And 9e management was not involved in these negotiations? They didn't agree to these terms of the contract?

 

It isnt that simple as us all being greedy pilots wanting to bid whatever aircraft was available, but imagine that??? At the time, 9E and 9L were understaffed, as usual and XJ was a little fat on pilots when DL decided they were no longer interested in us operating t-props for them. By your logic, 9E and 9L would have continued to run short and XJ would have possibly had to furlough. I will grant you, they should have organized the merger in a more organized fashion, but if they were properly staffed in the first place, maybe what you suggested might have worked better.

 

Problems started LONG before the Saabs started getting parked. Management can read (at least I assume so), so they knew what it would cost on that first vacancy. VACANCY, not displacement. We had guys sitting around going from the -200 to the -900 that just needed differences training for 3 months. By the time displacements hit, the vacancy still wasn't dealt with. If the company had offered several, smaller vacancies on a rolling schedule, they could have handled it rather than forcing a training bottleneck. The JCBA worked exactly as designed: it was there to prevent the company from dragging their feet on training events and if they did, the pilots were compensated for it. Management decided they wanted to try to get it all done at one time rather than run multiple vacancies. The displacements that were on the horizon made it worse.

Let's face it. You weren't doing this out of the goodness of your heart. Let's not forget the mindset you were in during the time. "Colgan and Mesaba guys stole my upgrade" was probably the best way to put it. How long do you put it on hold? Long enough for XJ and Colgan guys to be furloughed? Someone was going to get wronged one way or the other. That's the way it goes with mergers. I had guys from Colgan jump me on the seniority list, too.

IMO, CS did enough to shoot himself and the 9E MEC in the foot as it was. I don't think XJ would have had to fight too hard at all. DTW might have been the only base that wasn't ready to see a regime change.
Heaven forbid the union make the company stick to an agreement....

Management set the numbers, though.

 

Delta buying Pinnacle would be a surprise move.

And I don't mean a good surprise.

 

LMAO Boomer!!!

 

I agree. It would not be a good think.

 

No. By my logic, each airline should have had to their own pilots into their own classes based on their own operating certificate. Or they could have hired as "Corp" and then assigned a class to either Colgan or Pinnacle.

 

Problem is with multiple vacancies, you will have guys jump like crazy and go to/from whatever they need only to jump to another position again. Case in point, I found out that the -900 at original 9E would only be differences training for me, and not a seat lock. My plan was to bid over to the ATL -900 for one month to satisfy Emirates' requirement of at least 50 hrs in a jet greater than 30 tons. I lived in DTW at the time, and considered commuting to ATL just to get the time, and then on the very next vacancy, bid back to the -200. That is just one example, there were plenty of other pilots who were contemplating moves just like this. Multiple vacancies, especially when only differences (no seatlock) are involved, can cost lots of moves.

Doing it for the goodness of what was best for us as a company, and us as original 9E pilots. Upgrading original 9E pilots would have cost less, and offered more liquidity long term. All 9E FOs needed was upgrade training. No differences, etc. I already answered the "for how long" question. The answer is also in the company proposed term sheet. In the event of future mergers, kept separate until an integrated fenced operation was in place. The way they were forced to do it, the list JUST came out and two months later we had everyone jumping across on the "bid whatever you want!" method. And yes, sending people home that long with pay was complete money-wasted BS.

Should never have been commisioned into his position in the first place. Plenty of people in DTW wanted him gone, in fact, he had just lost the CA rep position in a democratic election in February. You'd think the message was clear from the DTW pilots, but just a couple months later, it was announced he'd be the new MEC Chairman.

That agreement only works when you have a complete fenced operation merger that is complete. 9E Corp was nowhere near that at the end of 2011. The massive training and displacement costs did put a hurt on liquidity. As for the numbers, absolutely agree. Though I think management realized we were severely short-staffed for Summer 2010, and that's when we started the huge hiring and upgrade cycle. It was unfortunate that some senile idiot didn't account for that in his arbitration award.

 

Ya, real funny. Ha ha, mister Delta guy. The reality of it is it sucks for a lot of people that are being bent over by Delta lately. Maybe you could call the Comair folks and wish them a merry Christmas

 

Seeing as 9E runs the -900 and -200 as separate categories, you would be incorrect. Check out (if you've still got it) Section 24 under Equipment Freezes. FOs can't bid another category for 24 months following an award to a new aircraft. You'd be locked int the -900 for 24 months, and you wouldn't be able to upgrade for 12....unless there was street CA hiring about to happen. Change of domicile? Unrestricted. There's a difference between NO QUOTAS for FOs and no EQUIPMENT FREEZE for FOs.

Guys were bouncing from equipment to equipment after that first vacancy because equipment freezes don't count in a displacement. In a vacancy, however, they're still there.