Elevation

First, kudos on having the gravitas to talk about your situation without divulging sensitive information. Simply saying you had to call the line a couple of times on here takes some guts. You also put a lot of thought into describing your situation too. Well done. I really respect that.

From what you describe, I see two potential failures.

First, somehow the phone tree didn’t work as you expected. Perhaps this was simple human error? Perhaps there was a political dynamic involved? I don’t know. In either case the system seems to have failed when you needed it to work. You didn’t get a call. Perspective from folks answering the phones would be valuable in figuring out exactly what happened.

The good news is that this first problem is self-correcting. Whether or not the system failed you, by describing your experience you can rest assured that people WILL respond the next time the emergency line is put to use.

I think the second issue is one of expectations. This is more important, in my humble opinion. We need to advertise services we can deliver. By similar token, we need to educate our membership about the realities they’ll face if they have a bad day. Have we been over-selling our ability to respond? Is our membership equipped to handle themselves after an event when we think about the realistic burdens they may be under? Are we realistic about how people rise to an occasion they are trained for but may check out in the hours after they get to the hotel/hospital etc? Perhaps more proactive steps to educate our memebers of emergency response is in order? Do people know if may take a “lot” of work on their part to get a timely response? How well are these thins handled at other carriers,and what can we learn from them? These are things for us to consider in house.

More bad events will happen. People cite turnover and new pilots, but just numbers (more planes, flying more hours) mean we have more dark event on the horizon. Now is the time for us to get out ahead of the curve to prevent the preventable and prepare for inevitable.

The specifics are for an in-house discussion, but your story is valuable.

Finally, we should probably remember that we don’t have the perspective of the folks who were answering phones that day. We don’t have a lot of perspectives in fact. This isn’t the place to officially lay blame or admit wrongdoing. I am glad I got a chance to listen to (read) your experience.

Elevation

One more thing. I can tell you’re angry. At the end of the day you’re one of us. Trash talk, tribes and all the other nonsense doesn’t matter. Ultimately we’re with you.

suddenimpact

Personally, I would have been happy to share this in-house. Unfortunately for 4-5 months we all did not have posting rights to our own Atlas 1224 forums due to the unannounced removal of the moderators that approved posts by Atlas 1224 leadership. Probably just as well, they were deleting posts and censoring them even though they met the TOS. Only recently, unannounced, non-Atlas moderators at 1224 starting approving posts. Discovered by DC8driver from what looks like a miss-posting on those forums. I had quit trying after two-three months with none of my postings being approved. Atlas leadership has pretty much killed the 1224 Atlas forums by that maneuver and the only choice is the non-Union facebook page gc_comms (nudge-nudge-wink-wink). The facebook page denies access to dues paying members identified as FPL amendment supporters which past by majority vote at 1224 or others expressing themselves not in line with our leaderships view on things. But leadership allows questions from the facebook page during membership calls.

As to perspective, I believe the ExCo Chair gave his during the mentioned membership crew call. BTW, we don't record them anymore since we lost the work action injunction. So I can't give you the link for his perspective, but it was pretty obvious to me and a number of others that emailed me afterwards that his actions were those of malice and not ineptitude. Considering all his other past actions, the case for malice is a forgone conclusion.

FR8Dog7

Nothing will change at Atlas until you get rid of the bunch that are running your Exco. You are paying the highest dues of anybody so the chosen few can have prime rib and king prawns on your dime at every chance they get. If you post something they don't like, or God forbid try to change the by-laws, they throw you off the site altogether.

Elevation

I think a lot of what you cite as wrong with our organization is common to a lot of other organizations too. Unchecked most organizations, squadrons, departments, etc. have a tendency to devolve into a glorified high school lunchroom. We can all think of many examples. Swapping out one set of people with weaknesses for another set of people with weaknesses won’t change anything except for the clique in charge. These problems are systemic, universal and persistent.

Rather than removing and replacing folks en masse perhaps we need to push for a general cultural change? Instead of slinging mud or commenting on mishaps, we need to state the facts when institutional failures occur. If we are going to drive any organization to function as advertised we have to function as advertised as well. I’m not saying we all need to be sanctimonious jerks, but I am saying that we ourselves have to be trustworthy for us to force trustworthiness into the union’s actions. That starts with being good to our FOs and FAs (or captains for recent hires). When you think about it, isn’t that what solidarity is all about? It takes a lot of energy, though. Sometimes you can get really worn down as folks want to trash talk your friends. That’s the cost of doing business, I guess. We’ll get there.

DC8DRIVER

Agreed.

The union is all of us. The union officers and chairs are all volunteer positions. Anyone can run for office. And they are all human, subject to imperfection and if there is a problem, there are good and bad ways to fix the problem. If something is broken it is best fixed it by being constructive - not divisive. We have all had problems at one point or another and the best results are the product of cooperation. Kind of like the way we are supposed to act as a crew in flight.

JackStraw

The union is all of us but the ones with NDAs are extra union.

FR8Dog7

$11,000 for wine for a stewards meeting!

Kirchner , Robert
EXCO Atlas
$61,208


Bourne , David
Airline Director/BA
$81,955

Atlas Air Inc
2000 Westchester Ave
Purchase
NY
flight pay loss $1,272,562


Law Office of Edward Gleason
$436,902

Lionel Largmann
$25,260


Chateau Elan Winery and Resort
Braselton
GA

$10,824
steward meeting

https://olms.dol-esa.gov/query/getOrgQryResult.do

DC8DRIVER

You know, I may be no expert on these things, but I think that Chateau Elan Winery and Resort is the name of the place and they offer more than just wine (and pretty much all hotels offer wine btw). Like I would imagine they have rooms you can pay for to sleep in and food that you can buy to eat. So if our stewards go someplace to meet, I am OK with paying for them to do that.

The way my math works out, $11,000 divided between 1750 pilots is about $7.00 out of my pocket for this meeting. This is about 70 cents per steward for our 10 stewards and that allows them to meet and figure out how best to represent me against an ever increasingly hostile company.

A better question is why a retired guy even cares about whats happening here and why he has so much hostility towards our union ...

FR8Dog7

You are either a fool, one of them or both! The Teamsters have not done ****** since they were brought in. Just a bunch of lies and broken promises. The amount of money that has been spent is absurd. And why in hell is 1224 paying Dave Bourne 80+ thousand a year when he gets paid by Teamsters Intl?

I still have friends that work there and are tired of paying 2.5%.