Airline Pilot Central Forums - Dear United Mainline,

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- - Dear United Mainline, (https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/regional/74133-dear-united-mainline.html)

Quote:

Originally Posted by NoLightOff (Post 1387064)

The memo***

Dear Regional Travel Partners,

We sincerely thank all of you for your patience as we transition through the ups
and downs of our new processes and systems.

We appreciate that each of you took the time to speak to us last Friday. We are
very happy to announce that the pass travel policies, including eligible pass
riders, boarding priorities and network availability is not changing for your
co-workers or retirees. As we explained during the call, an analysis was done
and we have a (dollars)7M gap per year to break-even with regional employee
travel. We reviewed various membership opt-in fee models, but were not able
to come up with a reasonable model to cover a (dollars)7M recapture. As a
result, we will move to an all segment fee program and will be discontinuing the
Annual Membership fee program effective May 1.

Those currently on the segment fee program will have no changes, except you will
no longer have to opt in and out each year. Here is a recap for those of you
that are currently on the Annual Membership program.

%95 Employees will no longer need to opt-in or opt-out for the travel program each year
%95 All employees are considered opted-in and will only pay as they go, either pre-paid or payroll deduct, as applicable
%95 Employees will pay the same fees as a UA employee, plus the following service charges.
%95 Initially all base segment fees will be collected via payroll
deduct. We are working on the technology to pre-pay this fee upfront with the other fees. We will have an ETA on this in the 4Q13.

The new base segment fees to be in effect as of May 1:

Base Segment Charges:
Home Airline: (dollars) 0
Other UAX, United Mainline- Domestic1: (dollars) 20
United Mainline - Other International2: (dollars) 50

Service Charges are subject to change. Please refer to United's Flying
Together-Travel intranet information for details on the UA employee fees**.
1 Domestic travel: within the 48 contiguous United States, as well as Alaska
and Hawaii. Domestic travel will also include travel within the Micronesia
Islands and from Guam and/or Saipan to the Micronesia Islands.
2 International travel: will be consider all other travel, including travel
to Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, Europe, Africa,
Asia, Guam, Micronesia and the South Pacific, to be international travel.
** Service Charges vary by distance and class of service used and are in
addition to the Base Segment Charge.

In regards to the bolded statement, do United mainline employees pay per segment to non rev? If this pay per segment scheme is just for United regional carriers, that's really crappy. "Thanks for contributing to our bottom line while working on lesser pay scales. By the way, you owe xxxx dollars for the privilege of coming to work."

Quote:

Originally Posted by FlyingKat (Post 1387030)

If this is true Smisek will be in for a rude awakening if he tries to make UAL mainline pilots and FAs pay to get to work......

But it's ok to royally screw RJ pilots flying UNITED PAX?

Sorry if someone has already answered this but, how does a FEDEX (for example) pilot pay the per leg commute fee? What about other mainline pilots? What if you have 3 pilots wanting to JS but a lot of empty seats?

Quote:

Originally Posted by yeah sure (Post 1387092)

It sounds like it will only affect those of us who fly UAL pax. Pretty crappy thing to do to us if its true. I guess things will get worse before they get better. (If ever)

so has anyone heard anything official?? Nothing here at XJT.

Does that mean I can non rev on my company airplane for free?

Is there an email where we can all send our concerns about this? It's completely BS!

Quote:

Originally Posted by pagey (Post 1387086)

Is this a joke? Amazing some of the things people will say when the other person isn't standing across from them.

I'm hoping I just blatantly missed the sarcasm here because if not this is one of the most arrogant, disrespectful, straight up dbag posts I've ever seen on this board.

"little man"??? Really? Get a life.

He's just upset because he has a "little man".

Well, we'll see how Smi**** feels when he gets the fuel bill from all of his express carriers running 2 engines and APU's every chance they can....

Quote:

Originally Posted by Good Rate (Post 1387002)

If this happens, it will mean $80+ a month for me to get to work. Do you know how easy it is for me to burn 10x that in fuel burns. Not to mention mtc write ups. They may take money out of my check, but they won't make any money on me.

And...I will not wrongfully deny a united pilot a jump seat, but there will be no more "making it work" to get one on. If the numbers don't work, they just don't work. No favors...unless you got $20 in your hand.

Best thing you could ever do for me is deny me the jumpseat to get to work. I've got my commuter policy firmly in hand, so I'll just enjoy my days off. I can't drop a trip to save my life, so you will just be doing it for me!

That being said, I still don't understand the thought process of the regional pilot these days. I've been there, done that, and I would NEVER have thought of commuting to work for a regional. I simply didn't make enough money or have enough time off to make it possible. I moved 3 times with 2 regionals to make sure that I lived in base. The problem with working for a company that doesn't actually pay for seats, fuel, etc. that they fly is that you are at the mercy of the company that pays the bills. Everyone flying for a regional today knew it when they signed up. I certainly did when I was slogging around at the commuters making my $17k a year.

I'm still trying to figure out how you've decided that this is somehow the United PILOTS who are to be held responsible for the travel arrangements with their commuter partners. This is about the 4th time I've been treated to a "denial of jumpseat" threat (and sometimes actually denied the seat) by certain United Express pilots. Sorry, but this does nothing to make me feel threatened. As I mentioned above, not making it to work when I have a commuter policy in the contract is a blessing for me. Keep this in mind, however, when you are appealing for sympathy or action from the United pilot group. In the last decade my airline has shrunk literally in half. Most of my F/O's have been furloughed... many of them twice. During that time, the regionals have literally EXPLODED, flying larger and larger jets, getting hired with less time and less experience. It wasn't that long ago that you had to have several thousand hours of flying checks around before you could even THINK about applying to be a regional F/O for that $20k a year job. Some perspective has been lost over the last 10 years. Yet during all this time of watching more and more express pilots get hired with less and less time, flying more and more of my old routes, I never ONCE denied a UAX pilot the jumpseat. Never ONCE did I do anything other than offer to stow UAX pilots bags in the cockpit and welcome them on board.

It STINKS getting this charge thrown on our UAX pass travelers. I would list how many things Jeff and Glenn have done to mainline employees that STINK, but I don't have enough GB left in my data plan this month to list them all. It's a fight each and every day to push back against the crap that these guys steal from us. Would you like me to cost my pension for you for example??

Feel free to go crazy with fuel burn, denying UAL pilots the jumpseat, flying with the APU on, writing up questionable maint items, etc. etc. The beancounters at UAL are watching. And when they go to your management and say "well, your costs went up 25%. We are going to have to extract that from your contract", where do you think they will take that money from?