Laker24

"The same old ALPA mistakes." Like it or not ALPA provides the best contracts in the world. Talk to pilots working for Norwegian, RyanAir, Emirates, Etihad, EasyJet, Qatar, anywhere in China, etc and you might change your tune.

Route66

So all those Airlines are ALPA? I didn't know that!

Route66

Wow. Someone who "gets it".

Laker24

No they are not ALPA. That's the point. Look at the pay/work rules for non-Union airlines. They are nowhere near what you can get with ALPA.

seafeye

Yes, look at PSA, PDT, Eagle, TSA. All ALPA, all have subpar contracts. Always will if ALPA is involved.

Nevets

ExpressJet and air Wisconsin have good contracts and they are ALPA also. ALPA is there to leverage any positive economics (profits) on the property and they are there to mitigate negative economic forces (bankruptcies, hostile management, no profits, etc). The best thing for pilots ability to gain good contracts is working for profitable airlines. The question is, can your union extract (or mitigate) as much as possible? If you are in bankruptcy, you can still have wins by minimizing losses. And when you are profitable, you measure success on how good you were able to negotiate. So if you look at PSA, pdt, envoy, you'll see what your management will do with a divided pilot group. TSA as well, as their management divided them and now whipsaws three of their airlines against each pilot group, one of which isn't an ALPA pilot group.

aa73

ALPA has had its share of bad presidents and made some ugly moves.

But the long term pay and benefits that legacy carrier pilots enjoy under ALPA membership are obvious. They have consistently outdone us just about every contract cycle. And it's high time that AA pilots, the largest group in the world, took advantage of that fact.

If we just focus on the individual mistakes ALPA and its presidents have made, of course it looks grim. But if we instead focus on the big picture and the potential we'd have under ALPA membership, the answer is obvious: we need to switch.

I'll also add: Regional airline ALPA and legacy ALPA are two completely different animals. ALPA can never represent the regionals as well as it can the legacies simply due to the two entirely different career prospects of each. ALPA recognizes that the regionals are the pathway to the legacies, and as such, they dedicate the majority of their energy on making the legacies a better career. By doing that, they are actually succeeding at putting pressure on the regionals to either up their game or go under. Case in point, Republic. What the regionals need are a regional ALPA type of union, a branch of ALPA that only represents them. Which is kind of what they have already.

That is why very few regional pilots have anything good to say about ALPA, whereas the majority of legacy pilots praise what ALPA has gotten them over the years. It sounds convoluted but it's the way it works.

And lastly, many folks bring up, What has ALPA done for the legacies during their BKs, where their lay and work rules were gutted? Ahem. ANY airline that goes through financial difficulties up to BK, will get spanked no matter WHO represents them. However, ask yourselves, who are the legacy airline pilots groups that exited BK and bad times with the most lucrative contracts? Hint: it ain't the APA group.

ALPA all the way, it's time.

Laker24

seafye,


If you can't figure out the difference between regional alpa and mainline alpa it's not even worth arguing the point. Hint: mainline contracts have scope clauses yet a regional airline can be shut down and replaced the moment their contracts become too expensive (think Comair).

Yes you must be right. PDT pay sucks so ALPA must be bad. I'm sure if DAL, UAL, UPS, SWA, AA, etc went non union then they would all get raises and better work rules. It's those corrupt union thugs that are holding down the working pilot.

Sliceback

Our Pilot Groups - ALPA

List of the US ALPA airlines.

Laker24

Maybe my post wasn't clear. The point was that large international airlines, such as the ones i mentioned, that do not have union representation generally have terrible work rules and zero pilot protections. ALPA has its warts but the alternative is much worse.