Should have looked at it closer, long crew duty day.

Yeah, but how many tickets did you buy? :)I once told the other half that I had won 2 grand in Vegas. The response: "so how much did you lose?".
"I promise I'll never go to Vegas again.".

How about this, "the ALPA lawyers are good at assuring THIER job protection!"

Just wondering as I have no idea- are lawyers at alpa pretty much tenured, ala college profs? Have any been replaced due to failure to meet performance objectives? I'd hate to think they all get the "welcome to the last job you'll ever have" speech when hired.

The names on ALPA's lawyer list are the same names I've seen for decades. The ALPA apologists here are quick to describe that length of service as proof of these lawyers' expertise in our industry.

It's kind of like failed airline CEO's getting re-employed by an airline after they drove their airline into the dirt. These CEO's get hired because they haved all that "airline experience."

Carl

Its still not the same. The APA gave you a guaranteed trained by date four months out. No flexibility on when you got benched and paid at the higher rate unless the pilot did something to be unavailable for training. The APA system forced marketing to get their feces together and make commitments four months out, otherwise there was a benching/staffing penalty four months later. The AE system has a lot more slop in the conversion date thus allowing marketing to be sloppy with their planning. This was all done with only the time and a half pay for over 80. Imagine how bad it would look for marketing if you married APA with GS/IA/GSWC pay.

The fNW training footprints were a bit longer than most current DL courses and it sounds like the good fNW training programs still in existence are getting hacked and shortened...

Agree that the APA system had junior pilots in category doing the NATCO shuffle at times. Would be slightly different without separate block and reserve categories.

Agree with Nosmo and F4H. While at the bottom of a category, you could be subject to some churn, but I didn't really ever see a whole lot of that, and most of what I did see was block to reserve.

Knowing exactly when you were going to be in a new category, the ability to sharpshoot when you went to training, and the ability to bail from a bad position or swap a base on a monthly basis far outweighed the downside. Letting the company have up to 12 months to put you in a new category is madness.

Sure DAL CAN put a bid out every month, but they don't, and for people stuck in a bad position, waiting around for the next AE, THEN waiting to be converted could be 18 months or more.

Nu

on a different subject, i found this and thought it was pretty cool.

62 Year old WWII russian tank found in perfect condition in a swamp.

Tank

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtJkyd3JJWE

The flight attendants take offense at being called "the team"? Crikie! Everybody's looking to be offended these days....give it a rest.

Does anybody know anything about a DC-9 that had an emergency landing in ATL yesterday, around 13:00 local time. Landed on 26L (yes, Left), took the high speed near the end, had the gear pinned and towed in. I'm just trying to find out what was going on w/ the a/c....