hawkman

Is your logic that since the FO's got bonuses in recent past years, and captains didn't, they should be okay with having to pay for crash pads, or hotels and live out of the domicile sometimes two legs that their seniority was holding? I don't think most FO's are mad at the senior pilot group as a whole anyway, just the agreement to be on reserve with crappy reserve rules (with promised and never delivered improvements) and have to pay the costs of the displacement themselves. Sure, the captain group didn't get anything for a lot of years, but those that came behind weren't responsible for that. And by the way, the amount of the bonus for most of us will never reach much above $23000, we are being upgraded before receiving more than one of those.

Thedude86

This got me thinking. If class sizes ever do start to dwindle, I’d be surprised/not surprised if the company started offering 40k-50k bonuses spread out over 3 years. That way it sounds nice to new hires, but the company knows they’ll only have to pay half of that because you’ll be forced to upgrade after 1.5 to 2 years. Essentially not paying anymore than they are right now.

captande

Most will be lucky to cash one installment check before upgrade. Honestly we go month after month of same old same old. And I understand the senior guys seeing it as by the time change comes they’ll be either gone, close to flow, or even retirement, that they don’t have a dog in the fight anymore. But with a huge majority of the pilot group being here 2 years or less. Why don’t we just go scorched earth and elect a complete new regime of people who have shared these frustrations?

Throwitaway

That's essentially what Mesa did/is doing. We're not too far off. We have a long way to go if we indeed want to be the most respected regional airline. The dark days for airline hiring are on the horizon, especially in respect to how they plan on training all these people. It'll be very interesting to see the industry 5 years from today.

Approach1260

So ALPA traded first officer seniority to help management with a PR problem? Here I was thinking the Union was supposed to fight for the pilot group not the company.

irrelevant

My logic isn’t about it being okay to be forced to upgrade out of domicile...though that would happen to someone regardless. It’s driven more by understanding how the regionals work, and how PSA works. At the end of the day, they dont care one iota what any of our quality of life or level of financial security is. All they care about is how to get bodies in the seat, at the cheapest cost they can get someone to show up for.

Over the last several years, there has been a lot of information posted here and elsewhere discussing the way PSA and other regional airlines operate. If one chooses not to research this, or chooses only to believe the “sunshine and rainbows” crowds and recruiters, then they are setting themselves up to be disappointed.

You have to understand that when the airline actively finds ways to violate the written agreement it accepted during contract negotiations (SAP transactions processed in real-time, minute by minute manipulation of the reserve grids that are supposed to be set, using alternative math to avoid having to increase the flow as previously agreed - as a few examples), they display a complete disregard for the employee, and “doing what is right”.

If someone doesn’t take the time to research before committing, I can understand why they would be frustrated/disappointed with the way the company (and local ALPA) operates. The company is going to negotiate something with ALPA that has such loose language that a ten-year-old could find a way to violate the spirit and intent of the language. Because the company doesn’t care a bit about your or any of our personal well-being, they will begin at the earliest opportunity to interpret things in the way that minimizes our well-being.

ALPA, for their part, has to take what they can get, based on the leverage they have. In this case there wasn’t any real leverage, as there’s nothing preventing junior-manning into the Captain position at this, or I suspect any regional airline.

PSA has long operated with a “if you don’t like it, quit” culture. This is why they won’t increase pay or quality of life for people already on property. If one is oblivious to the culture long enough to build some seniority, management believes there’s a very small chance that employee will leave. That’s why they would tell a prospective candidate who was going to be number 1,400 on the seniority list they would flow to AA in 5-6 years...at a time when we were flowing just 55/year, and the company was arguing that they weren’t required to increase the flow by just 11 pilots a year.

WhiteMorpheus

But which other regional would call a base change during a forced upgrade a "voluntary" displacement, and why would our union support that language?

Have people grieved the real-time SAP language not being upheld?

irrelevant

Probably a good number of regionals would if they could get away with it. I’ve said for some time these agreements need to be published in advance so the pilot group can review them before they are signed off on. 1,800 sets of eyes looking at something for issues is better than ten sets.

There has been effort from the union to get the company to process SAP transactions faster. PSA likes to outsource everything to vendors, then claim they have no control over the outcome they are supposed to be responsible for.

ALPA was unable to even win the arbitration over the manipulation of the reserve grid by the company. It is unlikely they’ll be able to accomplish anything more than a temporary band-aid with the SAP....unless there’s something significant the company wants that they can’t figure out a way to interpret into the contract.

We need new blood to step up and get involved. That doesn’t mean we need to toss out everyone who is already serving in an ALPA role.

texinc

BTW, today's announcement has senior manning upgrades by pilots hired 1 year 5 months ago.

JayBee

Not only that they had to force people to upgrade into a non Jeopardy class...