24 years ago today I started newhire indoc at USAir which at the time was held in a tiny elementary school near Pittsburgh called The McCormick School. In his welcome speech, the VP of Flight Ops said the following:

”We, along with every other major airline, have been hiring for a few years, so I want to you all to know that you guys are the best .... of what’s left.”

It was hilarious!

For some reason these class size posts reminded me of that. 🤣

The SAV is here! Interesting timing before the company’s town hall.

I find new hires to be among the most engaged. 95 percent of them are wearing SWAPA lanyards and get how the game works. Take a look around the pilot lounge senior center at 6am and tell me you are comfortable with the strike vote going well. That group is "just happy to be here" and "don't tell Herb, but I would do this job for free".

6am, I’m still asleep!!!!

Before Whack and anyone else dumps all the former mil dudes into the same LUV boat coasting the Kool-Aid seas… a data point:

Time between the end of my 20-year mil career and starting New Hire training here: less than three weeks.

But I at least had the brains to know what I didn’t know. Hence, all the following complete before I got off probation:

- Devoured the Contract
- Read Flying the Line. Both Volumes
- Read Hard Landings
- Read Sky Gods
- Read the actual text of the RLA. All of it.
- Read every single article on John Livengood’s RLA webpage.
- Went to the NMB website and dove into their negotiation report archive.
- “Hey Cap…I wasn’t here for TA1/2…what happened?” …. more times than I can count.

Later I had a long forum discussion with a now former SWAPA rep who answered a ton of my questions, quoting many of the Supreme Court cases that Lebronski has recently.

Later still, I read the riot act to a CA who couldn’t wait to vote for the 10% pay cut during COVID. This (not former mil) dude in particular is beyond hope…

But not every mil dude is. Do your part. Explain what needs to be explained. Mil guys are all about the mission, but some could use your *constructive* help reorienting where the mission comes from and who the mission is for. It’s not SWA. It’s us (their new “bros”). It is their family. They already had a career being selfless. Teach them why now is the time to be selfish.

It’s also time to be well behaved and professional on the line. We need the support of our customers, who now have had a taste of what we are dealing with. We all want the company to succeed. The SAV is a wake up call to both pilots and management. I have a furlough fund and am willing to make the walk; hopefully the company decides to do the right thing.

That’s awesome and encouraging! Well done! And I bet you’ve discovered understanding the RLA doesn’t require you to be a rocket scientist.

I’d also recommend going to Google Scholar “Cases” feature and searching for RLA cases that concern various topics like “good faith bargaining” and mediation. There are also quite a few good legal journal articles out there from which can be gleaned valuable insights. They can be found via a variety of methods but searching Google Scholar “Articles” is a good one.

thanks for posting this. I had another post asking for more RLA reading assignments but got sidetracked with my other job today.

I don’t believe your numbers are correct. The seniority list is a little misleading because the classes are over booked. This means if you’re in an overbooked slot that you’ll show for 2 days of your class then go home and roll to the next class. There are a lot of 20 Dec classmates in the 27 Dec class. A couple of 27 Dec are in 3 Jan

The 3 Jan and 10 Jan have 45 new hires. We are being told 45 a week for the rest of the year.

On CWA there are 34 people listed in the 1/3 class and 33 in the 1/10 class.