Well we all voted no except one.

 

F_____g legend!!!

 

Love it. I’ve gone up with the plane logbook and sat in the boarding area and told them I wasn’t going back down and that plane wasn’t moving til the pax were on. Amazing how good that works…

 

Your perspective and mine couldn't be farther apart. I'll be lucky to get 5 years as a "topped out captain" before I age out. The gulf between your last 20 years and my last 20 years is large enough to make some of these opinions and priorities incomprehensible.

12-yr SWA CAs make anywhere from $400,000 - $1,000,000+. Being forced to accept such a pittance in exchange for the last 20 years of your mighty labors must be a horrific burden. It almost makes me feel guilty as a mere 7 yr FO for prioritizing QOL issues in my responses to SWAPA polling. I'm 100% against the "I'd do this job for free" attitude and I'm a 1221 member, but it kind of sounds like you're actually complaining that you'll truly suffer under our contract as a maxed out captain for 20 years. I'm struggling to find the suffering there.

 

I was talking about them. The pups that WILL be topped out captains for 20 years. Who voted for short term FO gains when they'll only be in that position for 6-10 years max. And I never said I was suffering, just tired of guys who are bad at simple math.

 

You can call out FOs for voting on this, but let's be real about it. 97% of the pilot group voted yes, that's a lot of CAs as well, and we were losing FOs left and right due to the old contract. Keeping them around and attracting more is what led to upgrades and movement. Also, why use a condescending tone like "pups"? Lots of us "pups" came here in our 40's with several flying jobs prior to this, so the assumption that we are all naive and can't do simple math is shortsighted as well. For some of us, making extra in those first 6-10 years is a huge thing, especially when we may only have 15 to go, and for the younger ones who have more time, 6-10 years is a long time of making extra money, stocking away 401K money, raising a family, etc. Plus, the odds of not getting a new contract in that same 6-10-year range are pretty low, so it made sense to move forward. Lastly, the contract was good, so why not vote for it?

 

Along the lines of simple math, how long do you think it would have taken us to get the contract that would be acceptable to you?

 

Us pups can do math. The return on investment on my ratification bonus and increased NEC is worth more than some nebulous promise of topped out captain pay whenever I can hold CA considering the length of contracts.

The argument that our CA pay was industry leading didn’t hold water; it’s not a secret that we have and have always had market CA rates. The ability to work extra or be a tournament player helped take home, but CA rates have only ever tracked inflation. Go plug it into an inflation calculator if you need some help with the arithmetic.

FO pay rates, however, have always lagged the industry here by a wide margin, and doing the math on this contract meant I would probably be an FO for most of it. There’s even an RP article somewhere our VP wrote about our pay only tracking inflation. That relic of the 80s and 90s didn’t matter when guys upgraded in 4 years here. With upgrade at 8+, that matters significantly more. More earlier helps that 8th wonder of the world turn into higher overall compensation at the end of a career.

Did you really think our NC was going to get 777 pay for NB CAs if we’d just held out longer (and effed over the bottom 40% of the list?)

I had other reasons for my no vote, but FO pay being too high wasn’t one of them. Lack of financial penalties for implementation misses, killing lance, crew meals, parking reimbursements that don’t make a member whole, sick accrual on premium, waiting on FAs before we can bounce, substandard hotel language….plenty of no vote justification. My pay (and subsequent NEC contribution rising?)….not so much.

 

Meh. Was feeling feisty last night. I agree with you that there were plenty of reasons to vote no. And I did. But for me, while I was all for raising FO pay, it should have been demanded by snapa only after everything else got taken care of. Including actual industry leading captain pay. I never said 777 captain pay.

I'm not working extra so I can bring my numbers up. We have flexibility here to do that, but my goal is to work as little as possible to make as much as possible. Even so, I still block more than anyone I know at a legacy. So it's still a good deal for the company.

Time frame for getting what I wanted? That would have taken an actual credible threat. Which I was waiting to see. And waiting. And waiting... Hopefully it will be a bit different next time. But if the some committee members and officers have their eyes on an office at the GO, that probably wont happen. Again.

 

Sounds like you get 777 CA pay. I made 452k last year.