Did KS bail for a LCC?

Super critical coverage at 300%
Regular critical coverage at 200%

Until January 31st 2022


You heard it here first

Its enjoyable watching management realize how bad their staffing is.

Actually, I heard it via union email first. But thanks anyway. ;-)

I said in a post a while back if the company wanted some good will getting flights covered they could buy it. They must be actually getting the hint.

What if my aunt had… oh wait, I guess that isn’t true anymore!

personally I like the idea a lot. Its a permanent increase, not a lolly pop when ever.

The top 5 CAs and top 5 FOs would still pick it all up, just like they will now.

Sounds like the company doesn’t need our help then.

I agree with you, this LOA should be turned down.

We need better soft pay. This LOA is a band aid that’s only going to benefit a few people. We finally have leverage, let’s use it to our advantage.

Personally, having seen how they operate, I'd vote no on any "improvement" that has a sunset clause (end date) that makes extension totally at their option.

Include a hard improvement like if the parties do not agree to revise & extend this LOA, then all FO regular rates shall permanently increase by 8% and all CA rates shall increase by 5% from current CBA rates. Additionally, if the company and union do not reach agreement on a revised reserve pilot CBA amendment by XX date, then the following modifications to the reserve rules shall take effect: (list changes).
Furthermore, henceforth the company shall make a 5% direct contribution to all CA 401k, and shall make an 8% direct contribution to all FO 401k. This shall be in addition to current 401k matching programs.
Pilots shall have the right to drop scheduled line flying so long as they do not go below 60 hours scheduled block for the month. Red & redder shall not apply to these trip drops. Trip trades of equal number of days on duty, or of trip values within 4 hours pay credit of eachother shall not be denied due to red/redder.
Health Insurance shall adjust the employee/employer prorations such that pilots shall pay no more than 18% of their costs calculated on an annual basis.
Company shall provide - at no cost to each pilot - both long term and short term disability insurance equal to no less than 70% of their salary.

Make their own inaction your weapon.

Don't just give them the ability to get beef in the seats for free.

Good luck guys; it's a great time to be a pilot. Make the most of it. Wanna really **** them off; tell em your hiring me as a contracted CBA negotiator. They can't fire me a fourth time, nothing to lose, and I'll tell em exactly where they can shove their bull**** offers. Right before I march over to the media about the abusive management at American's subsidiary.

I’d hope our union teams take note, at least unofficially for consideration. If there are discretionary funds, I’d give up a few pizza parties to compensate a consultant who is intimately familiar with our situation. Not saying the team is not capable, but no shame in taking all the help we can get, formally or behind the scenes.

even with tight money, you know the company is paying big money for professional advice on this stuff. It’s just business, I would too managing millions of dollars and tying to make every one count.

I agree 100%

Unfortunately it seems like our MEC is committed to sign this LOA. Our MEC should play with the little bit of leverage that we finally have.

So….
A. The sunset clause doesn’t protect the company at all. It only protects the pilots. If the company determines SCC isn’t in their interest they can just not designate any days as SCC. It’s entirely in their discretion.

B. It’s great that you listed a bunch of stuff that all pilots would want, except, since RW would sacrifice his own first born before agreeing to any of that, you should have thrown in free ice cream and slushy machines in the break rooms.

C. That’s a lot of tough talk from a guy who was on the MEC when we signed the 10 year concessionary turd we are currently under. Which, btw, is WORSE than the 10 year concessionary turd that got turned down 6 months prior to that.

D. QOL is going suck for the next few months, because the company needed to address staffing 6 months ago. We might as well get paid extra for the suck.

The ALPA lawyers are very good at helping the company get quick LOA’s MEC approved instead of by pilot vote, by pointing out that the MEC determines what “significant” changes are.... and only significant changes require pilot votes.

By that standard, you will NEVER be entitled to a pilot vote if they don’t want you to have one. They’ll do one little LOA at a time until you’ve essentially got a whole new CBA you never voted on. This is the most abused language in the by-laws. I wanted it changed back in 2014-2015 and couldn’t get past their fear that we’d lose something good if the company had more time to think on things making it less likely for us to get a quick grab before they realize the true cost.
In my years on the MEC, that happened once. The NY base closure LOA was way more than they intended to give once they started complying with it. That was Adam and me. The ALPA lawyers walked out saying we were asking too much and they weren’t going to do it. Adam and I went in ourselves and got every single thing we asked for. The company forever said we held them hostage for too much.

300% is 300%. Obviously the company is doing it because it is projecting short term understaffing. I can’t imagine them conceding to long term pay increases at this point. There is a pretty good backlog of pilots looking for a job right now, so they don’t need to. It is training capacity that is creating the shortage, not a lack of applicants. In a year or two they may end up back at having to increase enticements for recruiting purposes. That is when they’ll do the permanent stuff.

While I agree that simple pay increases don't really do anything to solve the company's current staffing issues, that doesn't mean there's not an opportunity to seek a permanent gain. For instance:

Scratch the whole 'super' critical with a sunset clause language. Instead, simply permanently increase the regular OT premium and critical coverage rates.

300% is nice, but getting rid of the captain pay banding would be nicer. Envoy needs the pilots to bail them out because RW and JD royally screwed up. If this LOA fails, then August pilot vacations will be canceled along with September which will only embolden the pilot rage even more.

It sounds like to company can select between either critical or super critical on any given day. If that’s the case than the sunset clause is to limit the amount of time they can use it as a band aid. It looks like it protects the pilots and not management (management never has to declare super critical).

It would be nice to get the OT scale increased permanently, but our unrestricted OT rules are already quite a bit stronger than other regionals so I doubt it’ll happen…

Haven’t read the full LOA. Is there a criteria for “super critical”. That’s what I was wondering if they never even have to declare it, what’s the point?

This whole thing is lipstick on a pig. They need to fix the underlying problems.

The way I read it, they can simply declare a critical day to be worth 300% as an incentive (my guess is in order to get pilots to pick up 2.3 hour turns). The only other difference is that a JM or extended pilot can request the JM be converted to OT in order to get 300% instead of 200% on the “Super” critical days.

The whole thing is literally 2 paragraphs. The email explaining it is pretty much as long as the LOA itself.

To answer your questions: No, there is no criteria, just like there is no criteria for normal critical coverage.
If they never declare it, then they won’t get enough people to cover their flights.

They need a minimum daily or something. Unless you live in Killeen, no one is going to pick up the GRK lost day. Even at 300% that’s only a bit over six hours pay for your double overnight and 36ish hours of misery.

What they really need is enough pilots to cover the flying they keep telling AA they can do. Then they would have enough reserves to assign to those crappy trips.

This LOA is just a band-aid trying to cover the gaping self inflicted wound they gave themselves by not recalling/hiring 3-6 months earlier than they did.

It depends on if they are desperate enough. I don't know the answer to that and I'm really just pointing out that there are permanent options that would help them out of the current situation and something I hope our negotiating committee has discussed.

And the point of my example about getting rid of the sunset language was because in my example there was no super critical anyway. Just increasing rates for OT and critical OT.

Anyway, what are they going to do if this is voted down in favor of something more permanent? Punish us by taking away Quicktrade? Oh wait!

Agreed that this problem, just like most of them, is self inflicted by management.

But the minimum daily or something is still needed. 11 hour four days wouldn’t happen. AAG would have to give Envoy some better flight files. The reality is having fewer larger regionals would help optimize things.

“If this is voted down” and “something more permanent” are two totally different things. If we say no what are the odds that: 1) They’ll capitulate and establish long term increases in pay; 2) They’ll whipsaw us against another regional and say “Ok, we solved the problem?”

I’m all for permanent changes to critical pay, I’ve just been around long enough to know how little leverage we actually have. If they’re willing to give me $750 to do a DFW-LIT turn (or $2,400 to do a YYC overnight), I’ll gladly take it until they’re desperate enough to start throwing money at us as a recruiting tool (I’m planning to be long gone by then…)

And guess what!? They’ll still cancel vacation if they need to.

It’s been CC for most of the bases and seats this month, and guess what!? There’s rarely any good trip worth picking it up.

We shouldn’t be here trying to save RW and JD with a garbage LOA. Did they “save” us when we got ****ed with the AIP? Quicktrade? Reserve talks? Cost neutral? And the list goes on…

I hope NN has some balls and turn this LOA DOWN! They’ll come back with better offers. We finally have some leverage.

OT cookie monsters are way over represented in the MEC right now. email and tell them we want soft pay/QOL.

Can we please stop talking about quicktrade? It was never anything guaranteed to us and it’s not coming back.

I can tell reading comprehension is not your strongest skill.

Alright then.

I agree with this. In fact, I’ve been hearing that QuickTrade was coded illegally anyways. QT never had official access to DECS and Envoy let it happen under AAG’s IT radar for a few years. I think that was actually a favor which benefitted both parties until AAG themselves found out about QT hitting servers with bots, which obviously costs money on server hits…


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The original comment was in JEST. So why don’t YOU let it die instead of bringing up why it IS dead??

Ssshhhhh, you might trigger someone...

Jeez, triggered much? Calm down buddy


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