I believe them too. And I don't care. If you can't afford what's on the menu, you don't get to eat.

Bottom line, Mesa management needs to go back to their mainline partners and renegotiate their crappy contracts so to pass increased labor costs on to them. Mainline is making record profits off the backs of Mesa crews and that cannot be allowed to continue.

Proud of my former colleagues!

 

Next step is to clear out the mec, kick them to the curb, and possibly bring the Teamsters onto property

 

Shout out to Mesa!!!!! Woot Woot!!!

 

We did very well but we DON'T want the teamsters onboard! Let's not get carried away, there is still a lot of work to do! Go Mesa!

 

I am glad to see that we did not accept the current TA, but we also need to remember that voting down the TA doesn't hurt the company in any way. This is not a situation where Mesa needs a contract from its pilots to grow. We don't have a situation like AIr Wisconsin where we keep getting raises every year regardless. We are still the lowest compensated pilot group in the industry, and there is no pressure on the company to renegotiate with its partners as long as we keep completing flights and getting pilots to come to the airline. NLRB will never release us for a strike which would most likely drain the company of cash and put it out of business. If you are new to the 121 world I would carefully consider all your options, as it is a pilots market and there are many better places to be if you get stuck as an FO. If you have 1000 121 than there is no quicker upgrade other than PSA. Come get your upgrade and ride it out as long as it lasts.

 

 

Way to go Mesa! Way to hold the line!

It's nice to see the pilot groups are getting it.

It is not the pilot group's issue what the company "can afford" or "not afford". It's management's job to negotiate contracts appropriately. As strategic thinkers they should have had appropriate labor forecasts in place and knew what was on the horizon. I assume there are bright people at the helm. Any strategic thinker could have seen that higher labor costs were on the horizon and negotiated contracts that could adequately cover costs. If they chose to ignore that and not plan accordingly, well, then, there are consequences to poor planning. Time to go back to the table and admit you did not plan correctly. The majors can certainly afford to pay more for the contracts if they want to continue the cheaper feed. Either that or take the flying back to the major level. That's where we're at.

Hopefully this is the beginning of all pilot groups standing together.

 

They won't release you because the NLRB has nothing to do with the RLA.

 

Exactly, during that conference call I believe someone brought up that question of management going back to mainline to renegotiate the contracts. The response was "mainline will just tell them to go pound sand". Well have they even tried??? If we stay strong on this then mainline will have to do something if they want to keep one of the bigger operations (Mesa) in the game. If Mesa truly doesn't have any more money then I suggest they go back to their mainline pimps and ask for some more at least.

 

Airline execs aren't going to tell a codeshare partner to "pound sand." That phrase reflects the juvenile, simplistic mindset of our current union leadership.

There is a vast disparity between what it would cost for mainline to operate our fleet themselves, and what we are paid to operate.

By drawing a line in the mud, regional pilots are gradually boxing legacy management into a choice--do you want cheap feed subject to rolling staffing shortages? Or do you want expensive feed that's reliably staffed (by bringing it in house).

Think about the business decision United has to make if Mesa finally hits the bottom and FOs start bailing:

1) Send the jets to another regional (every other regional capable of running and staffing an EJet program costs much more than us)

2) Bring the jets to mainline--extremely expensive and probably not profitable on many routes/departure times on our gauge of equipment

3) Bump Mesa's FFD margins up somewhere between those negotiated by Skywest/TSA/RAH and our current margin