Heard March is the current target, and minimal, if any reinstatement was echoed when asked about the 73N.

I am sure there will be some moving of a few seats, but they will try to keep training to a min for the summer months.

Let's find him a DPA lanyard! He's got my post-ALPA vote! :D

Thank goodness. That's where we make our "bacon." Sucks sitting in the schoolhouse in the summer, collecting miserable training pay, instead of making rain on green slips.

See we can agree on some things! :D

In reality Art is a smart guy and many are starting to realize that. When I get the chance I really enjoy talking to him about these sorts of things. What is great is how is writes. He makes his points but wants the conclusion to come from his pilots.

On that subject., give him a call or write him and ask him why his is still staunchly in the Pro-ALPA camp.

Agreed, I know Art and its all about being prepared, he is not wishing ill on any one. Eagle, if you want to expend your efforts on this...go for it, but right now you can only control what you can, and this is not one of those items. (6 airlines later)

More rumors from the line. This time, from 2 320 Capts, one of which is a checkairman.

The fatigue/rest rule changes will now result in 750 newhires, supposedly stated by ES, a senior linecheck guy. Very few or no hiring this year, but approx 600 next year and a few after that due to those new rules and retirements. I mentioned that I thought the fatigue/rest rule changes would only result in modest hiring, to which they said the 750 was the new number.


Contract is pretty much negotiated, but someone way up there wants initially a two year contract, due to those fatigue/rest rule changes, which will need a 4 year contract addressed when the rules become affective in 2 years. So, status quo rules wise with exception to what has recently been negotiated, and a 20% pay raise effective July of this year.(another rumor)


About 50 old A320s that flew for NWA starting around 1988 are quickly approaching the cycle limit put out by Airbus. How can you replace those quickly, they run out of cycles in about 1 1/2 years. Could a merger or buying more used planes help? Who knows?


That's all I have for rumors today, building on last week's DFW rumors. Have fun!

Did you just watch Atlas Shrugged?:eek:

OK, I'll say it again....*** happened to the vacation allocations this year?

It's not even like I'm asking for Thansgiving or Christmas off...one random week in September and one in April is hardly asking for too much.

I've easily held these weeks for the past six years.

The stupid thing GAVE me Thanksgiving off, because none of the other, seemingly worthless-to-everyone-else weeks were already gone....

Grrrrr......

Nu

That is way higher than I would have guessed and I just can't believe it. If its true though, and 600 are hired in 2013, permanant hiring will be the result (not including economic pulldowns which are very possible going forward) because 2014 starts the retirement waterfall that rapidly starts to build after that. Bring it on, but I still can't see 750 from the rest rules but we'll see.

That's still below SWA in rates but like many others have mentioned, the difference can be made up for in work rule improvements and I'm more concerned with scope at all 3 levels anyway. 20% even with positive work rules is a giant NO vote from me without at least some gains in all areas of scope (RJs, AS code share abuse and current and more importantly future JV's). Show me the scope.

Um, buy airplanes maybe? I mean its not like we're one of the largest airlines in the history of the world or anything. Did these 320s cycle out by suprise or something? What's next, we'll need to buy jet-A and pay landing fees? Who could have forcasted such unreasonable, unmanageable, rogue expenditures? As an airline if we need airplanes we need to buy or lease the airplanes we need.

If, after 80 years, this is suddenly become some unmanageable act of freakonomics then we need new managers who know how to buy or lease airplanes for an airline. I'm not against used planes, and would love to get the 71's that SWA is dumping anyway as well as the 20 or so in the desert, provided the terms are right. Other than those, I don't see very many used planes we would want.

A merger just to get the metal is some of the lamest stratedgy I've ever heard of. Yeah we get the metal, but we also get the current capacity its flying. Capacity we have to essentially pay to get along with the metal, and if we dump the capacity the LCC's and start ups will add every single seat we dump and we still have the costs of buying or leasing their planes anyway. If we merge with AA, in whole or in part, we get a ton of old metal that needs replacing anyway so back to square one and then some. Either way we need new planes and any manager or executive that pretends this is some crisis point is incompetent in this industry.

I don't see the point about a 2 year bridge deal regarding the new FTDT because the rules are what they are and there is very little relief we could give the company to help offset them even if we were in the mood to give up work rules. The only place I see is the 9 hour block unaugmented stuff, but if it remains true that time is a hard non waiveable 9 hours from throttle up of each segment like we're told it is, relief of our current 8 hour limit wouldn't amount to very much of anything and certainly not enough to warrant 2 years to think about it. IOW what is the incentive for the company for the bridge deal WRT the new FTDT's?