Not a word about CDOs. No education. No survey results. Just an attempt to jam down from our leaders. Many thanks to our Atlanta pilots who made the calls and wrote the emails and showed the center of power the light.

We dodged a bullet, but the chamber is still full.

C2015 will be about 3 things.

Training concessions-the major thrust will be pay banding. But management will attempt to drive training to the lowest level possible and eliminate all seniority list instructors.

Reducing or eliminating profit sharing.

Reducing sick leave bank.

We have a new negotiating chairman. I hope he is as tough as we have been led to believe. Get his email address and write him and the other negotiators. Be supportive. Be positive. And make it clear concessions are not necessary when management sends billions to the shareholders and leaves their pilots a decade behind, further milking their concessions when they are no longer needed.

Don't sit on the sidelines.

Make you voice heard.

 

Just curious. What prevents split duty periods right now in our contract? What will prevent them after this LOA is signed?

 

12.D.1

The max duty period based on report time. (9 hours report to release)

 

Yes and Yes! This, after all, is the internet age. No matter how great an idea(s) 15 or so guys have at an LEC meeting, it(they) can be easily vetted by the entire pilot group via a one week poll/vote on the interweb.

There is virtually no excuse, in this day and age, for something as onerous as SDPs to be sprung on the pilot group at the nth hour. (We are very lucky that we dodged this bullet.)

Again, how this made it to the level it did, and how our chairman was able to sign an email announcing how great this TA was (that included these SDPs), is beyond unbelievable.

Is our MEC really that out of touch? (I intend to find out.)

I do not have great hope for 2015.

P.S. I still feel strongly that a TA that changes so many of our pay/work rules should be an automatic memrat.

 

Um the LOA puts table B of FAR 117 into effect, which has 12 hour FDP, for the time of night that the CDO's would sign in, so they could do it now without having it in the contract.

 

You didn't mention the elephant in the room.. health care. Whether it be transfer of costs or some other mechanism... It will come up.

 

So the process worked? Members called their reps and expressed their opinion, thoughts, protests, and concerns? The reps then responded by removing the contended language via the negotiating process before voting on the entire LOA? Seems like a beautiful thing.

I suppose now the permanent haters, the terminally grumpy, the anarchists, the victims, et al. will claim victory over the same men who serve them? Perhaps we can still be treated the "sky is falling" chorus that serves this forum as anonymous background music. Maybe some more visual stimulus like "we dodged a bullet, but the chamber is still full".

Tell me again why "no membership ratification" will breath life into DPA? This negotiation, process, and LOA appears to have been calmly and expertly handled.

 

There's a 30 minute buffer also.

I suppose they COULD do it. It wouldn't be an official Split Duty under the FARs though.

They would have to schedule it for 11+30 or less, the return leg would have to push before 6 AM, and here's the big one:

It would pay 10+30.

$$ Ka-ching. $$

 

(NOTHING!

We just agreed to do CDO with no protection.

Honestly I think the SDP discussion was a red herring to get the FDP changed and the MEC has now rammed it down our throat faster that we could blink.

I have posted this several times in the last few days but here is the reality.

The SDP language would have allowed:
- 12 hour FDP (extendable to 14 hours)
- 3 hours minimum sleep opportunity
- No more than 2 hours skd block per leg

The thing nobody has been really paying attention to is the changes to Section 12.D.2 (Unaugmented FDP limits).

We have now agreed to up to 13.5 hour scheduled FDP vs current 13 and for night time ops our limits has gone from a low of 8.5 - 9 hours up to 10.5 or 11.5 hours scheduled with maxes of 13 and 14 hour.

With the new TA a pilot can be assigned a rotation with a 2100 report that looks like this:

- 11.5 hour FDP ( extendable to 14 with PIC/SIC concurrence)
- No Minimum Sleep Opportunity or even a Hotel Room
- No 2 hour block time restriction

I really hope someone else can show me where I am wrong, but I believe that we have just been had.

All we gained was 30 minutes and some pay. So that makes it all good and safe now.

 

Good point. I thought our medical was so bad (catastrophic only) that they were done with that.

I know the MEC committed to a "historic" C2015 in True Heading 14-2 and after scope and major increases in pay, that we can make historic gains in medical. Back to something more reasonable.

I'd like to see the first $3000 each year covered by the company and the unused portion carried over to the next year.

For 2015 the $1000 in Delta dollars is toast. Many, including DALPA, glossed over this unilateral change.