bid out of BOS or DCA they'll be withheld in the next bic vacancy award." That was a bit of a peek behind the curtain as to some of the detail we'd don't know, or see.

He also said he used to post amended vacancy messages years ago but finally stopped. "Do I do it for every change? Two fewer S80 CA's in DCA now? Or just the big changes? I finally decided that I'd just resend the generic message "make sure you double check your Preference bids in case 'things change.' He went on to say, during big changes, like furloughs, recalls, external events (market crash, 9/11, etc) marketing ("we're all responding to market capacity planning's moves") will sometimes make big changes a day or two before the closing so we're scrambling to figure out the new manning plan right before the award is posted."

 

Exactly. The training schedule request shows "closes 01/11/2026" so expect preliminary awards the Friday before (01/09/2026).

 

How low will NB CA go for both fleets anyone’s guess?