1515greenlight

Seems that this past week when Sully & Skiles were on Capitol Hill to discuss things; the incident, skilled pilot retention, pension reform for the airline industry and other things, our illustrious leader made sure he was there for the meetings and photo ops.

Oops...not so fast.

Seems that he did such a stellar job of FUBAR'ing the mess at Airways, both Sully and Skiles refused to have anything to do with him as did the Congressmen. So "fearless leader" was escorted out and the hearings and private meetings happened with the Congressmen and Senators and the ones Sully and Skiles wanted in attendance...CAPA (Coalition of Air Line Pilots) and the Director of the Airline Division of the Teamsters, a fellow by the name of Captain Dave Bourne...the same guy who took his pilots through bankruptcy and instead of getting their contract raped, they kept 12% annual raises and got stock options and profit sharing. One of his guys, a senior F/O, told me the strike price for the options was $17.00 and he sold his at $60.00. Then he showed me his profit sharing. 11% of his 2007 guarantee netted him $19,000.00 pre tax.


Damn......not bad. What did NWA get last time, about $1200.00?

And the wire says Atlas made money again last year, so I guess they get another check soon.

DublinFlyer

I don't get a lot of this. Who is the fearless leader?

schone

If i am getting it right, he is talking about Prater as head of ALPA.

If that is so, I believe he is right too in what he is saying. Its time to wakeup.

Selcall

Prater and the mustache crew have been about as useful as tits on a boar hog. Good for Sully, Maybe if prater hadn't tried to run roughshot over the USAIR guys during the initial scrape about their merger then maybe he would have a little more credibility. But then again maybe he wouldn't.

1515greenlight

You are indeed getting it right. "Fearless Leader" is our very own stogie chomping, top shelf only, John Prater.

The same guy who made sure his Executive Administrator Randy Helling, who has no financial backround whatsoever, won the VP of Finance election to replace Chris Beebe. The opposition was a guy with a very strong financial backround; but he was from FedEx and Prater didn't want any freight guys in the job. Or anyone who would easily spot the fact that the money is flying out the door on "Taking It Back" roadshows or shipping a blow up rat around the country.

Good thing though that he got Helling in. Given that the NWA merger committee overspent by $400,000.00 on the $1,000,000.00 merger budget, Helling was able to make it all go away with no accounting oversight.

By telling DAL that it's coming out of their SMRA money.

HSLD

I wonder if that explains why "Sully & Skiles" were not mentioned by name - only as "...the Crew of US Airways Flight 1549..." in the March issue of ALPA's Air Line Pilot magazine (page 5, pilot to pilot)?

DeadHead

I think this just goes and shows that there is a major disconnect between your average American airline pilot and ALPA representation.

I feel as though Captain Sully has his pulse on the majority of the pilots of this country, and I wonder why ALPA hasn't sent someone to Congress to discuss these very same issues. Maybe they have, and I missed it, but I see a sincerity with Captain Sully and a lot less politicking.

In my opinion, it seems as though our "Fearless Leader" would rather pose for a photo op, rather than postulate and propose real change to an industry with degrading standards of treatments and compensation.

I'll support my union, pay my dues, and do my best to stay informed, but somewhere in the equation it needs to be self-evident that ALPA National is doing what's best for all of their represented pilots, collectively.
The US Air merger integration was and insult to every single pilot at both of those companies, and ALPA should have done more to see through fair and equitable integration.

1515greenlight

You're right, there IS a major disconnect. Prater himself said right after he was elected that he never wanted the job, just enough juice to get a job in DC with ALPA as a consolation prize. Which is why he begged Woerth to help him figure out how to do the job. His first dilemma? How to give the job of Executive Administrator to one guy...when he promised 3 airlines the slot for their votes.

The staff is embarrassed for ALPA and what it stands for. All Prater and Helling want to do is walk around with stogies jammed in their mouth and a scotch, looking like big labor bosses and looking for photo ops. They have made ALPA a joke on Capitol Hill. Which is why the ALPA chief lobbyist quit last year; he didn't want his reputation trashed by this guy we call President.

Can't blame him...he has to live in this town. Prater is just here long enough to destroy decades of hard work and go home.

schone

Maybe we can start fixing this by demanding that ALPA, claiming to be the most powerful "safety organization" show some safety results.

Our fatigue is the number one issue. That issue was solved by president Bush minutes before he walked out the door back to Texas by signing the duty and rest restrictions act for RAILWAY LABOR. Maybe it's time our own organization show the same strength that they claim to have?

Or maybe we just need to kick our fearless leader along with this paper tiger that can't bite called ALPA.

1515greenlight

I agree, but it'll be difficult. They just cut Safety by 50% due to lack of funding. The annual Air Safety Week is now being cut to every two years. They tried to cancel this years upcoming one, but the hotel in DC refused to refund the deposit.

They took over GCAP (Global Cargo Pilots Alliance) and just cancelled this years meeting because of a lack of funding. That's really sad. It was started as a non-ALPA controlled group, by Dan Brannan, the former Astar/DHL MEC Chairman as a way to get all the carriers around the world together who haul for DHL, to enhance working conditions and safety. ALPA National tried to shanghai the meeting a couple of years back when Dave Ross, President of APA Local 1224 (the Teamsters at Airborne) was elected President by the worldwide GCAP group. ALPA First VP Paul Rice got P/O'd because their name was not on top, even thought ALPA wasn't paying a dime. Ross stepped down after his term and now the guys from Astar and ALPA are running the show. It's become a real mess, and now the can't meet because ALPA's out of money.

Prater should leave. He should do so for the honor and dignity that ALPA may have left so it can rebuild. There was a move in May of 2008 to begin a recall at the Executive Board; the smaller carriers were getting hit financially and the staff was telling us the wheels were coming off the bus.

Dave Webb, FDX MEC Chair, was supposed to be at a meeting of carriers and was to get the two new MEC Chairmen at NWA and UAL onboard to understand the problem ALPA was facing. Webb "disappeared" for 3 hours and could not be found. Said he "forgot." (Didn't return calls either)

Both the MEC Chairmen were Prater buddies and were convinced Prater was not the problem, it was those "regionals and smaller carriers who didn't belong here."

So, as much as we'd like to hope, it's pretty clear from staff that were in bad shape and getting uglier by the minute. I'm hearing from more and more MEC guys at several carriers that are hearing from their guys that it's time to look at leaving ALPA. They knew and worked with Dave Bourne when he was at Atlas and say he really went to bat for them with National when they needed help, even when he had no skin in the game. Now that Atlas/Polar is part of ABX Local 1224 at Teamsters, if they see more good stuff coming from over there (I think Atlas just started negotiations after ALPA held them up for 3 years), then their guys are going to want to go over there. Just saw something yesterday on the wire where this guy is adding over 17,000 new members to the Airline Division this year. And Prater blew over 5 million of our money on 3 failed organizing drives last year.

Sounds like he's doing something right...

Again, it looks like the complaints of the past, while valid then, are likely not going to continue with this new guy (Bourne) running the show.