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…)