There's a lot of reasons there is mass stagnation on our seniority list, I agree. I think your question overall is if it's not all DALPAs fault why the angst directed at DALPA?

Imho and my best guess there's three reasons this comes up:

• Did we really have to give up pilot productivity? The contract wasn't even due up yet and the company is profitable, why do that?

• Large RJ creep with no plan to stop or reverse it.

• We're setting the precedent we'll pay for our own mainline airplanes through scope sales.

And then I guess you could add fervently co-selling a TA that has issues.

Yeah, you could. I remember getting all those emails detailing the reasons not to vote for the...wait, no it wasn't emails; it was those glossy products in my file in the lounge that....errrr wait, I didn't get those either. My memory is failing me...it must have been the road shows pointing out some of the reasons why the proposed TA....uhhh, no that wasn't it. Remind me, how could you say the same thing about the sales job on why we shouldn't vote for the TA?

Other airlines with similar post-deregulation demographics are hiring. A widebody fleet less than half the size of everyone else and intl code shares/joint ventures aren't helping. Those are contractual items. To answer your question, yes ALPA has created stagnation, revitalized the RJ industry and set us on a solid path towards being like the merchant marines. Sadly I long for the day a company like Emirates can hire into some decent bases, I'd be long gone.

Good point.

The opposition was an unfunded grassroots effort.

There's no Christmas in June. Our language was written to be, at best, extremely naive and overly trusting at the expense of the entire pilot group by creating a seismic shift in power towards the company. By giving them unrestricted access to sick call harassment through poorly worded sophistry (whenever something is suspicious, yet suspicious being undefined) good luck to us ever trying to win a grievance on this. Oh and bonus, we just may have waived Federal privacy law for the entire group as well; at least until some "press to test" which hopefully some eventually will. I don't think collective bargaining can nullify HIPAA privacy rights by "forcing" you to sign away or divulge anything whatsoever under any newly created circumstance, but I guess we'll have to see.

For this to become an issue right out the gate, the second it could have, shows a clear path towards pilot pushing through classic sick call harasment which is one of the oldest tricks in the book. A worn out labor busting, pilot pushing playbook we were all told our friends on the other side of the table weren't calling plays from anymore.

This is a big deal and we've dug ourselves a huge hole with the pitiful language we agreed to. This wouldn't have gotten past a community college first year law school student yet it somehow got past the best our association had at its disposal?

Its great that we're now "fighting" the very problem we created and I hope we win. But what if we don't and now we're stuck with this?

That may or may not happen, but the TWA pilots are never going to see 1.7 Billion. You are correct in that ALPA would probably go away and be reborn with another alphabet group before 50,000 of us would be come indentured servants to compensate them for the equivalent of their seniority redo fantasy.

I feel your pain. Life long FO here. It's hard to watch the company grow out west using RJs in our very limited gate space while there is almost never a seat available on anything I fly. We had a massive head start on the merger parade and much of the success was due to pilot cooperation. Seems like we would have been able to capitalize and capture some market share. Unfortunately our company is addicted to capacity restraint. Whine mode off.

So all you were concerned about with your not one more seat and not one more pound stuff was the pencil whipped weight of the EMB-175 but not the quantity of EMB-175/CRJ-900s?

Agree, but more like 10 + years for some. Like you said it not so bad "stagnating" at the top. I realize that their are junior CAPTs stuck on reserve who are probably also frustrated, but they always have the option of bidding something else, whereas many pilots on the bottom of the list do not.

I was not trying to lay blame on DALPA, but I do think they went a little overboard in their zeal to sell the TA. I am not sure I understand the whole "sell-job" mentality and would actually prefer DALPA to take a more neutral point of view when presenting a TA. Kind of like - these are the good points, these are the bad points, and let the line pilots make up their own minds without the sell job.

My point was we may have done a good job getting our pay-rates up (compared to BK) but with all of our outsourcing many are seeing one step forward (increased pay) and two steps back (displacements to lower paying categories).


Scoop

In a company fully committed to capacity discipline while out competitors place record orders I often wonder how anyone thinks less total RJs but much larger ones benefits the profession in any way. I guess no one else sees 2x CRJ-900s with more range and frequency replacing some of our older narrow bodies.

Trends:
DCI gets bigger jets
Alaska codeshare
MX and S. America codeshares
Virginia Atlantic
KLM/Air France
....
And the -88s are conveniently last to get cockpit upgrades. Reality is once all these -900s are up and running I bet SLC and MSP follow the path of CVG, MEM and ANC. That's basically five bases in five years.
Now that we are all displaced at least one or two seats its time for another merger! I am sure this is coincidence...