Pinnacle, and on Jan. 1st, Compass and Mesaba lose all buddy passes. Parents have to travel on High ZED fair, and everyone only get 3 transoceanic travel days per year. Thats 3 one-ways across the ponds. Those are the details as I understood it. But as someone that likes to travel across the pond a lot, this would totally suck. Not sure why they can't pay $200 to get the better deals. I sure would.

I can tell you this... the minute Corp gets around to rewriting manuals, if what you guys have in your FOM isn't in our JCBA, the commuting policy will go the way of your pass benefits... regardless of a later SLI...

Just a heads up

At ExpressJet we fly at the SAME priority as the CAL employees. Our planes or their planes its the same priority. Flying the same people so why should be nonrev at different priority.

Normal travel is $12.50 one way domestic ($15 if you make a connection). International fees vary by destination. No Annual fee. All normal fee based nonrev passes are unlimited.

Just like them we also get up to 16 "vacation passes" each year depending on dependents. These are one way passes so up to 8 round trips where you get a "super priority" and also fee waived travel regardless of cabin class. Seats open in first from EWR to NRT well if you are using a vacation pass you just got yourself 16 hours in first for free up to 8 round trips this year. Vacation passes are good for 5 years so if you dont use all 16 they roll over. You dont have to use them just for vacation, its just what they are called. You can use them for commuting if you like. For me I will never use one for commuting because they are just to valuable for free international travel.

Here is an example of what a nonrev list might look like. Remember we all travel at the same priority so date of hire is all that matters. CAL or XTT employee doesnt matter.

Hire date Discription
2000 employee on Vacation pass
2001 employee on Vacation pass
2000 dependent traveling alone on Vacation pass
1986 employee on normal pass
1999 employee on normal pass
1965 dependent traveling alone on a normal pass

(dependents travel at the same priority as their respective employee if they are accompanied by said employee)

Jumpseat is different depending on if the flight is ours or theirs. They are OAL on us and we are OAL on them.

Our United pass travel is absolutely horrible as far as priority and cost with no vacation pass at all. It is anyones guess as to what might happen after our merger and the UAL/CAL merger. Our travel bennies are not contractual, although they should be, but we were just lucky and kept what we had from the ole COEX days.

In my opinion, regional airlines shouldnt exist to begin with but at the very least we should get the exact same travel benefits as the mainline employees and nothing less. We fly the same customers. Dont settle for less if you actually get a chance to negotiate for this.

They rely on goodwill to keep unions out. I think that has become a lower priority, but they would still like to hold the line. Healthcare of course is major goodwill (or badwill) issue, but it costs money.

It doesn't cost SKW money to stand up to DL when DL comes looking to bump us on our own airplanes. SKW is not negotiating new contracts with DL right now so it's not a big deal.

DL might be able to get FREE employee goodwill by giving them higher priority on DCI/SKW...so they will ask.

SKW can get FREE employee goodwill (or at least avoid more badwill) by telling DL to pound sand. Doesn't cost anything to say "No".

The NWA call-in-honest policy was removed with the merger with Delta. What makes you think a regionals' call-in-honest policy is going to stick?

No, actually the Delta call in honest policy was chosen over the NWA one.The NWA policy was a better one though.

The "little" 200 actually cruises faster in RVSM than the 7 and 9.

I've deleted most of the mud slinging in this thread, I hope.

You mean it "could" cruise faster. I've never had a -200 above .78 in level flight. And anything above ISA+0 it's .74 or less. The -700 will do .82 (limited to .83 in RVSM) and the -900 will do .85 (limited to .82 in RVSM) in level flight at any ISA.

Not bragging, just making sure the facts are straight.

You're not getting slowed because we're randomly deciding to slow down. I haven't had a day in a while that MEM center hasn't slowed me down while I was still on the arrival. Flow control into MEM used to be unheard of, now we're seeing it pretty often on short hops from FSM, XNA and some of the other shorter leg length stations. Oh, and I'll be a bit more concerned about flying faster to get there on-time when the company is concerned about getting us a decent contract. Until then, as long as the passengers are gonna make their connections (which how the banks are constructed in MEM, you can be pretty late and still see people make their connections), I really couldn't care less about what time we're gonna get to the gate.

Now, on the pass benefits, I'm still wanting "fly confirmed for less" back. Loved that with NWA, and as soon as Delta handed down the "DCI contract carrier" package, that was one of the first things gone. I LIKED being able to buy a severely discounted POSITIVE SPACE ticket for my wife and kid to go on vacation. FedEx works great for me, but I can't take my family with me. With the loads how they have been for about the past year, it's touch and go if I'd be able to take them with me on space available travel anyway, especially with the newly hired ramper from Delta taking his mom bumping us off....

LOL. Good joke my friend.