Not me. Not by a long shot. Check your PMs.

 

Albie, you seemed like a decent guy from your posts here and on flight info.

But seriously, is this your stance now? "Hey, why'd you bid it?" That's something Webb would say. Great way to look out for the new hires that are going to be sent there.

Yeah, I suspect we are all going to hear the "I've got a few other fires I'm working on so I can't address the issues with the FDAs blah blah blah" for the next couple of years. Up to and including the next contract negotiations.

FDA Pilot to Union: "There's roughly 160 of us now, and list as long as Prater's rap sheat of problems/issues that have not been fixed."

Union to FDA pilot: "Hey sorry, I know we promised you guys 'take this deal now and we'll get you a better one on the next contract', but we've got bigger issues and other fires to deal with now and can't help you. Maybe on the 2014 contract when there's 250 of you guys we can help you. But not this time."

Just f-ing great.

At least EI will try and help.

 

BG YUM,

If anyone read the LOA and came to a conclusion other than "If you bid this you are basically on your own" they didn't read carefully enough.

After reading your post it dawned on me that the company really hammered us on this.....even more than we realize. Come next contract negotiations how much pay and work rules are we willing to give up to sweeten the pot for 3.25 percent of the crew force? Do we stiff the FDA guys? I think we will see that any LOA improvements have a huge price tag. It will be interesting to say the least.

I hate to hear that a fellow pilot got screwed out of $10,000. I EXPECT ALPA to be all over this and rectify this situation.....quickly. Again, our best defense against an incomplete, inadequate and open ended LOA is to not bid it. This would have gotten the companies attention. Kind of reminds me of the Jonathan Orenstien story where he is quoted as saying " As long as I keep getting applications, I am overpaying my pilots" or something to that effect.

I think we are on the same page... I wanted to see a relocation package befitting a fortune 100 company...but not the Wal-Mart version!

 

Where is the union going to get the leverage to improve the LOA? You'll probably get the same 'improvements' everyone else will get...sub-inflationary raises, increase in health-care costs, sold out for those senior to you...then your progression towards those senior positions halted by non other than the union itself.


Seriously, when you bid HKG, did you really believe that you would see HKG specific improvements in the future? I'd be all for improvements for new-hires who are forced to go there, but you bought it already...caveat emptor...and I don't think you'll be pleased at future improvements.

Also, whoever trusted the company to make good on the $10k, gets the sucker award.

 

Skypine,

The time to fix this was last August ....and only 32% of our 4700 pilots seemed to care. To answer your question: Yes that would be my stance.

Again, very few people were interested in a fix when this was the only thing on our plate. How do you think it will go over when we are balancing pay increases, retirement issues, and work rules. I am not overly optomistic that this (FDA issue) will get any extra coverage. I really wanted to go to CDG, but this LOA is just way to inadequate to even contemplate signing.

I hope it works out for our adventurers, but 97% versus 3% just doesn't seem like good odds to me. (PS. 97% non FDA...3% FDA @4700 pilots)

 

:

Jokes aside, what exactly were you expecting at this point? I read up on this thing, attended a couple meeting/roadshows and voted no. I heard the same 'assurances' that you did, but they were all posited as part of the next contract not in the near term. Now whether or not we really believe that will come true considering our demographics, the Age 65 change and it's attendant issues, and the economy is another story, but to say that you expected improvements to be coming in the short term seems incredibly short-sighted to me. This isn't to say that they aren't deserved, they most certainly are, but the union didn't want to fight hard for them and we as a group held neither the unions nor the company's feet to the fire with our vote on the issue. To make matters worse, at the rate the company is going, the FDA's will be built slowly for a while and we as a group won't realize the full extent of things until after the next contract and the host of other issues that will come with that.

 

That's why we were screaming at the top of our lungs back in August.

Not very bloody well. Again, precisely why we were screaming back in August.

But promises were made. Will they be kept? I don't think there are many naive enough to expect much, but doubtful the existence of the promises will go unmentioned.

 

Very little, actually.

Me too. That's why I didn't say it. RTFP. I didn't say I expected anything. I expect very little.

The only people who seem to be under the illusion that there will be significant future improvements were the snake oil salesmen of the LOA.

Quit making stuff up.

Serenity now.

 

Ignoring the obvious fact that your last two sentences contradict each other a bit, I did read your post and it seems logical to infer by your complaints(valid) about the deposit assistance issue and statement that there will be more complaints going forward that you do expect some sort of remedy. Perhaps 'hope for' would be a better term, although that seems to be semantics to me.

Yup.

.

I don't know if you're talking to me or the aforementioned salesmen here, but if it's me, I don't know what's being made up. I was just wondering why anyone would expect anything different from the set of people who brought in this turd to begin with.

 

The former sentence is a generality referring to the fact that the word "expect" wasn't even used once in the post in which you quoted. The latter sentence is the first true mention of any sort of quantificiation of any expectation level.

Then I didn't do a very good job of conveying my low expectations, mostly because I didn't mention any expectations with regard to remedies. I do, however expect complaints, some justified, some not.

As far as remedies....we had our chance back in august. As far as hopes....there are a lot of things that wouldn't cost squat that could have been written into the LOA that weren't. I hope that kind of stuff can be fixed. I don't expect much in the way of improvements on any level. Much like I wouldn't expect much from a used car salesman once I drove my lemon off the lot.

I expect there to be little done by those who made promises. Those promises were so empty, you can still hear the echos (a whale fart analogy comes to mind).

Anyone who expected those promises to be kept was naive, but that doesn't make any complaints regarding unkept promises unjustified by anyone.

Could we all be pleasantly surprised to see the MEC actually work toward significant improvements for the FDAs as promised? It would be nice.....but.....Pass the crack pipe, please!


Sorry to be such a grump...time to get out of this hotel room!