...but they threw us a root beer float party in IAH... they care about us! I'm hoping for a pinnacoloaba chuck e cheese field trip on the first day of my next trip

 

Could you imagine what they would tell us if we told them that we cant do our trip for a few weeks because my day care is (understaffed/under-trained...... whatever you want here)

 

Sounds great, but we can't fire the company, they can fire us. They would just call a reserve and who do we call, our union? We see how well thats done us in the past.

 

I say our Union says "Screw you...call us when you get your act together and your computers are working correctly with test results to prove it, then we can do this all over again because PNCL is out of their contractual obligation with the Pilot Union."

We should stop catering to their child like management skills and rushing things all the time. They are rushing this merger when they should step back for a minute and just observe what the hell is going on. We got the ground workers scared to tell the middle management what is going on in the field due to the fear of being fired. Middle management keeps blowing smoke up upper managements rear end to make them look good. I call it Corporate Muttering. And upper management is driving this company blind right into the scene of the crash!!!

It's the little things that make a company great and this company sucks at little things. This Realignment Bid is "little" in the big picture. Pinnacle could be a well oiled machine...COULD. But never will be because these hiccups continue to happen everyday in our operation. From Base Management over managing, dispatch continual mistakes, and pilots doing 6 jobs to make the thing work!

It is unbelievable that we are even considering the idea of having someone do this by hand!!!! Why isn't our Union pulling the damn plug on this whole thing until the company is ready to do it the way all of us voted the way it should be done.

This Realignment HAS GONE FAR ENOUGH AND I BELIEVE SPEAK FOR OUR PILOT GROUP...WE HAVE BEEN PATIENT ENOUGH!!!!

THIS ENDS NOW!!!! UNION DO YOUR JOB!!!!

 

Wow look at those mock bids. Gotta be below #400 in DTW to hold more than min days off. 62% of the DTW CA's have 11 days off.. SWWWEEEET

 

I guess this is the part of the contract you are referring to.

"The Award date shall not be later than seven (7) days from the close of the Bid. If staffing circumstances change after the posting of a Notice, the Manager of Crew Planning shall post (on the Company's web site and in the Domiciles) a revised Notice that accurately reflects the Vacancies and/or reductions. The revised Notice(s) must remain open for no less than forty-eight (48) hours, and, if the revision occurs at the end of the original (or revised) Notice period, will extend the closing date. No changes will occur after the Notice closes."


What job is the union not doing? I read this to mean that if staffing numbers change, then it will be reopened. How will reopening it right now change anything? All that will do is delay it even more.

If they somehow have grounds to grieve this, what do you recommend they ask for? They already extended the time to ask for vacation buyout for next year.

 

The problem lies with not having penalties tied to missing deadlines. We've got guys that basically have their lives on hold waiting to see if they're gonna upgrade, downgrade, change bases or whatever. It doesn't affect the guys in the front office at all, so there's no pressure to do things like work through the weekend of past 4:30 in the afternoon. Start tying a monetary penalty into awards coming out 2+ weeks late, and the pressure starts building for those guys. Something to pay those affected by the award's late posting back for the stress. I don't have a dog in this fight. I'm currently at my #2 choice on my bid, and the quotas pretty much lock me out of my #1, so I've got no dog in the fight. I do know a lot of junior CAs and senior FOs that are biting their nails, though.

I'm just waiting for the next "drop dead" date as far as deadlines go. Same as I was this time last year with contract negotiations. If they're looking at secondaries, why not go ahead and put the initial bid out? Secondaries should be on the final anyway.

The fact that it's taking this long REALLY makes me wonder if 11-08 was contractually compliant.

 

JFK not much better. I got two 4 day trips and trip starts on every day I said to avoid starting a trip on. I got one stretch of several days off. Everything else only has two days off in between. I know it's just the mock, but come on. I bid #41. You'd think I'd at least be able to get 3 days off in a row with trips that don't start on a Sunday.

 

Is that actually true? Because if that is the case - that is absolutely ridiculous. I'm not saying that I believe/buy-into everything that management tells us, but the few messages that we have gotten recently have said that they're doing "everything" possible to get the alignment done as quickly as possible without errors - and it has seemed sincere. However, if they're not putting in extra time to get this thing done, that is unacceptable. It's the same thing as one of us getting drafted to cover a flight on a day off. It completely sucks but at the end of the day someone is forced to get the work done...how is this any different? Maybe I was just being extremely naive, but it seemed like they were putting in a bunch of extra time to get it done. If they're just doing a regular 9-5 and think that's good enough, that is NOT OK.

I really hope that is not the case, and I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt. Hopefully someone on here can give some evidence to the contrary.

 

I didn't see a 4 day trip worth more than 24 hours. Makes you wonder... Referring to the people demanding punishment for the company, who is holding them accountable, no one. They have never been held accountable for anything they've done. The summer staffing two years ago that hosed 9E in the integration was blamed on our pilots calling in sick. They were canceling 50+ flights a day and they blamed the pilot group for calling in sick... accountability. This company lacks that and discipline. If that is ever going to change Menke needs to wipe the perverbial slate clean and start over. All it takes is one person to bring a ship down.