Doing it this early is Ric being decent and saying “hey get your crap ready for furloughs”.

if they would offer another LOA, I think more would take it now. I know I would. I have rotor jobs lined up that I didn’t have last time they offered.

The question I have as a junior FO is will they suspend the language to allow FOs to bid aircraft to aircraft. I hope not, bc I want to be displaced from the 145-175. If they do a vacancy and allow FOs to bid birds I’m stuck on the 145 for years, on reserve and not flying

I wholeheartedly agree with this take. Also want to add, cost saving measures will not save jobs. The company will furlough or not furlough based on demand. Cost saving measures really doesn't effect demand.

I think so too. I think the company will fear monger us into taking concessions with threats of furlough even if furloughs are not being seriously considered.

Eh, Rick isn't doing this to be decent.

I don't think it would matter if they 'relaxed' the language. The "proffer to displace" option I think would function as a vacancy unless there's something special in that provision regarding FOs or something (been a while since I read it). It's not the same thing but if you could have held it if there was a vacancy, you could probably hold it with proffer to displace if there's no vacancy.

And this year we were suppose to hire almost 800 pilots smh. What a crap of an industry? Another lost decade, why would anyone throw away $250k to do this job behooves me.

Garbage men have better pay and work rules!

Anyone else notice on his official email in outlook it now says Richard instead of Ric... but what does it mean???

place is getting more formal... full names from here on out!

he probably got tired of people calling him d* ick wilson

I guess I didn’t realize how it works. So proffer to displace goes in seniority order instead of reverse?

That Cleaner job at a “porno film set” sounds about good now!

How exactly do downgrades work?

Yes. PROFFERS to displace are in seniority order. But it's a little complicated in how it works. Your seniority determines if your displacements are looked at but the junior pilot's seniority that 'would have been displaced' determines what you can hold, or something like that. Better to go and read the section in the CBA on it than to get into the details here. And if you decide you do want to do it, talk to a union rep about how to do it right and what to expect.

I just finished my probation ride, so I won’t likely get to move from 145-175 no matter what, but knowing I’ll be an FO for a while I’m going to try .

good luck. The letter is just a heads up of whats to come

Seniority, seniority, seniority....

That should always be the focus.

Not flow.

TheKooj is noticeably absent, not that I’m surprised.

Key points here.
1. No concessions. This isn’t the time to give away the farm and no amount of concessions will save the company from furloughing pilots. It took us all these years to claw out a “decent” pay and qol from the last BK, so
lets not give it back.

2. Wonder if PBS will become an issue again with all of this given the cost savings to the company.

3. Ric didn’t do this to be nice, he did it to start the negotiation process. I am thankful, as hard as I have been on Tom regarding a couple of his choices, that he is our current MEC. I hope he holds strong for all of our sake.

go back to helicopters until this blows over. Google Amentum (URS) ft rucker. Yea I know, but way better as a contractor and I make more now than I ever did as a 4 heavy captain at the voy. And oh yea, Being off every weekend and holiday doesn’t suck either. Don’t wait for another mythical VLOA. They won’t change the language for FO’s. Not their MO. Just my 2 cents. Good luck.

What good is seniority at a temporary gig like Envoy? If you had your retirement job it'd be different, but in the long run who cares if you're junior or senior here except inasfar as it determines how quickly you get out (ability to get TPIC, etc.)

Probably will fly EMS close to home, I have about 5k rotor hours.

I have to wait on another CSLOA, or furlough bc I took the 21.5 check on day 1 and I’m not even at the one year past IOE mark...

Have to agree, worrying about seniority here is a waste of time. It only matters when you are at your final destination. Envoy is “not” my final destination lol.

I’m going to have to disagree with the apparent consensus here. This downturn will likely prove to vastly increase the value of the flow. If your goal is to get to a Major, it appears that UAL and DAL may be a good 5-6 years away from taking new hires again. AA is probably 1-2 years. That means there will be a good few years where AA is the only game in town. During that time you’ll have WO pilots taking up around half of all the new hire slots at the only major hiring. That’ll both help those flowing, and those below them (movement).

Obviously no one is going to flow in the time they hoped (or were promised), but no one is getting street hired anywhere with 300 TPIC anytime soon either. The comparative value of the flow, in my opinion, has gone up, not down.

Also, for those saying the seniority is meaningless...
Seniority is QOL and pay at the job you currently hold. If you’ve never been in aviation during a downturn, then here’s my two cents:
Make the best of the job you have. You never know how long you’ll be here.

You make very solid points and I actually tend to agree with you on the value of flow moving forward if the goal is to make it to a legacy carrier. I think the faith that the wholly-owneds, current flow agreements, and financial viability of AA is misplaced, however. There may be consolidation, divestment, bankruptcy, etc. which could completely change that narrative. Career progression is largely tied to COVID-19 economic recovery — which, at this point, seems to be still be an enigma going forward.

Seniority is king during a downturn no matter where you work. What ever seniority you were once March of this year hit, expect to stay there for a long long time.

So correct me if I am wrong, but how did you come up with "half" of new hire pilots being Envoy? We are long past those days are we not? While your assumptions are great about the flow value going up, they are all tied to AA being able to stay afloat, not file BK, not change our contract etc. I think it is an overly optimistic view to think AA will skate past this and not file BK.

Trust me, I hope you are right, I just dont think you are.

I would like to add, this is exactly why you always want to push for pay increases over bonuses, qol changes that are contractual and good solid contract language.

Where is Charlie Bucket?
 

I too am shocked the advise being given indirectly is that SENIORITY DOES NOT MATTER AT THE REGIONALS!


A few on here have been warning pilots.

Envoy can become a career destination unintentionally! Especially as mainline hiring trends & various corporation & society clout towards diversity, not to talk future economic down cycle/ geo political issues & future regulatory mandates for the airlines since the Gov’t own I dear say 50 billion in grants/loans/warrants.

Folks SENIORITY MATTERS NO MATTER THE AIRLINE!

Thank you!!!

Exactly! When you believe it’s a career & you treat it like a career you expect from the company more!

This is why Mainline loves & promulgates flow at the WO. to SUBVERT demands for better contract, 401k, and long-term QOL/reserve improvements!

Flow = AAG’s tool and not the other way around! They have always had the leverage!

Careers focus is why Skywest and Republic pilots have better contracts, QOL, and overall pay (bonus/profit sharing/ etc)!

Seniority and QOL advancements at Envoy should have been MEC’s focus over the past 3-4 years, not FLOW.

Envoy will always flow when AA needs it. Make AA want to flow envoy pilots with a better contract and longevity pay at envoy.

Heard there is a Flowthru/Flowback provision in the works.

I highly doubt that the Envoy MEC is going to allow flowbacks when they are being told that furloughs are coming. Accepting you on the seniority list would put more of our pilots on the street. Where is the benefit in that? The Envoy pilots should shoot themselves in the foot to get an AA seniority number that is worthless for a couple of years so that we can listen to a flowback tell us how great things are at mainline as they taxi out of G19 and smash into a barrier? Flowback Mountain will rise again!!!

Good luck. I would just assume quit than vote for that considering mainline pilots do exactly zero to better our cause.

Now you all want to talk about merging the pilot group and forming a single union, something good for all, we can talk about flow backs.

How would that benefit Envoy pilots?

Exactly. It doesn’t.

Give us mainline seniority numbers, however, I’ll gladly be furloughed and go find work doing whatever in the meantime.

Reminder to not negotiate here. Email the union...

Quit trolling.

I highly doubt the Voy would want that either. Every Flowback would be a training event and put one more trained Envoy pilot on the street that would have to be retrained when recalled. Lots of expense and zero benefit to the company.

I think he said half of new hires from the WO. While it may not quite be half, that would probably be pretty close.

It all depends on class sizes and monthly new hires. If AA hires 60 per month or less, the WO flows will get about half the seats. If it is 100 per month, the WOs will account about a third of the seats.

All of those extra seats will just be a bunch of military and street hires jumping ahead of the flows on the AA seniority list.

I'm not sure why anyone would want flowbacks. I don't think anyone is asking for them.

Can't see why an AA pilot would want to come here and drive an Embraer around for peanuts when they could just liquidate one or two of their vacation homes and live off that until they get recalled.

That didn't work so well for the first four party agreement. Took them 13 years to flow, after losing their left seats to flowbacks, and FO's not upgrading, being pushed down the seniority list, and furloughed from the bottom.
They didn't get to flow over and bid with their 13 year seniority number either. AMR played games with that too....


The company will push APA for scope exceptions so they can run smaller planes on the routes until the loads pick back up to some agreed upon metric.
The opportunity here is to merge all the airlines. Not sure the sixth floor can get that far outside the box; but this would be the time to do it. Restructuring into one big carrier saves them a ton of administration costs. It wipes out the majority of scope issues, allowing them to right size the plane to the route. The APA and ENY ALPA would have to again agree to a modified CBA and pay rate plan that AAG previously said would work for the pilots, but nothing similar had yet been negotiated by the other work groups.

The downside is an AA furlough could be a few thousand easily; that could put everybody currently at ENY on the street. So, rather than simply dust off the old APA/EGL ALPA agreement outline, I'd suggest a modification to include some level of furlough protection. A furlough fence where only a certain percentage would be allowed to bid down to the smaller jets.... say 50%.
The fence would stop at the last pilot hired at DOS. after that nobody has any fence protection. It would be a straight from the bottom furlough.

just spit-balling ways to make this work for the pilots in the long run.

#824neveragain.
Just saying. That will never happen.
Neither will the merger.