News to me: the TA for the FA's takes them off of 117 and puts them under 121. We won't be flying as cohesive crews anymore, it'll be like mainline. They'll come and go each turn, seperate hotels, etc.
Maybe not a big thing to many, but that team spirit/mindset will be gone...:(

I'm just trying to explain my results after working for both places that's all. My experience has been higher earnings at SKW hopefully you guys can raise the bar even higher so we can continue to have future leverage.

As a former QXer, I feel horrible that you all are being put in this position. From what I've heard about the TA from my friends that are still there, it's concessionary but not horrible. One of the guys that I trust most about contract language because of his service on the union there, says "it's something that he can live with".

As for the comment about Delta not ratifying their TA and still getting the airplanes anyway. I do think that there are two sets of rules. One for mainline and another for the regional partner. The airplanes promised to Delta would make their Company money. For a regional, it doesn't really make them money because those airplanes can be flown by another company. That is not the case with E190s and 737s going to Delta or some other mainline carrier because of scope.

I think we'll let you guys raise the bar in time for our pay arbitration in '21 ��

Their hours of service is still 117 they just don't call it 117. Their trips will conincide. However, they won't have to sign the release anymore (don't laugh) and their reserves are going to get used harder. On the flip side they can fly back to back a.m. Trips (no wocl issues)

Not saying this mentality is right or wrong.. but this reluctant acceptance of concessions as "something that can be lived with" in a time of never before seen company profits astonishes me.

Would not be surprised to see this passing 60/40.. sad.

The talk here should be about how much in rate and QOL improvements should be sought... not on how many concessions can be lived with.

We simply under value our worth as pilots.

Yeah, the concessions aren't huge and they're probably livable. But everybody knows it's total horse---t when the company is making so much $$. They're laughing all the way to the bank. It's not the typical "Well, take concessions now or take them in BK court" scenario. It sets a really bad precedent. When the company has gains, the pilots are supposed to share in those gains, as we are certainly asked to take cuts when things are bad. If you don't get any gains in this contract, then when, ever? In 8 years... in 8 years when it becomes amendable how do you honestly go ask for anything with a straight face? The company was super profitable before, we took cuts. But now it's been 8 more years and we'd like.. what? "We're gonna shrink you again and take all your jets to (random whipsaw place) if you don't take more cuts." I don't work there, so of coure there's nothing at stake for me except for my friend's well being, that's the only dog I have in the fight. And yeah it seems like they're selling it in the road shows as "well it's not that bad, we can live with it". But on some level it's absolute madness. The name of the game in 2016 is regionals having trouble staffing and flying will go to any carrier that can manage to staff it. Being asked for any kind of concessions with no give from the company is so patently absurd and offensive that only management could have thought of it. But it's your lives and you're being asked to play high stakes poker and figure out if they're bluffing or not... It just makes me sick.

Exactly, which is why I voted no. I won't be a part of this game. We've got **** to lose but Alaska has WAY more to lose. If we go down we will take those motherfu**ers and their precious stock price with us.


The puzzle palace cleaned house the other day, multiple employees with 25+ years of loyalty to the air group were shown the door Alaska style.

When does the vote close?

On the 29th.
(Bonus: The earnings call for the AG's last quarter and full-year 2015 is on the 21st.)

Any chance you can say who?

^^This right here folks.

This will very likely pass because there are enough senior people here who would rather see this place go to **** than go away. This TA will not make this place go to ****, but it'll be a damn good start.

As for myself, I see no better time to find out how Alaska really feels about Horizon than right now when hiring is booming. I still stand by the fact that shrinking us would be suicidal on AAG's part, but I recognize they might just be arrogant and stupid enough to try anyway. Fact is, if this TA must pass for us to survive, there will be more cuts to come.

For those of you on the fence about this, be sure about one thing: if this TA passes then there WILL be another round of BOHICA. However, you will only have more to lose (whether you have been here a year or 10 years) and there is no guarantee you will be gainfully employed elsewhere when the **** hits the fan. There is absolutely no better time to hedge that bet and the company knows it.

Do not believe what they say in the roadshows about how the company will come begging in a few years to revisit the CBA to attract new hires. Fear is a powerful motivator. If this passes they will forever have the upper hand.

If everyone believes the company will come begging to renegotiate in 3 years, why not make it a 3 year deal? Just remember, management is playing chess while us pilots are playing sorry.

Since most of those 175's will be replacing mainline flying, Alaska is gaining huge in that arena....but that is not enough....Horizon could have left their union employees alone, taken on the massive challenge of adopting an entire new fleet type, developed some major goodwill and allowed the other regional contracts to rise up to theirs in this current cycle...And then done the honest thing and commenced negotiations in ernest so as to have a contract in place by the current ammenable date....

Why would they renegotiate? If they find themselves unable to staff, they'll just raise first year pay like the other regionals did. Doesn't require a whole new contract. There may be a small amount of give to get it raised, but unlikely. If you look at how Compass did it, they started giving out the $10k signing bonus, when the union grieved it and said it was illegal, they went to arbitration and just raised first year pay, can raise it again whenever they like, and all everyone else got in exchange was 4 commuter hotels a month and hotels during irrops... I mean if you give concessions in a time like this you don't exactly come from any kind of place of power in 2-3 years if they can't staff and want to raise pay. "we're gonna get back what we just gave up if you want to raise 1st year pay.."... not likely.

This is Brad Tilden were taking about here...

So, I talked to a CA yesterday that went to a roadshow. He had time to kill, so he sat there for a few hours and listened to everybody else's questions, as well as having some of his own.
He said he couldn't identify a single standout positive thing in the TA. There were two things that might make life a bit better, (some of the reserve rules being one), but that was it.
People tore it to pieces.
There are many holes in the language big enough to drive trucks through. A lot of the language isn't finalized, the union reps said things like "this is how we expect it to read...".
When they first sat down and mentioned the jet pay scale, (that we have in the current contract), the reps said the company stood up and walked away. They said they would never agree, a complete non-starter.
When questionable parts were pointed out, all the reps could do was shrug and concede. "But it was the best we could do...", "we think it'll turn out this way..."
Failure.
What really torques me off on the union side is the fact that if you change your mind, you can't change your vote. After the earnings call tomorrow on the AirGroup's 2015 results, I think there'll be some buyer's remorse from early "yes" voters.
Historically, this has been a good place to work, as far as regionals go. The future? We'll see, but I've been in such a black mood recently...

It's really sad. I'm hoping people will wake up after tomorrow's billion dollar record breaking highest most profitable quarter in US airline history announcement by Alaska tomorrow and vote NO TO CONCESSIONS!

You should see what PBS just did to everybody at compass in February. You guys have no idea what kind of concession you're taking for free. Absolutely no idea if you vote it in. PBS disregards seniority in order to award better pairings to the people junior to you when it benefits the company (which is always.) There's no protection they can put in that fixes the fundamental problems of PBS. It can't go in seniority order because it's all pieces of a puzzle and it'd be left with nothing but end pieces. You get whatever makes the puzzle fit whether it's what you wanted or not and seniority doesn't go out the window entirely but that is the last priority as far as PBS is concerned.

Yep, record profits.
The best year ever for Horizon and Alaska Air Group.

A lot of dodged questions about the q400 and what will happen if the contract doesn't pass with the E175s. Typical.

Just curious...who is your PBS vendor? Do you have contract language for minimum staffing levels for PBS to function properly?

They will do whatever is most profitable in the short term, because all they care about is their overvalued stock price at this moment. They know if they give the flying away it will cost them millions as we burn the place down, so I think they would go back to the table. Especially if its 51% No and 49% yes.

This non-passing speculation will all soon be a moot point when this company fishing expedition, concession laden TA sadly passes 60/40.
Their many lifers buying into the fear of unknown factor and enough impressionable junior guys buying into "commit to compete" will serve this nice concessionary gift to a company that just announced a BILLION (not million) dollar profit.

I hope I am proven wrong and gladly eat crow but willing to bet that I am right.

$1.35B if you include the stock buyback, but whose counting...

I'm with you. I am not optimistic about this thing getting voted down even though there are a myriad of reasons why it should be. Too much fear, not enough logic and risk tolerance.

Our vendor is AOS. Same one Skywest uses and I've seen my buddies schedules there, same nonsense. Essentially our contract says PBS should leave very little open time, they can't raise the floor above 85 and there has to be a 10 hour range at least so they can't give everybody 95 hour schedules... at least somebody has to get awarded 85. It's pretty weak. But I'm sure no matter how "ironclad" your contract language is, they'll find a loophole to do what they want. And they certainly will construct trips with the contract in mind to get what they want. It is absolutely a big concession and worth getting some serious money for, not giving up for free.
Basically if this thing passes I don't even understand the point of being represented by a union. Pilots are asked to share in the company losses, they should also share in the gains instead of being used as pawns.

Are you saying the minimum line AOS will build is 85? If so that is nuts...

It's configurable within the software, and for us nothing in the contract prevents them from raising it to 85. At least the past 6 months it's usually been a floor of 85, so that is our minimum. Not sure if you have protection in your TA but it doesn't matter anyway, because there is a hard floor (what they set) but also internally within the software it starts assigning higher and higher line values as it realizes it's not going to cover every pairing and then starts doing weird, sometimes seniority violating stuff to make sure absolutely everything gets covered. If it didn't, it would have a bunch of pairings left that it couldn't use to make legal schedules. Your day off bid doesn't matter to the system, if it needs to it will disregard that bid and call it "company need" day and award you a company need pairing.

The QX TA has the floor at min guarantee and the average line can't be higher than 83 hrs/bid in the Jet. Those numbers can't be changed without union approval.

Our union hasn't even decided on AOS they are looking at NavTech also. I think a lot of us are worried about AOS globalizing solutions too. If the TA passes there will be a selection committee that decides which system is best.

So what happens when we say we want X software and the company says "too expensive" ?

From what I understand, we get the system we think works best and the company buys it...all the bells and whistles we want, negotiated part of the deal for PBS.

Make sure your committee knows how bad AOS is, then... I'm certain there's a reason why so many regionals ended up going with it. Idk. It seems like Navtech has a lot of clients as well, though. Mesa/Gojet are on it apparently, might be worth asking them what they think.
(Or just vote no to this offensive TA, but easy to say when I have no skin in the game and obviously no way to know if the company's threats have merit... but I do believe pilots are commodities right now.)

Seemingly related thread:
http://www.airlinepilotforums.com/ma...folks-pbs.html

Jets are on the way
https://www.flightglobal.com/news/ar...t-quar-421088/

They are talking quite openly about Horizon flying these airplanes given that it allegedly all hinges on BOTH pilot and FA groups passing their respective TA's. It seems to me openly communicating with the media about plans for Horizon then making major deviations from that only weeks later would raise some eyebrows. That is, of course, if AAG is ready to pull that trigger if that time comes.

I think the company has done a mediocre job of making Horizon feel unloved enough to think they aren't worth more than these new contracts. Occasionally they've been on the spot, but then there are things like this that sure doesn't make it seem like the company is a finger snap away from burning Horizon down. How are there so many people leaning towards voting yes? AAG is clearly not ready to do that.

And these 175's are not realy growth.. Just a trade off for Q's going away... The whole thing is dumb.. As Alaska posts record profits. If they cared they would fold Horizon into Alaska and get the jets...

A great point and a great question. Pretty bewildering to believe a TA was even agreed to by the union let alone a yes majority vote most likely occurring in this climate of:

1) The company announcing over a billion $$ in profits.

2) These statements in the article from Pederson about QX getting the jets.

3) QX already being highly profitable operating with the current FA/pilot contracts.

4) A pilot staffing issue has by no means gone away for QX which should be allowing the union to be in a strong bargaining position... at least better than this TA seems to show!

How could the climate be any better to demand at least QOL improvements here?? Pretty astonishing. Horizon is getting these jets period. Anything the company can get through concessions on your contracts is simply gravy.

Notice the headline says "expects to order." They are just preparing the stock holders for the order so that they don't get their panties in a bunch if it goes through.

Why is there so much desperation to have a guarantee around here? Is it because of how we lost the CRJ's? It's a different time! The company is betting with nothing to lose, but following through with their threat leaves them with PLENTY to lose - they won't do it. Not when they're banking a billion in a year. The risk is NOT worth the reward for them.

We need to up our risk tolerance here folks.

Yeah pretty sure horizon falling apart would hurt Alaska more than it helps them. The whole point of having two regionals is so they can manage cost and whipsaw. They don't ACTUALLY want Horizon to shrink to unprofitability.