It's his 5th year. He needs to start owning his policy decisions. GWB is chopping wood in Texas, not playing golf at Martha's Vineyard.

 

What's the highest 777 ETOPS time now? I know Air New Zealand has 330 minutes ETOPS on their 777-300ERs!

 

By default I support DALPA.

My perspective is the company is going to do what they want. DALPA will always find a way to accommodate that. Whether or not I agree with it is apparently irrelevant.

 

T,

You are a 767 captain who is looking to retire in the next 10 years. It's great that you can look forward to being part of the investment class.

But, you should consider that there are a lot of pilots on our list who are looking at making half of what you make during that time and aren't afforded the opportunity to look at the world through investor colored glasses. For them, the best investment they can make is to insure they upgrade to captain as soon as possible and make sure the company or the union does nothing to slow them to that goal.

Just something to consider....

 

If my health insurance sucks, I blame my bargaining agent and my company. From what I see, it sucked long before the current guy took office. Maybe we should start owning some things too, huh?

 

Well, as usual you don't make any sense. I have no talking points. Here is the situation we have today. Delta must have some change to the status quo soon. Either we need to extend the relief for the 316 limitation or Delta needs to back out of their NRT beyond code shares. For us, it is an asymmetric condition; we will never do those code share flights but for Delta it makes them some money. Delta will not start flying more slots into NRT just to keep the code shares it is not worth it.

So for us, we can either watch the code shares go away or try to get something for allowing them to continue. We have no block hour protection now. 85% will be an improvement. It is just people like you try to frame it as if we are "giving up" 15% which is flat out wrong. For Delta, this is ceding some amount of control over their capacity. There is no way they will lock in at 100% because that would give them no options if Fukushima blows up or if Godzilla attacks Tokyo or whatever crazy thing is the next to happen.

It comes down to a simple trade. Is it worth it to Delta to cede some control over their capacity (85%) in order to keep the code shares? How much more would they give for 15 pax a day in a system that is now over 150,000,000 per year?

For us is it worth it to allow the code shares to continue in order to have some backstop protections in the Pacific, protections we do not have today?

So you can frame it as "what do I say when all the wide bodies go away" and that is not an emotional argument, but if I correct your misrepresentation of the new protections it is emotional. Got it. For everyone else, realize that both sides have options, not just us, and you need to weigh each sides options with the plusses and minuses of each path. All this emotional baggage is just political BS and does nothing to help analyze which choice is best for us.

 

Dave Behncke just rolled over in his grave.

 

Maybe he was.

 

This analysis you've posted is pretty interesting and seems to cover the options of this decision... but you massively mislead our downside by not extrapolating a legal contract clause into the future, "What if the company decided to take advantage of this wording, could they?".

Your straw man you set up to slay is "15 pax a day", as if that's all this is about on the downside, or COULD EVER BE--that's our choice, 15 pax. Come on, that's not the downside of this at all! It's the contract language POTENTIAL for 1500 pax a day of code shares if the door is inappropriately opened and protections to stop it are removed. You seriously can't be this unable to look towards potential adversity from the PILOTs perspective... I know you certainly can see the downside of the company's potential decisions, you present them to us non-stop.

You do this "set up a bogus strawman and argue against it" style of argument quite often alfa... I like your intellectual slant, but you NEVER PRESENT BOTH POTENTIAL SIDES! You are 20% of the reason I don't trust my union-- you rarely argue the non-company side and play devil's advocate, or start by taking the "pro-pilot cautious company disbelief until proven otherwise and still ensure protection against unanticipated intentional full exploitation of the wording by the company" position-- MY BARGAINING AGENT's obvious and fiduciary position! Every time I read your posts, and I've come to understand you are affiliated with my union somehow, I feel like I'm reading some company-propagandist whose intent is to talk me into whatever they are selling. Seriously every time I read you, I think "Well, that guy sounds quite smart... I sure wish he were working FOR me, instead of for the company, I wonder how they managed to buy him off, maybe they got his kids hostage?" Gosh how I wish you'd apply your mind and intellect to presenting the data from a "pilot's first if there is conflict" perspective, instead of a "company first, and pilot's will probably benefit from that" perspective.

Just my opinion, but you do spend a lot of time here presenting the ALPA case, so I thought you might like to hear a data point from a receptive listener on how your postings come through. No insult intended, truly, I read everything you post... I just never feel you have MY back in mind. Hope I'm wrong and just don't understand enough.

 

We are through the looking glass here.

This is not Section 6. We don't have to do any of this. So we are just voluntarily giving up something in our contract that has tangible value for us in exchange for "protections" that allow the company to cut 15% of the hours we currently fly in the Pacific.

What kind of a deal is that? Its pure insanity. Only DALPA could spin this as some sort of good deal. That's not protection. That's total surrender.

I am fully aware that the situation in NRT is changing and the company no longer wants to fly 316 slots. They will lose money if they do. But so what? That is our contract. Those are our jobs. They also lose money by paying reserves a monthly guarantee. Let's get rid of that while were at it. tsquare's stock will go up.
They lose money by paying us per diem. They lose money by allowing us to have vacations. They lose money by paying us when we're sick. etc. etc. etc. If the company is hurting, then why isn't all that stuff on the table?

I don't care if we have a section in our contract that requires them to keep a 747 in standby orbit over FTB's house 24 hours a day fully loaded with breadsticks and cognac and staffed with Oregon cheerleaders.
By God, they will keep that airplane up there and if they want to get rid of that contractual requirement then they are going to have to pay me something in return. Promising to only cut 15% of our jobs is not something in return. Its an insult to my intelligence.

Our PWA is NOT open right now. To quote a famous CEO, "A contract is a contract".

Put me on the negotiating committee. I'd take an immediate 5% raise and a 100% of current block hours guarantee in exchange for those slots. Nothing less. Otherwise, bye-bye codesharing at Narita.