Holy Cow!!!! New K!!! You're ALIVE!!!!

New,

I'm not certain, but I've heard that they are having trouble converting guys to NB's. They can't pull them off the WB's because then those fleets will be short, but they're going to increase most of the NB catergories this summer so they need more bodies. I think the hose is about to burst.

I'm not sure Rolling Thunder will cover this summer, especially when the TS's roll through. But then again, I'm just a line grunt.

 

NEW IS BACK!

 

Contract 2012 is just around the corner. If this management team is anything like their predecessors, here are a few things to remember. There is no free lunch. Management assigns value to anything that is perceived to be a positive for the pilot group. Not some, but all positive things, whether it is scope, NFC, more pay, time off, better benefits, etc will be considered to have value. Some of you may not agree with this or like it, but that is the way it works. DALPA works with those parameters, but the perceived cost of each item is where the differences show up at the negotiating table. Sometimes management even turns a negative concession into a positive, i.e. when we gave them the “Vacation Bank.” The change to our vacation was probably the biggest concession we ever gave them. I’m sure some remember this, but basically we used to bid for our vacations and any touching trips were dropped with pay. This meant that a pilot could very often get an entire month off with pay for just one week of vacation. Now multiply that times 6 or 7 weeks of vacation per year and you quickly get the picture. Senior Bubbas were only flying about half the year and so on. I don’t remember what the exact numbers were; but that little give back singlehandedly reduced the pilot workforce by a huge amount. What we got for its replacement was the Vacation Bank as we know it today. Admittedly, the previous method was a bit grandiose, but it was still a huge concession. How the company tried to make it look like a positive is when the unused vacation bank payout rolled around in April, they didn’t want to pay us. They said it was going to cost them too much money. R U KIDDING ME? We had just saved the company millions of $ and they were acting like they had done us a huge favor. They eventually paid us. By the way, I voted “NO” for that contract as well. I could give several more examples, but me thinks you gets it. Later, Waves

 

I think they apparently got the number of lines in the MSP MD-88 and DC-9 mistakenly switched. MSP DC-9 hours are about the same as April.

 

Yes. New K is Back and confused as ever. Man. I was thinking about bidding MSP on the next AE so I could be super senior. If I was there now, I wouldn't even be close to being able to hold a line (For May).

Happy Easter, gentlemen.

 

Ah, haaa. That would make sense. Emergency avoided. (Where did you find the hours?)

 

In the bid packet they give number of trips and average trip length. Numbers were similar for April and May.

 

Like most concessions the vacation actually evolved over several contracts. We started out with touching trips dropped on all vacations with all days on trips that touched vacation paid on the primary and secondary. Tertiary and Quatenary only days within the vacation were paid. We then went to a system where you got a max of 12 days paid that fell outside the vacations on touching trips. This was to counter the 10 and 12 day trips we were flying to the Orient and Europe in the early 90's. Then we went to a hour bank and the value of the vacation day decreased in the 1113 process. To put it all into perspective if we went back to the original system a bid would have to be posted for about 900 Captains.
We also once paid Greenslips as double credit and pay. Fly a 4 day greenslip and you normally ended up having to drop two trips!
We have lost far more jobs to work rules then RJ's.

 

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On a side note: Wanna know what kind of pax we're carrying these days? My FA wife flying flight 545 ATL-CUN. Pax says to her,"Can I go up to first class and fart and then come back here?" No lie. Happened yesterday. Apparently we need to add a "No Class" section to our aircraft.

.[/QUOTE]

That is hilarious. lol

 

Sailing, it is Manas Air Base. Great place and would kill for that trip to be in ATL. I have family over there. No kidding.

New, great to have you back. Go grab Carl and tell Ferd to stop lurking!