The company is not "using any capital to cover no changes for all in bad times"...SkyW is one of the very few companies still showing a large profit quarter after quarter(even Southwest has been losing money for the last 4 or 5 quarters)!! The fact that we are still showing an operational and net profit would indicate they are actually adding to their surplus capital. They purchased ASA with some of that capital, and have been investing in a carrier in Brazil to the maximum amount allowed by the laws there.

As far as furloughs go the last several dozen times I've tried to drop a trip or even take vacation/user I've been denied due to insufficient reserves. I've also been called on my days off because they supposedly were below minimum reserves "system wide"! It appears they aren't really all that "overstaffed"???!!!!

 

Didn't SkW invest in an airline in Ghana several years ago? If so, they lost their shirt on that one.

 

I did not say that the company was using the Capital. I said that some people say "but we have almost a billion in cash" when the company cuts things fo us. What I ment is that having the billion is not going to prevent the company from trying to save while the profit is getting less and less. The cash capital is for other things like investments that you mentioned, save the company if UA closes the doors, etc.

ASA was bought years ago and the purchase cost itself is not relevant to the financial situation today but it has cost us a lot of the ASA / Skywest gross profit for the quarter when they had to park 60 airplanes and cancel over 270 flights in a short period.

I am not at all saying that ASA is not good for us or that they do not produce a profit for Skywest. They have and I believe they will continue.

Yes we are showing a profit but it has gone down to lower levels and it does not take much happening in a quater for that to turn to negative numbers. This mean that the company have been using more of the gross profit to cover operational cost showing at the end lower net profit. You can tell that by looking at the revenue and flown seat miles against the cost profile and compare it to earlier years. The cost profile has not decreased in the same way as the profit. The cost profile has actually grown a lot.

The company knows that a $15 - 60 million net profit in a quarter is very marginal for the size of the Skywest operation and it is looking at every posibility to cut the cost and increase that net profit without any furloughs on the pilot side. That is a difficult task.

On the furlough side. The operation is big and will show differences from base to base and I had the same opinion that you have until recently.

Talking to a very high positioned source change my mind. I was told we are way overstaffed.

 

You mean the one in Brazil? Never heard about Ghana.

 

I guess I can burn my MBA now and just come to you for advice???

 

No. I think we have made that clear many times over.

The current issue about future health coverage hasn't been made final and is a work-in-progress. It is definitely not an overriding reason to throw our hands in the air and get a union.

A lot more things would have to go bad BEFORE I think the pilot's at SkyWest would consider a union.

Besides, we have CONTINUOUSLY and REPEATEDLY voted against having a union and that is because in the big picture, even with all the trials and tribulations that SkyWest and all airlines go through, SkyWest is STILL in a better postion than most airlines out there today.

 

SkyWest had something cooking in Mexico, too. Not sure where that's at. Alma de Mexico was a CRJ-200 airline that failed, and presumably SkW could fill that with Midwest birds.

Upon further research, it appears that the Ghana operation may not have been SkW, but instead the patriarch and original pilot of SkW, and Jerry Atkins' uncle, Ralph Atkins. The following is edited and quoted from other sources:

"The people behind GIA (the American "strategic partner" to Ghana International) seem to be:

Ralph Atkin tries to bask in Skywest's glory, but he was long gone from operation responsibility, when Skywest started operating United's feeder operation in California. Skywest has become the airline it is now, AFTER Atkin left.

Albert Vitale, of Florida passes himself off as an ex-Pan Am pilot, but the FAA only knows of issuing him a pilot's license in 1993, but only for single-engine aircraft on flights over land. Since Pan Am went out of business in 1991, its hard to reconcile the dates.... Vitale is currently in some role with Chalk Airways in FL (which operates Grumman seaplanes between Miami and Bahamas)

Finally there is a Sean Mendis - Mendis' only experience in airline mgmt is that his parents are ex-Air India cabin crew. Mendis currently passes himself off as an Aviation consultant in Canada/India - after getting deported from the USA due to visa violations.

God help Ghana International Airlines from this "great mgmt team" with "lengthy and successful" track records in commercial aviation......

Why is it that a group of Mormons raised a bit of money, and put two guys - AC Vitale and Sean Mendis (who are not Mormons - I grant you) in charge of setting up operations for a major airline - when neither of them have ANY experience!!!

These same guys tried to outbid American Airlines to buy TWA in 2001.....Except they were called Jet Acquisitions Group:

Feb 2001; Jet Acquisitions Group of Phoenix, Arizona, bid $889 million plus assumption of liabilities for substantially all of the assets (with $684 million designated for the non-Worldspan assets and $205 million designated for Worldspan). The Jet Acquisitions Group bid was submitted by [bold]J. Ralph Atkin, president[/bold]. The notice address for Jet Acquisitions Group is: Jet Acquisitions Group, Inc., 6991 E. Camelback Rd., Suite B-305, Phoenix, AZ 85251.

 

Agree with your assessment. Not SKW,but the industry is similiar. The market is what it is, pilots have predictable inertia. The 'No Union" folks are a management dream right now. They can cut benefits,stop pay increases, change scheduling rules to anything they want. You, the pilot has no choice. No recourse when they fire you for any reason. It is slow, but will be a steady downturn. You know, the frog in a pot thing. Management has given up on being a non union carrier because they see lots of financial benefits during a long and tortuous transition. It was not always that way. Business is that way and management will think business. Until now, no union was best management practice, no longer.

Management knows the inertia will give them plenty of time to drag you all down to a miserable state, you will vote in a union eventually. They will not really discourage it by that time. They need it for the next strategic event. Then you are all subject to RLA and will take you years for ALPA or otherwise to negotiate your first contract. Management $$$$$$ ahead.

Your first contract: Management will start with basement benefits. Basically why they will freefall from here forward. Management is already starting negotiations with you. Have they not always raised benefits? This is your first reductions, they are not nearly the last.
The negotiations will predictably divide the pilot group. You will all blame each other for the mess, not management. Sweeeeet!!! Pilots are so easy to predict. Management $$$$$$ ahead.

If management gets there way, it will be ALPA because it gives them options with ASA. An in house union would not be in their plans.
In any case, good luck, they hope you all sit back, relax and move on the inertia of the past, not your future.
Strategically, they are way ahead of you in planning savings while the pilots blame and fight among each other. They will accept the acrimony because it will save them 10's of millions ao dollars for the next decade. Good luck with your future. Pilot predictability is now going to work for managements financial bottom line. Management $$$$$ ahead.
Best bet is get your leaders in the group to start thinking strategically and support them in the actions you all choose. Sitting on the side lines is a management expectation. Looking forward?? Management is hoping you look backward to previous votes, etc.
If you support SAPA, is it such a far stretch to give them some teeth?
Best of futures to all of us. Read about the RLA, time to get educated. It is a thorny road, but so is doing nothing.

 

Well if someone high up said it then it must be true, we're a family and they would never lie to us, oh wait, yes they would!

 

Don D. was fired, but used recourse available to any human in the good ole US of A.... a lawyer. I'm confident that any settlement with Don by SkW would have paid (or will pay) for his legal expenses. Granted, a union may, or may not, have provided Don with a lawyer (if he p*ssed off the wrong union folks, they'd let him sink).

I was also fired from SkW. I'm confident that any union worth that title could have mitigated that in some way. However, the reality is that any pilot union, just like the current SAPA, would most likely be run by captains, who by a straw poll, support my firing (for failing upgrade training). Union or not, there wouldn't be a change here, either. FO's seem to see the policy differently, for obvious self-serving reasons ;-)

SkW is actively firing folks for failing recurrent training. Again, a good union should be able to argue training / downgrade / anything EXCEPT to be fired / PRIA / jobless. And a union with a little money can force the issue in arbitration / court.

SkW had fired another guy in the past two years, local to me in San Diego, during probation. Apparently another carrier's gate agent turned him in for getting into some kind of argument over the jumpseat. No union is going to save this guy either.

SkW fired another guy concurrent to my firing in August 2008 for failing FO IOE on the EMB-120 (also on probation). Seriously, what would any union be able to do there? The answer is nothing. Maybe offer the guy a counter job, or bag handling?

And this gets to a point I made earlier. Whether union or not, there won't be a significant change in firings. There should be, but I doubt there will be. Even the firings that should be won by a union might not be.

A union will offer lots of bravado, and at least a greater possibility that some jobs could be saved, or policies changed that make it easier to fire somebody.



It has occurred to me that if ALPA were genuinely concerned about a union at SkW (beyond "we get their dues"), they'd finance the start-up of an in-house union... with no strings attached.