In what world are you living in that our compensation is subpar?!?

Did you happen to glance at the pre-merger Airways rates? Now THAT was sub-par. I made more in a 50 seat RJ than their NB CA's made.

We're getting the average of the two highest paid passenger carriers out there.

It's not like we're getting Allegiant rates! My GOD people.

 

History reminder time. Can someone in the class tell the group when Parker, as CEO, negotiated a contract with one of his pilot groups that the pilot group (or other pilot groups) considered (forget about 'industry leading'...how about) 'decent' or 'good enough'? Take your time...

 

Why is this rhetoric necessary? Why do you continue to pepper your legitimate concerns with this shrill? Please stop. It is not productive. I want to listen to what you have to say but this sort of post makes me just want to skip over to the next post.

 

KingairIP, nice post.

My opinion is that Doug is severely underestimating the ramifications of arbitration. But he's trying to play it cool as if he knows arbitration will just whack everyone into submission. Truth is, he's nervous about it but wants to look like it's all cooly calculated. It's not. It will bite him in the a$$ for years.

 

I don't think everyone is saying that. It's Doug (following the advice of that idiot Glass whose track record here stinks) that's not negotiating, but demanding. The APA's blasts indicate a litany of strong-arm disrespectful tactics since this process began. I don't see the APA drawing any lines in the sand.

 

The investor crowd LOVES this sort of behavior from management. So does the board. Less for labor always sounds good.

 

So...lemme get this straight. The process that was overwhelmingly voted for, to obtain the pay average of the highest paying competitors, is not only not "good enough" but is so bad that people are going to drag their feet for half a DECADE to show how upset they are by getting EXACTLY what they voted for in the first place?

This has to be a twilight zone epispode.

I honestly don't think pilots could survive in a normal corporate world.

 

I agree with that. I think he's badly miscalculated the situation.

Here's something else for those that think we'll get this back in 2019 or we'll show them in Section 6 in a few years. Keep dreaming. Think about this...Parker should never have been more motivated to give a pilot group a decent contract. All he had to do was pretend to give a crap. Maybe just the rates he offered without the asks would have been fine for most in the group. And, we would have happily went out and KDAed. Yet...he. couldn't. even. do. that. Do you think in 2019 he's going to suddenly change his tune and give us industry leading. Forget about it. Self help, you say? Joke. We only have one option in my eyes...make sure Parker and his team, including and most especially, Kirby, are not around in 2019. That will be a Board of Director decision (not APA's BOD but the AAG BOD.) It will take time, but the BOD has to decide that ParKirby is not in the best interest of AAG. Or, it will always be thus.

 

You're right. Until "less for labor" becomes "less for the shareholders".

 

And it already has. Look, whether we hammer out a mediocre "deal" and take the pay raise early or live with the MOU/MTA, management's got a pilot group that feels blind-sided and lied-to. That's not a good place to be. I know we'd all like an ILC, but the reality is, it's not going to happen until at least 2020.

So we can basically try to stretch this current company proposal into something livable and gain the economics from it (and in my opinion, the 2 hour callout and HBT are the two worst aspects, the rest will have fairly minor to no effect) or we go to arbitration and get the reduced economics, and only save on a few minor QOL issues. Either way, we're going to be disappointed and many will be bitter.

That's the reality. Some of you think if we keep pressing, Parker will finally say "OK, fine, here you go, you can have some of your improvements". But he can't do that, because if he does, then the FAs will come running. And then the TWU folks and others will already know management's bluff. So I don't see that happening, and as KingairIP has already alluded to, they haven't yet made a real "deal" with a pilot group in over a decade.