Your MEC has zero say on how the seniority lists are integrated. Plus I think Mesaba pilots are getting benefits from this deal, how about your furloughed pilots being offered positions at Colgan and Pinnacle? How many more furloughs would be coming down the road for every Saab that leaves your property?

Mesaba has a good contract and PNCL and Colgan will benefit from it however a contract is not worth much if you are furloughed.

 

Pinnacle Corp is nothing but Pinnacle Airlines thinly disguised. Pinnacle Airlines gave birth to Pinnacle Corp to own it. Colgan is Corp's only other major asset and they have lost Corp money, so it can't be said that they have positively contributed to the financial standing of Corp. Corp and Airlines' management are even the same people in the same building.

You guys at Mesaba know about holding companies and shell games. MAIR....


What it comes down to is that one should expect to be able to bid roughly the same percentage on their seat / base / fleet type after the SLI. You should not be able to jump ahead to a much better position afterwards due to how the SLI was worked out. Anything else amounts to you taking from another pilot.

The benefit to the pilots of a combined seniority list is that they can't play the groups against each other and that there are more bases / fleet types open for bid as your seniority holds it. A benefit of a combined seniority list should NEVER be that you may be able to leapfrog ahead of your peers.

 

I have the solution: A Lottery!

Everybody gets one ticket for each year of service, then we draw.

 

Ok which one is Buddy Casey and which one is an original Gojetter?

 

I'm guessing you welcomed Big Sky with open arms?

 

You are right, a lot of us would be on the street, but lets put it all out on the table.

We have 41 -900s, far more high paying jets than either 9E or 9L

We have a good contract, XJ pilots are not the ones getting 20% or better raises

We are giving up section 6 negotiations, for which we had additional raises coming gauranteed

We also had a flow through, it would have roughly negated the furloughs going forward

We had a lot to look forward to before this deal. Do not think we are jumping for joy because we got bought by Pinnalce Corp.

You can look into the future and guess as much as you want. 9E pilots have much to gain from this deal, but if you are not a -900 captain now, I would not expect to be one for some time.

 

Big Sky never took my airframes, in fact, I gave up contractual money to make sure it didn't happen and their pilots didn't tell me how their relative seniority should put them ahead of my actual seniority.

Other than that, I didn't care about who MAIR owned.

 

I posted in the above quote in blue text. After all that, I should say that I welcome the Mesaba pilots to the battle. A few were in my crashpad before they were furloughed, and I am happy to see them back up and flying. I have been through a furlough and it isn't fun.

I think that no matter how this all works out, a majority of people at Pinnacolaba, Mesaganicle, Colabicle??? will actually be in a better position than they were when it started. We are at a stable company that is expanding and hiring. A contract will come (eventually) and with it will be better working rules with better pay.

As for seniority list integration:

My concern now is actually ending up behind people who were furloughed when this little buy out happened. By my math, roughly 10% of the Mesaba pilots were on furlough. I am roughly 10% up the Pinnacle list. At this point I am a line holder FO and would like to remain a line holder FO. A relative seniority integration method may just push me back to reserve so that a person who didn't even have a job, can now be a line holder. Someone please explain to me how that is even close to being fair.

 

What was your date of hire at 9E? I'm roughly 20-25% from the bottom at XJ with 3 years and still on reserve...would be on all three airframes as well.

As far as integration, no matter how anyone wants to spin it, the Mesaba guys are going to have the least amount of gains when it comes to this new contract. I'm not saying there aren't going to be gains for XJ guys, I'm just saying they aren't going to be as groundbreaking as 9E or 9L...there has to be a positive spin on this for the WHOLE Mesaba group, what that will be remains to be seen, every group has to be on board for this to work...I'm glad 9E and 9L have picked up our furloughs, I think in troubled times as of late our industry has come together to do the right thing. Just like when Compass was helping out our furloughs who now will flow in front of some 9-10 year XJ captains.

 

"Giving" XJ furloughs a job is not some kind of charity. I am appreciative of having a job but I am working for it just like anyone else. I have had two days off in the last 16.