I hope you guys don't wait long for a decent contract either. It helps both our causes.

You are either trying to start an argument or you have no idea of why K4 left 1224. Retirement was never even on the table for K4. Wasn’t even mentioned. Way higher priority items for our pilot group. Great results by our negotiation committee that 1224 tried to take away from us, good riddance

You're coming into this argument late... The quote that started all of this was something like "DW held us back..."

FACT - You wanted to vote yes on your contract that has the worst retirement that I know of. While we're at it we can talk about monthly guarantee, duty day, Trip Rig, days of service and unpaid 24-7s. I'm fully aware retirement wasn't a priority of K4 pilots, but there were a slew of things DW took issue with that your group had zero problem with. Retirement was used by me as the glaring example. My understanding is that you wanted a Rate that was branded as "FedEx's Old Contract". That's all you really cared about at that time.

FACT - DW held back that contract in an attempt to get you more with regard to work rules... Meaning shorter duty days... etc...

Since DW wanted more for your contract than your pilot group did how did he hold you back? If memory serves correct about 90% of yall were yes votes. Connie could've had you for far less if it weren't for DW. Yall wanted the Rate and you wanted it then after a long hard fight.

Best of luck in the next negotiation. ACMI is far behind the rest of the Industry and I sincerely hope yall are ready to push to fix these problems. Atlas may be counting on you to get gains because I agree with yall that there is a statistical chance you get a contract first. I tell people to go to K4... It's a better deal.

Worst retirement that you know of? You're not looking at the regionals then! Charter? Corporate? Your own? So we cap out at 10k a year on 5%. You can't hit that until you're over 200k. How many captains do you have over 200k? I'd say most, if not every single one of ours are there; if not they're close.

I know nothing of Corporate or Charter. If that's what you want to compare yourself to then have at it. I bet there are jobs like that with better retirement than what ACMI offers. Regionals... I don't know much about either. If you're proud of having a slightly better retirement than Mesa then I'm glad you're happy. I'm pretty educated on ACMI retirements, Spirit, Jet Blue, Southwest, The Legacies, and the two big cargo airlines. Your contract is behind all of those by Millions of dollars in your career.... Except for the ACMI ones where you're only slightly behind.

The point was that DW wasn't holding you back from better contract language. Actually... You're proving my point. You're thrilled with your contract. I'm pretty sure DW thinks it's not a great contract. You'd have gladly accepted less because your retirement is better than Air Wisconsin's... You're thrilled with the work rules too despite most of them being behind Atlas's antiquated contract... Your pilot group voted yes overwhelmingly to something DW would've voted no on.

I left Atlas. I don't see them getting a Retirement that makes it worth working there because none of the other ACMI carriers have anything that make it worth sticking around. If everyone voted with their feet then it'd change... But yall are happy and that's is a beautiful thing.

To expand on this, DW wasn't technically holding you all back, you all were holding DW back.

Nothing emotionally attached with this statement. It is just the reality of the situation. But as Globemaster pointed out, if you all are good with that, we are all happy for you.

You couldn’t be any more wrong. TA was complete. At last minute DW scuttled TA using agreement letter from Southern 737 debacle. He introduced 18 hour max double crew duty day as a brand new item to be negotiated. He then stopped K4 pilot group from voting on TA. K4 group was forced to waste time and money appealing all the way to the top of the Teamsters for relief which was not granted. Feds finally got involved for a settlement and a 1 year moratorium on the work rules which was then arbitrated.

Here is the thing on the work rules. We had 30 hrs. We negotiated to 24, which was what we wanted, so we didn’t get stuck in hostile zones because of duty day AND the company would be able to bid the military trips and make a profit. SO, we were forced to work under the 30 hour and other old work rules for a year. Guess what happened when we went to what was an expensive arbitration, paid for by our pilot group, not 1224 BTW? We were awarded the originally agreed upon work rules.

Why was this done to us? To advance the cause of Atlas negotiations. I took a 30,000.00+ pay loss because of this bull crap.

Interesting thing here. I read AAWW pilots on here rightfully complaining that they did not get to vote on their last contract and that they may not get to vote on this one. I agree this is bad. Wonder why it was OK for Atlas thru DW to do that to us?

One of the advantages of ALPA is that a local is not forced to borrow money from the Teamsters and then pay it back for negotiations. Is ALPA perfect? Not at all, but way better that the financially and morally corrupt 747 and now the morally corrupt 1224*.

*my opinion only

I truly do not expect you to understand the difference between working at AAWW and K4. Different culture and different desires in a contract by their respective pilot groups. I can only guarantee 2 things regarding K4’s next contract. It will not be the same as UPS, and you will not think it is good enough.😀 That’s ok, I can live with both. Our group is free of 1224 and free to negotiate our own path driven by the desires of OUR pilot group.

It’s a 4 year contract. You don’t think they’d get the direct contribution at the next amendment round? In the meantime they’ve doubled their pay those four years and improved their working conditions.

So they didn’t get 10-12% for those four years. They did get $80-$150k more than they had before each of those four years.
They were smart to lock in the large great gains....

Someone who gets it
With no ax to grind
Thanks