While I was 100% against this TA from the first time I read it, I also understand why nearly 70% of our pilots voted yes.

We are constantly bombarded with comoany propoganda. Phrases like "Commit to Compete" are plastered all over the company website, daily blast emails, and almost every communication from management. Our crew rooms have little murals of the EMB-175 (with Skywest and Alaska painted on the side), we had an airplane open house for all the employees to "tour" a new E-Jet... The list goes on. Needless to say, all of this propoganda is not a wasted effort by companies auch as Alaska Air Group. They know exactly what they are doing and that is instiling a sense of urgency and fear, even during the most profitable time in the airlines history.

This is a sad day for regional pilots everywhere. While our CBA at Horizon can still be considered decent, the fact remains, we took a LOT of concessions in this deal. There is no doubt. Had this been 5 years ago, I would have a different opinion, but today nearly EVERY other fee for departure carrier is making improvements in thier pilot contracts while we take cuts. Sad indeed.

Some of the concessions for those curious:
-PBS (prefferential biding system). Complicated, industry standard, but it is a far cry from line bidding. I have used both. Not only do we loose a lot of control we had making our schedules, we loose vacation time because of it as well. Huge concession.
-Jet pay. We had payrates for up to 120 seat jets. Those are gone. There is a modest increase for Jet Captains, but nothing for FO's (anual 1.5% increases with baseball arbitration ever few years... Thats it) Whether or not we are now in line with the industry or not, WE TOOK A PAYCUT in this TA.

-We STILL must take the jumpseat while deadheading! Although now this is restricted only to flights of 1 hour or less block time, over 50% of our stage lengths are less than 1 hour of block time.

-Reserves must now "call Crew scheduling" and be available for 30 minutes after blocking in at base. Amazing job AAG negotiators! Of course now we get long call reserve... But so what? We had long call rules in our old CBA as well.

-Newhires will not get our basic, low deductible, health insurance. Current employees can keep what we have now, but the only option for new pilots is now a "high deductible" HSA insurance plan. Cute.

-Theres a few other points, but these are the big ones (PAY and PBS).

Sorry to the rest of the Regional Airlines trying to better thier contracts, I feel we have let you all down and opened up the concesion window during record profitablity and a shortage of pilot labor.

Here is a question from a potential new hire.

Would you come fly for Horizon today given the new contract?

Do you want to live in SEA, PDX, GEG, BOI, ANC? I dont mention MFR because there is a STRONG suspicion that base will close eventualy. If yes, then I would say its still an OK place to work as far as regionals go. Time to upgrade is getting shorter. As soon as Alaska calls up all the pilots here waiting for class dates, the time spent in the right seat will only continue to decrease.

Skywest has bases in PDX and SEA, Compass has a SEA base. No idea how senior they are, but I would look at those places as well if you want to live in the Northwest. They have all jet fleets, more growth potential than Horizon, and lets face it; as long as you dont commute it doesnt really matter what regional your at. Get your time, and get on with a major!

I once considered Horizon a potential "career" airline. After this TA, I want out more than ever!

No way. Read like the last 50 pages of negativity here. There's better options than us right now since we're becoming like everyone else.

Do you want to fly a jet? If you come here before February 2017 you will NEVER fly one here unless you want to bypass a q400 upgrade to be a 175 FO after your 4 YEAR seat lock expires.

Are you prepared to be on reserve for 10-12 months?

Can you handle flying 6-8 legs a day in a piece of crap with PBS coming soon? How about getting paid 5 hours for a 2 day trip since we have no daily min guarantee?

Go to compass or SkyWest and thank me later.

Amazing how much this pilot group gave up in exchange for such weak job protection language. What does this CBA do that protects us from shrinking anyway? It guarantees that nobody gets furloughed. We're losing over 100 pilots a year through attrition, there is plenty of room to shrink without furloughing.

That being said, I think there's still a good chance of happening. Voting in this TA now just gave the company the chance to do that quietly.

Plan A.) AAG somehow finagles E175 deliveries by early next year. Seems next to impossible given that there is a long line for getting these airplanes, so I don't see how there can be AAG owned airplanes on the property that quickly, which means..

Plan B.) AAG buys CRJ's. Bombardier is hungry for customers to buy these, we already have a CRJ training program at Horizon, this could be a possibility. However, there are reasons everyone is buying E-Jets and not CRJ's. Bombardier has been a big disappointment as a service-provider to AAG with the Q400, and customers greatly prefer the E175 to the CRJ, so...

Plan C.) Skywest gets the first 8-14 E175's anyway by AAG exercising the "option aircraft" portion of this CBA (which gives them up to 14 that they can give to SKW). This means the CBA can't go into effect, but the company doesn't care that much, at least not enough to get CRJ's when the market calls for E175's. They now own the Horizon labor groups. They let the Q400's expire and attrition takes care of the weak "job protection" clause in the new contract - Horizon shrinks.

Once they can finally get AAG owned E175's on the property, they'll give them to Horizon, implement the CBA, and hopefully we'll at least get enough to return to where we are...though that could take years. Years of no upgrades and little hiring.

Here's why I think this is possible:
LOA 1.A. - "intention of AAG...to place an order for 30 firm and 30 optional regional jets with anticipated deliveries beginning in 2017" -- this is meaningless
LOA 1.B. -- just keeps the CBA from going active until the first jet.
LOA 2.A. - this is only about other people flying Q400's, also meaningless
LOA 2.B. - "None of the Firm aircraft acquired and placed into revenue service under the Order, shall be flown by airlines not controlled by AAG in order to fulfill a [CPA] with an entity in which AAG has a controlling interest unless the flying is performance by the Pilots." -- Nowhere else in the document does it say that "firm" orders need to come before "options."
LOA 2.C. -- in summary, 50% of option aircraft must be flown by Horizon. However, section 1. of this says compliance of this only needs to be done "at the date that represents the midpoint of the Order," so they can exceed this 50% requirement up to at least 14 new aircraft, which is one airplane short of when "Allocation of Option aircraft will be reconciled...to ensure compliance with the no less than half provision" (which I believe we have conveniently heard the first two waves of new jets will be in sets of 8)

As for the LOA about "job protection" it only says "The Company shall not furlough Pilots on the Seniority List as of the date of ratification during the acquisition and acceptance of firm orders..." Like I said earlier, not a problem. Stop hiring and they'll find themselves down to size in no time.

I'd love to hear any opinions especially from the legal-minded among us how this CBA is rock-solid on preventing this, but let's not kid ourselves and say what the union has been saying for the past month.

"Well...that isn't the intent of the wording."

Some really good analysis and questions raised by Phteven.

I will just add this little nugget from the company's official announcement:

More information to come shortly on the timeline, including when we will know if jet flying has been awarded to our airline.


IF??? What more is there to be settled? Probably reading too much into it but did cause me to read that statement twice.

You guys fell for the oldest anti labor tricks in the book... Too bad
You're not alone plenty of others have as well.

Yup. Though to defend myself and the other 31%, we're not all chumps. Just most of us apparently.

Given how readily willing your pilot group is to take concessions in a time of record profits for nothing, I'm not sure why an 8 year contract is a bad thing either. I mean how do you seriously ask for gains in the future when you just took this thing? There's no leverage anymore, Alaska got what they wanted out of the TA. Line bidding ain't coming back. Probably best to stay on this contract for awhile because if you're Alaska you're stupid not to demand concessions in the next one too, the pilots already proved they'd fall for it. It's a sad day for the industry.

We tried, all we can do.