The saying "Jesus" is well established as an expression, and is neither negative nor offensive (except maybe to you.) Jesus was a historical figure as well as a religious one.

Now if I said "JFC", I can see why that my offend someone. Anyway, best of luck to you in your endeavors - I've had enough.

Oh for f..k’s sake. Can we talk about Miatas now?

If Jesus came back today I bet he’d drive a Miata.

This is an intriguing suggestion. I’ve given it a great deal of thought and find it to be potentially more palatable than many other suggestions. In this scenario we would preserve our furloughed brethren, preserve our hard-fought contract, build unity among our pilot group, and, best of all, keep our fate out of company hands. Plus, it would provide our NC with walk-away power at the negotiating table.

I’ve done some very basic math assuming what I consider to be the worst case scenario wherein 1750 pilots are furloughed. As of January 1st 2021, 27 of those pilots will be on year 1 pay, 373 will be on year 2 pay, 716 on year 3 pay and 634 will be on year 4 pay.

All told, paying each of those pilots 88 TFP per month would cost each non-furloughed pilot $2,560 a month. That would be almost 22% of a year 4 FO’s TFP guarantee, but only 12% of a topped-out captain’s guarantee. Somewhere in there is a percentage that, if given by each active pilot, would mitigate the furlough entirely.

The percentages mentioned above are based solely on TFP guarantee; flying over guarantee, per diem and NEC are not included. I also didn’t consider the folks out on ExTO, who have given so much, but would also take a hit if pay rates dropped. Nor did I consider their phased return based on which of the six ExTO durations they selected.

I have no doubt SWAPA could do the math fairly easily to contrive an actual percentage of TFP income each non-ExTO pilot would have to contribute to make this work.

The number would obviously depend greatly on the number of furloughed pilots, which I believe will be less than 1,750.

Despite being a really heavy financial hit, this option could possibly appeal to the membership, especially since it comes with no FM clause.

There's no way in hell that we furlough 1,750 or anywhere remotely close to that number of pilots if Gary is intending to play any offense in the market. Not to mention COVID and any mandatory quarantine. Simply no way. If we have any furloughs, it'd be a token number because Gary would be throwing a tantrum and he'd show us who's the boss. That is, if he is indeed that stupid... I doubt that he is, but I've learned not to underestimate the propensity of egomaniacs to cut their noses to spite their faces because their egos were hurt. A furlough here simply makes no sense.

But getting back to the idea of SWAPA-wide assessment to cover the furloughees min guarantee, talk about an FU to the company and SWAPA's message being simple: You can thank these middle managers and list them name by name and how they interpreted IROPS, used the "etc." to pile on the grievances clearly going against the contract, how we have 140+ grievances in the system with no desire by the company to put an even remotely reasonable dent in addressing them, and simply we won't give them anything to further erode our contract, let alone FM language, a pay cut or anything else, so we'll take care of our own and you all can GFYS'ves. You could call this the Dallas Tea Party.

Just off the top of my head, I could see a subset of our pilots who would be potentially opposed to it would be those who would get downgraded. Those guys would take a pretty big hit and any assessment would hurt them more. The upside to doing the assessment even for them is that given how our contract is structured and incentivized, they'd take a hit to QOL, but they'd still be able to pick up. Conversely, if we were to just let the furloughs go, they'd get downgraded, and there would be the immense pressure to not pick up which would likely fracture our pilot group and cause much internal strife which is something most of us don't want.

In other words, two paths: one in which we don't pay anything to take care of our furloughs and you have all the pressures on people to not fly any OT.

The other path being, you fly as much as you want, but we take care of furloughees via an assessment, so if you fly more, you pay more, but the furloughs are still taken care of.

To me, it's a no-brainer and I'd have zero qualms taking a 10% assessment to take care of the furloughees, but HELL NO to taking a pay cut by giving up our contract... but that's just me.

Love the idea. Wonder how much support there would be for it though.


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I'm in the furlough zone (most likely) and I would even say that paying half guarantee (like being on ETO) or a little more (like being on ExTO) would work for me and be less painful of an assessment on the non furloughed pilots. Probably easier to get ratified by the pilot group as well.

Just my $.02

No way. He's more of a Jeep guy. He's from the desert. Wears robes and sandals. The beard.

So you’re saying if you would be furloughed you’d rather us all take exto? I’d def prefer it over furlough but won’t save as much money for the
company to bite

I think this is an excellent suggestion. It would also give the NC a Trump card to just get up and walk away from talks.

I think you should forward it along to your reps and the NC. I'd be happy to pay a 10% assessment during a furlough, and agree that it's smarter to do that than to divide the group over the open time participation problem.

Good work!

Oh! And post that over on the 2020 Facebook page too! Might get as many folks as possible onboard emailing and calling their reps in support of your idea.


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