My opinion only, our pilot group is apathetic. One former SAPA president was very upfront with our pilot group. The company tried to limit his communication and our former VP of FO asked that all communication to the pilots go through him to be approved before it was sent to the pilots. Our SAPA President refused and lost access to send emails from the company email to the pilot group.

The only time you will see a push on elections is when SAPA is worried about someone running that may rock the boat. Most of our rep elections are very low turnout because people realize that nothing can get done and eventually all our good SAPA reps get burned out and quit the company or being a rep. I personally feel there are several things our current SAPA Pres and EB have done things that should lead to a recall. Changing the ability to have new hires vote (during a pay package vote that gave them a substantial raise), censoring our forums, and trying to give the company the ability to reflow our pilots via our EFB are just a couple that come to mind. As you pointed out with the above examples, you don't dare speak up for fear of retaliation. In fact, we had a recent SAPA rep that was very critical of the company and called them and SAPA out regularly. He was labeled as a troublemaker and subsequently fired.

Inc wanted to get ASA and XJT combined, but surprisingly XJT didn't want to give up the good parts of their contract. From my source in SGU, they simply said fine, we just won't give them anymore flying. I don't think they are trying to get XJT out of business but they sure as seem like they would rather give the flying to the side of the house that doesn't have work rule protections. We get paid on some made up number called credit if we come in under block, they can award us 90+ hours each month with minimum days off and SGU uses their creative version of reflow to extend us into days off because it is still the original flight number. There are some good things about SW like the crews and the fact that BB is not the President of our company. But there is an ugly side that the kool aid drinkers refuse to acknowledge.

The simple fact is that INC is giving the flying to the cheap side of the house. ASA/XJT is being whipsawed by someone under their same INC umbrella. There is a reason that INC fought so hard against integrating our pilot groups.

 

1.5% Plus profit sharing which added about another 3% for me in the second half of 2015. Proud No voter. I would have rather had QOL enhancements that would allow me to hold the trips my seniority should allow. 3 years of not being able to drop a trip and getting loaded with hours each month is getting old. Of course when your NC and EB is all senior folks or people that haven't flown the line for years, you get what they negotiate. The company told them what a great deal they were getting, even if some pilots tried to say otherwise.

 

Is there still any gap between ground and sims?

 

I noticed SKW has dropped their minimums for hiring. Get in while it's hot!!

 

They have been as low as they could go for years now.

 

Hahahah really? That sounds like third grade behavior on the company's part. Good god, that's worse than MESA was in the old days. Company really wants to control the message I guess.


So SAPA protects the company in some way that they don't want someone rocking the boat? What do you mean by rocking the boat?

New hires got to vote too? WHAT? Uh... I thought you would get to vote AFTER you were off probation which is usually one year.

So, a new pilot on property for one day gets to vote? That definitely could favor the company during a hiring boom. Get the newbies to vote in a crappy deal for the senior pilots. Oh boy!

If that's true who the heck made up that policy? DUMB.

They fired a SAPA person because they were critical? The company labeled them a trouble maker and retaliated against them? Whoa, that's so illegal. I'd assume that the SAPA group stood in the way of the firing and the SAPA rep got their job back because that sounds very, very wrong. Good for the person standing up to the company. Bad if your pilot group did nothing for you.

I must say, the internal politics at your place seem horrible. You guys need a union, this SAPA thing doesn't sound like it works for the pilots.

 

Xjt is not being whipsawed against OO. You are being whipsawed against Mesa, gojets, and Republic. But if it makes you feel good you can pretend there are only 2 regionals.

ALPA hasn't done anything good for any regional and until they turn the representation around it's a lost cause. You can say each airline is only as strong as its MEC, but until ALPA starts acting like a real Union and national leads the regionals to stop taking concessions it is broken.

 

Hmmm, maybe you should tell that to the SAPA pilot person who allegedly got fired for sticking their neck out on the pilot's behalf.

 

Not true. In December, they required 500 FW hours. Now it's 250.

 

Mesa bases - DFW, IAD, IAH and PHX
GoJet bases - ORD, RDU, STL and DEN
Republic bases - DCA, LGA, MCI, ORD, SDF, CMH, PIT, JFK, PHL, IND, MIA, EWR (Also currently going through bankruptcy)
XJT bases - DFW, DTW, EWR, IAH, ORD, ATL, CLE

I have went ahead and highlighted the airlines above with bases where we are currently getting our extra flying from. What is it our scheduling liaison keeps saying? We are sorry for all the deadheads to and from DTW and ATL that is making our trips inefficent but we are adding flying that needs to be covered by our partners? If only we had another airline under INC's umbrella that had pilots there to fly these extra routes. The flying is being given to the cheaper pilot group by INC. XJT has a ratio of reserves to line holders that is in their contract. We don't. How many reserves have we had in MSP over the past couple months? What base is being used to cover this extra flying?

I'm not saying ALPA is the answer. I'm just saying we don't have a contract or CBA that can be legally defended because SAPA can't sue INC because SAPA is payed for by the company. And until we decided that 2% of our salary is worth these protections, we will continually be taken advantage of by the company. Again, JMO.