Nicely done, AA pilots! From everything I've read, it sounds like you learned from other airlines like United who thought voting yes would lessen the blow that management had planned on dealing anyway. This way, any imposed agreement only lasts until you exit bankruptcy, not 6-10 years.

I do have a question for someone who knows the RLA. If the judge abrogates the contract, do the pilots of AA not have the right to withdraw their services in the form of a strike? Otherwise, it starts to sound a lot like slavery to me. If someone tells me that they're not going to pay me a fair wage and I have no choice but to show up and fly my trip, how is that not a form of slavery? I know the individual can resign, but could the pilot group as a whole give the company the finger?

Really had no choice. Even the union admitted during the road shows it was punitive and a gross "over-reaching". It will be interesting to see how then plan develops from here on out, but I see little hope for AA unless something dramatic alters the present suicidal course.

No major corporation can expect to be viable, let alone competitive with a well of acid as their most critical employees. Only a true megalomaniac would think they could force that to work.

Thanks AA. I respect your pilot group for standing up and doing what was right for our profession, families and passengers. Maybe this is the high water mark of unethical and immoral CEO compensation/robbery and your no vote the beginning of a fair return to the people actually do the work. Best of luck. --a regional pilot

:D Awesome! Stay strong my friend!

You must be US Air east? lol Good job AA I hope it works out in the end.

Ha... ok, 2nd most. :D

That's a pretty healthy margin against it too. I've had a few AA guys in the jumpseat lately and they've been ready to go to the mat. Lots of respect for APA tonight.

Good job to all of you.

Don't be so sure; it could easily happen. Of course, then no AA pilots will show up for work, right?

Horton/Hale & Co. may not have been bluffing when they said it was an LBFO...they might be done negotiating.

Time will tell, I guess.

Way to go AA pilots.

They can't stop negotiating, it's a condition of the bankruptcy process and required by law. AMR management is acting improperly during this 1113(c) process, and they will lose it if they keep it up.

Great job AA pilots. I wish DALPA had your backbone.

To those of you from other airlines, thank you for the support!

We still have a long way to go and the road only gets steeper. Undoubtedly, we are looking at a scenario where there will be the most dire of threats will be made by the company and pilots fired (hostages, or as known at AA, "dead cats"). I pray the group can take the heat and not cave before we get the results we desire.

For those of you that don't know about the company's "offer", to put it briefly, it was not only punitive, but was an incredibly overreach/land grab. There were significant sections of the contract such as our reserve system that were reduced to one sentence. i.e. "The reserve system will be replaced by a reserve optimization system". Whatever that means. In other words, much of the contract would have been a dream "fill in the blank" contract for management to exploit for 6-10 years.

Onerous work rules and the new C-scale for the 319 would have meant that the pilots of AA would only be dragging down everyone else in the long run. Imagine, we could merge with a "discount airline", and their pilots would be taking a significant pay CUT!

I am hoping that APA has made a sharp turn from a political organization to good old fashioned organized labor. This path of capitulation has to end yesterday. A once proud career has become a job. We need to turn the ship around.

Your continued support is appreciated. At some point, you may be asked to do something to show your support for our fight. Remember, you will be helping raise the bar for the profession and will also be helping yourself in the long run.

I find it extremely interesting that anyone would even attempt to put this BK TA and the DAL contract on the same level. They're apples to oranges. DAL pilots weren't voting on a 6 year deal (try 1/3 of that) that included massive reductions in sick time, work rules, & scope.

Good for you AA pilots. You should be proud.

Cactusone, take your worn out crap to a new thread. You, the west, would be the last pilot group to take a stand.

The Northwest flight attendants are the only group to ever push it that far.

Here's the answer they got:

We hold that Section 2 (First) of the Railway Labor Act forbids an immediate strike when a bankruptcy court approves a debtor-carrier's rejection of a collective-bargaining agreement that is subject to the Railway Labor Act and permits it to impose new terms.


Here's the entire ruling if you're interested:

IN RE: NORTHWEST AIRLINES CORPORATION, Docket Nos.

Another RJ guy here saying thanks. Well done!

I'm a DFW guy, voted NO, and I'm ecstatic. Remember, DFW is hyper-senior... even the FO's are old, and many of them simply wanted another 5 or 8 years to sail into retirement without a lot of stress and angst.

Screw that noise. I'll be damned if I go quietly into the night while AMR is rolling in cash and lining their pockets.

Worst case scenario... well, the line ops will devolve into chaos, killing revenue, and oh yes, I think a large number of pilots might become "depressed", requiring a year or three being grounded on Prozac at a minimum.

I agree this has nothing to do with Delta's contract, this is about management's abuse of the bankruptcy system to exploit pilots and the unions that submit to it.

Not true, the Mesaba pilots had their contract rejected and were barred from striking.

"Negotiating" is a loose term. They could agree to sit in a room staring at the APA and playing with their smart phones and technically be negotiating.

APA CA Bates just resigned. And the fun begins.

I agree, don't we have enough threads of West guys calling East guys names? Besides, of all the names you can call US Airways pilots, I don't think "Limp-D*****", would be a good choice. There's plenty of erections to go around if you mention 'DOH' in PHL (or Nicolau in PHX).

Bravo!, from a hopeful prospective AA pilot.

Yes, coming from CO, the perennial bottom feeder of major airline contracts, I can see how our pay rates being almost 50% higher than yours made your negotiations miserable. :rolleyes:

Best of luck to the AA folks!

Well done my AA brothers! Fight the good fight! I hope we at Unical can vote the same way soon.

Thank you AA "no" voters.
There is no reason your contract should be any less than DAL or UAL.

To be honest they don't have the same synergies or economies of scale as their larger counterparts. DAL and UAL will always have about a 10% boost on American. APA can demand more (and rightly should) but it won't come easy.

I know pilots will hate me for saying this, but it's the truth. If American pilots demand the same pay as DAL/UAL, it puts AMR at a disadvantage.

Ahh yes, your 83' hires are the epitome of the "anti-wuss"....... :rolleyes:

Holy crap.

What is the general reaction from the pilot group? It seemed like he did a lot of good and made progress with AA. This is a crucial time and electing a new leader is the last thing to be focusing on.

You don't even know what you are voting on yet!!

That was my thought, too. I read the last message he sent out endorsing a Yes vote and I thought it was a half hearted endorsement. He laid out the pros and cons of voting quite well and it seemed pretty balanced.

I do think this will be good for the AA pilots. Management, be it Horton or anyone else, will have to bring more to the table at some point.

Hi Flyby,

The general consensus is that he did the honorable thing by resigning. He knew it wouldn't serve the best interests of the pilots by staying after heavily promoting the LBFO, so he resigned. Showed a touch of class, although I',m sure he was under a lot of pressure from the BOD.

New APA Interim President, F/O Keith Wilson. Smart guy, tended to be concessionary in the past... with all this unity behind him, I'm hoping he fights the good fight.

Not our (ailine pilots) problem. Is it the same job? Does a software developer at yahoo make the same as one at google? Labor is not a variable cost. Like fuel it is fixed.

AA no voters......

THANK YOU AND BRAVO!

James is duly impressed.

There's "Negotiating".....Then there's "Negotiating in GOOD FAITH".

Under your premise above, I guess having both sides locked up in a Centerport Conference Room having a "C.J." would constitute "negotiating"? I would hope that mediated/supervised/BK monitored talks WERE found to be that of "Good Faith", as opposed to the 'monkey motion' that UCH's Mgt has orchestrated during our talks.

Either way, congrats on a strong showing by way of the recent APA vote. The CAL/UAL Pilots are behind you all on the stand.

I don't believe it is the same job. If it was, it would just as easy to get hired at Delta/United as Virgin America.

Probably not. I'm sure the pay varies by how successful the business they work for is. Personally, I think this example contradicts your argument.

Unions love to say this, but it simply isn't true. If all the companies had to pay the exact same for pilots, Delta/United (and maybe SW) would be raking it in. After a while they would get so fat that they would start to move deeper into competitors' hubs and bleed them dry.

Who do you work for? 38% voted no. I've been on strike, voted no for every concession since 2004 at NWA. Sad part is that our contract is the best out there outside of luv, fdx and ups. Unless you are there, I suggest a big dose of **** until your group can do better. Negotiating a contract against the garbage that lcc, ual and cal have was not easy.

Yes, we'll just have to settle for having a much better contract and a lot more money.

Yeah,

Reducing outsourcing by 15-25%, increasing pay by double digits, improving retirement benefits, decreasing contract medical plan costs by 19% while increasing benefits, improving work rules, improving LTD and sick policies, getting a short duration, getting it done 7 months early and NOT waiting 1-5 years with zero gains.......

How pathetic and lacking in "professionalism".:rolleyes:

AMR overreached on their gutting of APA and it backfired big time in round one.... we shall see who wins round 2.... Hope APA is on the winning side every round, I think AMR will have a very tough time getting the judge to gut the CBA that much, too many examples of "smaller" givebacks in BK for AMR to get carte blanche.