Talk about "coincidences".

Sick Continental Pilots Cause Flight Cancellations

IS it operation Orange...............

No were just that short.
,
And the only way they can spin this is to blame pilots for not taking no-doze, afrin, and sudafed, before reporting for work. Calalpa told the company our current staffing levels were not adequate but I guess they thought they would get more folks to pick up trips on their days off.

I typically fly SIX non-IRO trips to the UK a month, with 12 days off. That works out to about 90 hours a month in the summer. Sick and tired? That's putting it lightly. Let it burn.

When one of our IAH-ACP's addressed a class this past Spring, he had this to say about the Summer-2011 Staffing/Flying model when a pilot in the class broached the subject....

"Sure, you can always put 20lbs of groceries into a 10lb bag, but in the end, it won't work out too well".

All I have to say to him now is "No $h1+ Nostradamus".

Let's not forget the ever popular "You don't build a bigger parking lot at church just because of Christmas".

Is CALPA going to do anything with the press as far as getting the other side of the story out ?

Right now, most of the media is calling it a "pilot sickout", so unless ALPA get's involved with serious communication and clarification, the pilots will stay the bad guys.

If your insinuating that the CAL Pilot Group is worried about being PUBLICLY perceived as "Bad Guys", that's the least of our worries.

I'm sure the Union is setting up for the potential 'job action' claim by the Company in the wake of their Press Releases. UHC's publicly aired media blitz as to this being a "Pilot Sickout" is "reckless" in every sense of the word.....especially when examining our current staffing numbers vs marketing/block hour set for Summer 2011 flying = UNREALISTIC.....see the above quote.

"Heard" through the grapevine this afternoon that CAL ALPA is going to put something out by way of a public retort to the Company's claim. I'm sure everything is being put through the "legal-bee's", while bolstering their (CAL-ALPA) evidence/data prior to airing it. This is not something that 'just happened'. The Union has been 'informing' the company for quite sometime that they will run into problems this summer with it's marketing plans vs the pilots available to do the flying.

Stay turned.....

SoCal,

I don't know how things work at CAL, but at UAL, both in the 'summer of love" and the summer leading to recalls, I was mad that ALPA didn't provide the very correspondence with company regarding manning issues to the media ASAP after these shots were taken.

In both those examples, I worked for the SSC. I know exactly what the company was told and it came to fruition. A simple release of these documents, redacted as needed, stating that the union believes this plan is flawed because of x, y, and z. With dates at least 6 months prior to the breakdown. Might shutdown any media value the company could try to get by "politely" insinuating some type of possible job action.

Would love to see the company have to respond to that release by ALPA.

Frats,
Lee

Throw in and IRO and I bet they can push that number even higher.