What's happening at Horizon and Jets?
 

Alaska had another great quarter. In the letter to employees Air Group CEO Brad Tilden included a paragraph about, "What's happening at Horizon Air." Here it is:
Sounds like they're asking current pilots at Horizon to fly the jets for the same pay rate as the Q400. Does anyone have additional information about these negotiations?

There are also significant scheduling and work rule concessions involved. I don't have all the details as I've gotten it secondhand. Hopefully a current qx pilot can fill us in because everyone's been asking.

Maybe they'll get the CRJs back from SKW. Aren't the registration numbers still XXXAG?

Is there anything wrong with being paid the same to fly a 76 seat jet as you get paid to fly a 74/76 seat turbo prop?

LOL, Of course not. They should be the same one would think. But if the 76 Jets rates are higher then they should fly the Q400 for higher rates also right?? Should go both ways. Hell the Q400 guys should be paid EMB 170 rates.

I think having pilots to staff said flying would help to ' fight the competition' as well. Minor details and what not.

At this point, we just don't know anything.

Still waiting to see if our union and the company can put something together that we can actually vote on. It's been quiet. The original target was the end of October.

Here are the highlights of what is going on:
1. We're losing 20 Q400's (40% of the fleet) by 2018
2. We have the "opportunity to compete (against SKW)" for 30 E175's, the first of which will be flying in Q1-2 2017
3. They want us to fly it at Q400 pay (our current CBA is for a 10% pay increase on a 76-seat jet over the current Q400 rate)
4. They want us to ditch line bidding and our schedule adjustment periods for PBS.
5. And they want to "simplify" our work rules...nothing yet on what that means.

The past two months they have been doing roadshows and sending out emails telling us how we are 28% too expensive to get the new flying. The union has hired a financial analyst who has already concluded this number is wildly inaccurate, but the company thinks if they keep saying "28%" we'll eventually believe it.

The general opinion from the line is:
1. The decision has been made, and it seems that the majority believes that the new flying is already slated to come here regardless (how do you shrink an airline by half in 2.5 years without a mass exodus and flight cancellations? NOT the attention AAG wants right now with the SEA turf war with DAL). There is more contention on the line about this, however those that do think this place might shrink still don't seem interested in voting in a concession to grow.
2. Our schedule adjustment periods (SAP) were fought hard for and many are very resistant to PBS
3. The 10% boost to fly the jet isn't about the money, it's about NOT TAKING A ****ING CONCESSION IN 2015. Especially to cave to the fear of downsizing.

We have some weird scheduling problems here (for one, all FO trips with CKA get dropped and pay guaranteed. Every day there are multiple FO's getting paid days off, 20-30 day stretches off aren't unheard of), and I think there could be a reasonable discussion about these things, but the company has come out guns blazing, so the pilot group is voicing a resounding "f--- you, pound sand."

The company wants a TA by the end of the year (hah!), and on the original timeline we were supposed to be voting on something by the end of October, currently the union is in another round of negotiations this week and we have heard very little about what is going on, but I assume they aren't making much progress because every other Friday we get an email that says "This week concludes another week of discussions. We wish we could report a major breakthrough however progress is very slow. We ended this week with no agreement. Further discussions are scheduled for next week."

That about sums it up. For the record... there was a video somewhere from Mesa's union people that included a cost comparison for regional pilots. It showed QX being about 10% more expensive than SkyWest.

These are going to the scrapyard at the end of 2016. Skywest already got a new contract to exchange that flying for E175 flying a few months ago. Horizon didn't have an "opportunity to compete" for that.