Eagle: FAQs for AIP
02-10-2014, 01:03 PM
#31
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Dec 2012
Posts: 610
Thanks Mr. Gardner,
I am a CFI, and a potential future interviewee of American Eagle. I read this post as a Q&A and opinion neutral; you have literally saved me hours of crawling over dozens of forum pages looking for specific details of any potentially new TA.
I am a CFI, and a potential future interviewee of American Eagle. I read this post as a Q&A and opinion neutral; you have literally saved me hours of crawling over dozens of forum pages looking for specific details of any potentially new TA.
02-10-2014, 07:21 PM
#33
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Jan 2014
Position: Canadian Alluminum Tubing Assistant Transporter
Posts: 164
I'm in the same position as Waitingformins.
I do appreciate Mr. Gardner's neutral FAQ on the potential new TA.
This is what I got from it. Envoy can stand to keep the old contract voted in last year at risk of dying out at the end of that contract, but full pay to the last day. If the new contract gets voted in, there is a paycut, and there will be new jets and increased flow through in theory... The company may stand to stay around when being locked into this contract for 10 years...
It's all talk either way. Lets see what the results are after the vote this week... Being an outsider looking in, we can talk about what ifs all day, but we'll see what the pilot group actually ends up voting. Hindsight is 20/20 even more so. The direction of Envoy will be interesting to see years down the road.
I do appreciate Mr. Gardner's neutral FAQ on the potential new TA.
This is what I got from it. Envoy can stand to keep the old contract voted in last year at risk of dying out at the end of that contract, but full pay to the last day. If the new contract gets voted in, there is a paycut, and there will be new jets and increased flow through in theory... The company may stand to stay around when being locked into this contract for 10 years...
It's all talk either way. Lets see what the results are after the vote this week... Being an outsider looking in, we can talk about what ifs all day, but we'll see what the pilot group actually ends up voting. Hindsight is 20/20 even more so. The direction of Envoy will be interesting to see years down the road.
02-10-2014, 07:29 PM
#34
Line Holder
Joined APC: Sep 2010
Position: Dash 8 Q100-300 CA
Posts: 78
Counter Offer
My wife is in finance, Accountant to be exact! She gave me the inside trader info on what Parker and his team are doing... Supply and Demand, basic economics 101.
They need the larger RJs but we are too selfish and stupid to realize that
. The regionals are having a difficult time staffing and now that 1500hrs Atp is in place is just a matter of time before the industry is upside down. Envoy just counter offer with what you guys want, most important thing should be a number at mainline. Why doesn't he pull this crap with mainline pilots? Counter offer and if they don't like it tell him to give the planes to RAH who cant staff the current 46. Its time to get our Profession back. If not this is going to be the next episode of American Greed. 
They need the larger RJs but we are too selfish and stupid to realize that. The regionals are having a difficult time staffing and now that 1500hrs Atp is in place is just a matter of time before the industry is upside down. Envoy just counter offer with what you guys want, most important thing should be a number at mainline. Why doesn't he pull this crap with mainline pilots? Counter offer and if they don't like it tell him to give the planes to RAH who cant staff the current 46. Its time to get our Profession back. If not this is going to be the next episode of American Greed.
02-10-2014, 07:35 PM
#35
Line Holder
Joined APC: Sep 2011
Posts: 99
This communication from Republic / Bedford was just posted in Republic Questions thread:
Dear Co-workers,
Good evening, I want to take a few minutes of your time to bring you up to speed on an announcement that will hit the wire tomorrow morning. As you probably have read, United Airlines has made a decision to significantly reduce the number of flight departures at their CLE hub. In their press release, they mentioned that their decision to reduce flight service was prompted by news that some of their regional airline partners were experiencing difficulties in hiring suitable pilots to crew their aircraft. That disclosure has caused quite a bit of media attention as to whether or not we (our country) are experiencing a shortage of qualified pilots. I’ll come back to that question later, but the reality is that our airline, more specifically Chautauqua, is having a very difficult time finding new-hire pilots that meet the 1,500 hour rule AND meet our quality and competency requirements.
It is no secret that many of our small jet, fixed-fee agreements are scheduled to expire this year. In fact, we have 41 ERJs which, unless extended, will expire off contract over the course of this year. Since our successful Chautauqua financial restructuring in 2012, we have consistently said we expect to be able to keep these aircraft in productive service for years to come; however, the pilot staffing challenges are changing that outlook.
Starting shortly after the new law became effective in August of last year, we began to see a steady decline in the number of qualified applicants applying at Republic. As a consequence, by the end of last year, we were concerned enough about the trends that we reached out to all our partners to get their read on the situation and to warn them we could have real problems keeping our aircraft properly staffed. The applicant flow problems continue to persist in the new year and it has become all too clear that we can no longer consider extending all our small jet contracts; in fact, we have asked one partner (United) to accelerate the removal of our 12 ERJ aircraft so we can redirect Chautauqua flight crews to EJET training. Effective April 1, we anticipate ending our Chautauqua ERJ flying for United. We also are no longer able to extend our American Connection agreement covering 15 E140 aircraft. Those aircraft will be removed from service between March 1 and August 15. In total, we plan to remove 27 small aircraft, which we had otherwise expected to continue to operate in to the future.
Of course, this is very disappointing news and will naturally cause some of our co-workers to have real concerns over their personal situations. Wayne is on his way to Louisville to discuss the situation with our team down there, but let me say we see tremendous value in our Louisville base and with our people there, and we have no intention to do anything other than keep it running normally and bring work into the facility to replace the work that may be affected by this development.
We also intend to continue to receive new E175 aircraft for American. Those 25 aircraft are scheduled to go into service this year. And while we have not made any final decisions, we do still have four Q400 aircraft that were anticipated to go in to service this year for United, which we would like to satisfy. Of course, it all depends on our ability to find the kind of women and men who can meet our standards.
So do we have a pilot shortage? Well if you define a shortage as not having enough people that meet the requirements of the 1,500-hour rule and not being able to pass muster with our standards, then yes, we have a shortage, and we are not alone. However, I do not think the country has a shortage of truly qualified pilots, at least not yet. There are ample pilots for today’s needs, but these young people, who have graduated with aeronautical aviation degrees no longer qualify for employment. And there are not enough ways for them to get the hourly time the new law requires. It is a real catch 22, and one you will probably be reading a lot more about for the foreseeable future.
Longer term (and that may only be two or three years away) we will certainly have a much bigger problem, even if the hour requirement is reduced from 1,500 hour to say 500 hours. Why? Because the age 65 rule will mandate retirements for nearly 18,000 mainline pilots over the next 10 years. It started last year with about 1,000 retirements. That number grows steady over the next 10 years. Even under the old system, our country simply does not have the ability to train that many replacement pilots. It’s the same problem countries like China and India have been dealing with for years. We are going to have to develop an entirely new way to train future aviators in this country. But that won’t be much help in the here and now.
Finally, it is reasonable to ask how the lack of a new pilot CBA has affected our recruiting situation. It’s a fair question, but a hard one to answer. It seems reasonable enough that not having a new CBA isn’t helping and certainly may be hurting our efforts in recruiting new pilots now, even though it wasn’t a problem before the new law went into effect last year. However, while we very much want to get the negotiation behind us, the reality is a new CBA won’t create a single new qualified pilot in the USA. I do think it will help bring some people to us that otherwise do not want to consider Republic because of the uncertainty here, but that is a hard thing to quantify. Suffice to say we want to close out the negotiations with a fair deal and, when that happens, if it allows us to hire more pilots such that we could staff more aircraft, of course we will discuss adding these small jets back to service with our airline partners.
For the time being, we should all keep our focus on providing the outstanding levels of service that have become a hallmark of our three great companies. We have faced challenges in the past and as a team, we have prevailed. We will face challenges in the future and, together, again, we will prevail.
God bless,
Bryan
Dear Co-workers,
Good evening, I want to take a few minutes of your time to bring you up to speed on an announcement that will hit the wire tomorrow morning. As you probably have read, United Airlines has made a decision to significantly reduce the number of flight departures at their CLE hub. In their press release, they mentioned that their decision to reduce flight service was prompted by news that some of their regional airline partners were experiencing difficulties in hiring suitable pilots to crew their aircraft. That disclosure has caused quite a bit of media attention as to whether or not we (our country) are experiencing a shortage of qualified pilots. I’ll come back to that question later, but the reality is that our airline, more specifically Chautauqua, is having a very difficult time finding new-hire pilots that meet the 1,500 hour rule AND meet our quality and competency requirements.
It is no secret that many of our small jet, fixed-fee agreements are scheduled to expire this year. In fact, we have 41 ERJs which, unless extended, will expire off contract over the course of this year. Since our successful Chautauqua financial restructuring in 2012, we have consistently said we expect to be able to keep these aircraft in productive service for years to come; however, the pilot staffing challenges are changing that outlook.
Starting shortly after the new law became effective in August of last year, we began to see a steady decline in the number of qualified applicants applying at Republic. As a consequence, by the end of last year, we were concerned enough about the trends that we reached out to all our partners to get their read on the situation and to warn them we could have real problems keeping our aircraft properly staffed. The applicant flow problems continue to persist in the new year and it has become all too clear that we can no longer consider extending all our small jet contracts; in fact, we have asked one partner (United) to accelerate the removal of our 12 ERJ aircraft so we can redirect Chautauqua flight crews to EJET training. Effective April 1, we anticipate ending our Chautauqua ERJ flying for United. We also are no longer able to extend our American Connection agreement covering 15 E140 aircraft. Those aircraft will be removed from service between March 1 and August 15. In total, we plan to remove 27 small aircraft, which we had otherwise expected to continue to operate in to the future.
Of course, this is very disappointing news and will naturally cause some of our co-workers to have real concerns over their personal situations. Wayne is on his way to Louisville to discuss the situation with our team down there, but let me say we see tremendous value in our Louisville base and with our people there, and we have no intention to do anything other than keep it running normally and bring work into the facility to replace the work that may be affected by this development.
We also intend to continue to receive new E175 aircraft for American. Those 25 aircraft are scheduled to go into service this year. And while we have not made any final decisions, we do still have four Q400 aircraft that were anticipated to go in to service this year for United, which we would like to satisfy. Of course, it all depends on our ability to find the kind of women and men who can meet our standards.
So do we have a pilot shortage? Well if you define a shortage as not having enough people that meet the requirements of the 1,500-hour rule and not being able to pass muster with our standards, then yes, we have a shortage, and we are not alone. However, I do not think the country has a shortage of truly qualified pilots, at least not yet. There are ample pilots for today’s needs, but these young people, who have graduated with aeronautical aviation degrees no longer qualify for employment. And there are not enough ways for them to get the hourly time the new law requires. It is a real catch 22, and one you will probably be reading a lot more about for the foreseeable future.
Longer term (and that may only be two or three years away) we will certainly have a much bigger problem, even if the hour requirement is reduced from 1,500 hour to say 500 hours. Why? Because the age 65 rule will mandate retirements for nearly 18,000 mainline pilots over the next 10 years. It started last year with about 1,000 retirements. That number grows steady over the next 10 years. Even under the old system, our country simply does not have the ability to train that many replacement pilots. It’s the same problem countries like China and India have been dealing with for years. We are going to have to develop an entirely new way to train future aviators in this country. But that won’t be much help in the here and now.
Finally, it is reasonable to ask how the lack of a new pilot CBA has affected our recruiting situation. It’s a fair question, but a hard one to answer. It seems reasonable enough that not having a new CBA isn’t helping and certainly may be hurting our efforts in recruiting new pilots now, even though it wasn’t a problem before the new law went into effect last year. However, while we very much want to get the negotiation behind us, the reality is a new CBA won’t create a single new qualified pilot in the USA. I do think it will help bring some people to us that otherwise do not want to consider Republic because of the uncertainty here, but that is a hard thing to quantify. Suffice to say we want to close out the negotiations with a fair deal and, when that happens, if it allows us to hire more pilots such that we could staff more aircraft, of course we will discuss adding these small jets back to service with our airline partners.
For the time being, we should all keep our focus on providing the outstanding levels of service that have become a hallmark of our three great companies. We have faced challenges in the past and as a team, we have prevailed. We will face challenges in the future and, together, again, we will prevail.
God bless,
Bryan
02-11-2014, 05:49 AM
#40
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Jul 2008
Position: ATR72
Posts: 208
What we lose if the AIP gets voted in.
Example
1. We have a $36.4 million dollar credit that the company is obligated to pay the pilots at the 2016 amendment round. What we gave in BK we get back. AIP negates this and asks for further now permanent concessions.
2. Our perdiem will be at $2.30 in 2025. AIP $1.80 frozen. $11000 dollar loss per pilot for the 10 year duration.
3. IAI for 2015 increase will include IAI excess of 1.5% for 2013/2014. AIP loses that make up difference and freezes wages untill 2018 with a small increase of 1% every year after 2018.
4. We have one of the best turboprop pay rates in the industry. We give that up in the AIP with nothing in return.
5. 170 aircraft minimum may be reduced by the company.
6. PBS to be implemented at the 61st E175. Currently it would go to pilot ratification. If we get the treatened pay cut we could get it back in 2016 with the $36.4 million dollar credit.
7. 10 year duration. Need I say more.
And the biggest lie,
8. Enhanced flow through.
There is nothing enhanced about it. It is the same rate we currently have. However, currently it is an arbitration award that cannot be modified by the company. If we ament it to the AIP the company can and will violate this, as this now becomes part of the AIP contract.
All of these sacrifices and we get nothing in return. Nothing. Zilch, Nada.
The only reason people are inclined to vote yes is the fear of us closing up. But, that could happen regardless of the AIP vote outcome since there is no contractual guarantee in this AIP which will ensure the continued operation of this airline.
Example
1. We have a $36.4 million dollar credit that the company is obligated to pay the pilots at the 2016 amendment round. What we gave in BK we get back. AIP negates this and asks for further now permanent concessions.
2. Our perdiem will be at $2.30 in 2025. AIP $1.80 frozen. $11000 dollar loss per pilot for the 10 year duration.
3. IAI for 2015 increase will include IAI excess of 1.5% for 2013/2014. AIP loses that make up difference and freezes wages untill 2018 with a small increase of 1% every year after 2018.
4. We have one of the best turboprop pay rates in the industry. We give that up in the AIP with nothing in return.
5. 170 aircraft minimum may be reduced by the company.
6. PBS to be implemented at the 61st E175. Currently it would go to pilot ratification. If we get the treatened pay cut we could get it back in 2016 with the $36.4 million dollar credit.
7. 10 year duration. Need I say more.
And the biggest lie,
8. Enhanced flow through.
There is nothing enhanced about it. It is the same rate we currently have. However, currently it is an arbitration award that cannot be modified by the company. If we ament it to the AIP the company can and will violate this, as this now becomes part of the AIP contract.
All of these sacrifices and we get nothing in return. Nothing. Zilch, Nada.
The only reason people are inclined to vote yes is the fear of us closing up. But, that could happen regardless of the AIP vote outcome since there is no contractual guarantee in this AIP which will ensure the continued operation of this airline.
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