This is not your early 2010’s management team either.

Gumm is dead set on escaping his 23M7 cost dilemma at a discount. The idea that they’re going to buy it back at fair value, in the short term, is a stretch at best.

I don’t particularly like the idea of giving away our most valuable bargaining chip without achieving comprehensive gains either. If a two year deal is signed, then negotiations will reopen in less than one year. Management will have no incentive to do anything but stall, assuming auto accept has already been traded away.

 

I would rather have the current m7 fiasco and no new contract than a subpar new agreement. I will vote accordingly and I bet most here will too.

IMO one of the big leverages we have with renegotiating to end M7 is not just the cost but the labor it frees up. how many pilots are flying very little because they can get paid M7 pay without working? M7 goes away and most those pilots are probably back to flying full ish schedule quickly

time is on our side. If we can get a deal done quick that recognizes our goals then great. If HT and RG want to play hardball I am more than happy to wind the clock, and from the sound of it so is our MEC.

 

Realistically what would the outcome look like for escaping it? The fact is, the company showed they were willing to pay $100+m to cover predictable staffing and scheduling/tech shortages, and by all indications want to stay pretty close to that redline. People I talk to keep acting like the contract will fix the 23m7 "problem", but obviously we're not giving that cost away. It needs some ironing out, like how and where the 3x/4x pay is awarded, but that level of surge pricing for emergency coverage is not going away in any contract that has chance to make it to the table. The company will either have to hire themselves out of it, or keep running hot (but under a mutually beneficial smoother system). There's not really a third option where they just escape it and cheaply run operations understaffed (despite their best efforts).

 

there are at 2 a few ways I can think of they could escape it, it would just require negotiations in good faith with ALPA

-allow CS to jump straight to QS without paying a harmed pilot.

-make certain/all proffer slips single step acknowledge/ accept.

If they are able to cover a trip without a harmed pilot that helps them 2 fold.
-it lowers the cost to cover a trip and
-it will incentivize farmers to go fly and help their staffing.

ALPA knows the value of these things and I trust they will not give either away without getting enough $ elsewhere in the contract.

 

They won’t escape it. But that reality is going to take years to sink in for an egomaniac like Gumm.

I will be very skeptical of any agreement we reach in the short term. Most likely, we won’t reach one and will pivot to the long game. His sole focus right now is cost relief.

 

Divide $23M/month by 17,500 pilots and I think you’ll find it actually isn’t much value per individual. I assume the company actually wants to reduce that bill and not just pay it elsewhere, so I simply can’t see them bringing anything that will pass memrat to the masses. Triple pay is here to stay for a long time, I’m guessing.

I sure won’t vote for any deal that puts $23m/17,500 in my pocket every month (roughly $1k after tax). I probably make ten times that solving the daily gummster fires management created with their incompetence.

 

If they don’t reduce the value of 23m/month, and just redistribute it elsewhere, is it not still a win for them operationally even though not financially? Not saying I disagree with you in general though. There needs to be a steep cost to them for us to help them out of their mess.

 

My understanding is that number is just M7 payments, that does not include the staffing problems m7 creates or the fact they are having to send trips at double pay (actually triple pay but don’t want to double count costs) that might have gone out for single pay.

and I agree, if they come with a low ball offer, it will get voted down. I do trust the MEC to know their audience. We will see what happens in the coming weeks whether we are in for the long haul or not.

 

I did the math based on 23m7 reports last month and the total cost of open time by my back of the napkin math (m7 payments plus premium pay) was $40mm/ month it costs to cover open time, only including trips that incurred 23m7. It’s a half a billion dollars a year.

do you (the grand you, not You) realize the lengths any company would go to in order to remove or even just mitigate a line item that equals nearly 10% of profits?

 

We better hope they don’t just put it back to the way it was pre COVID - no batch sizes and no auto accept. Guys phones were ringing off the hook back then and that was before they staffed this place completely dependent on premium flying.