The contract. All I had to do was get within 4 hours of my guarantee, and then the company had to pay us 4.5 hours for every day of reserve that we had left for our calendar month. So I'd pick up flying early in the month to kick the trigger on this bylaw. Now that rule is gone, so I simply grab short calls to stay down low on the call list and avoid flying. I haven't seen an airplane since 8/24 of this year. It's been glorious.

FAR 117 has only affected line holders mostly. The line holders would scramble to grab deadheading in order to pad their pay and put extra flying on top of it. For us reserve folks we just chill and avoid work as much as possible.

And you are correct. We could get our days rolled, but it was WAY LESS LIKELY because we could split up our HDO's with the old contract. It was like 2 stop gaps in the schedule. When our contract negotiators worked on this contract, most of them were NOT global pilots and did pure domestic, so they didn't realize how the reserve rules crimped our lifestyle. Now we have to take all 6 HDO's in a row. Not cool.

I'm surprised by your take. Adjusted for inflation C97 had better pay rates and retirement, more schedule flexibility and better scope. IOW, you made more money, had more time to enjoy it and your job was better protected under C97. If you're comparing it to the rest of the industry in 2000, I'd agree it was lacking in everything but scope, but I'd take it over today's UPA. As far as our openers in 09, I remember them vastly differently than you do. Not banging on anyone for voting one way or another as the UPA is a light year ahead of what either legacy had at MAD and it's all water under the bridge anyway, but I don't see it the way you do.

C97 was a big leap forward but I'm not sure it compared well industry wide. This was the contract that Bethune supposedly said they we were flabbergasted that we left $500m on the table because they had expected to pay that much more based on industry standard. If I recall it was partly because the company leaked the pay rate, and only the pay tables, and the line pilots pressured the NC to sign the contract quickly to start getting those rates. Regarding C09 openers there were improvements but again in comparison to where we stood and all that we had given up on C02 I was disappointed.

This has been refuted by Bethune himself. I saw the correspondence between him and another pilot where he asked if this was true and Bethune's comment was words to the effect of "I never said it. Where do they come up with this stuff? We fought like crazy on that contract."

Source? And please post it so we can all see...or gives us the link since you "saw it."

Thanks for the clarification.

Rumors, true or not, often reflect a shared line of thinking within a group. One rumor had Bethune traveling and a passenger in first class mistreated a flight attendant before the door closed. He confronted the passenger and asked how much he paid for his ticket. The man told him and also said who are you? Bethune said I'm the CEO, peeled off many hundred dollar bills approximately equal to the ticket price, gave them to him and said now get off my plane. Great story. But did this really happen? Maybe. But the repetition of the story within the employee groups reflected the common perception at the time that there was someone in charge who cared about his employees. The $500m left on the table may be in the same category. I think the pilots felt they could have done better.

Totally agree and if you're looking at the current UPA in comparison with other contracts in today's environment, I'd agree this is the closest LCAL pilots have been to leading the industry since before Lorenzo. However, the comments were this is the best contract LCAL pilots have seen since before Lorenzo, period. I disagree with that and would rather have C97 than the UPA... that's how far the industry has fallen. As far as the C09 openers, while you might have been disappointed, there's little doubt in my mind they were superior to the UPA, but not necessarily achievable in the environment of 2012. We had to play the hand we were dealt.

I never believed that story, not so much because the reasoning behind it wasn't true, just that Bethune was far too savvy to rub employees noses in it. Jeff on the other hand...

Its on his personal facebook page. I saw maybe 2 years ago, maybe less. Don't remember the date exactly. He's very active so there are lots of posts and I don't know how to search someone else's facebook. He has a very active page so good luck.

https://www.facebook.com/GordonBethuneOfficial?fref=nf

He sounds like a really great guy. Too bad he isn't running United now. After reading a bunch of facebook posts he seems really genuine. He was a Naval officer so he had that going for him. I wish I had the post, because he made it clear they fought over that contract and the company gave up more than they wanted. Maybe someone will find it and repost.

I agree C97 was a high point post Lorenzo. I think our memory of it had a lot to do with pay rates and not as much overall contract. Below are two sets of data from the MIT Airline Data Project. The first one is the cost of the CAL contract compared to other legacies. The second is the compensation and benefit part of that cost compared to other legacies.

The first shows that we've always been cheaper, sometimes the cheapest cost, to the company. Remember the 26 (was it?) straight profitable quarters? It was often said that Bethune's "genius" was not in his running the operation but in getting us to subsidize it.

The second shows the C97 pay and benefits bump above industry standard that lasted a couple of years. I think this is what we takeaway from C97 despite the fact that the contract was overall below industry standard. Liars use statistics as the adage goes so there may be other considerations here. But it's a start.

Total Cockpit Cost per Block Hour - ALL AIRCRAFT

1995 38% below
1996 40% below
1997 32% below
1998 17% below
1999 13% below
2000 16% below
2001 24% below
2002 39% below
2003 12% below
2004 16% below
2005 14% below

http://web.mit.edu/airlinedata/www/2...20AIRCRAFT.htm

Total Pilot Wages & Salaries and Benefits & Payroll Taxes per Pilot Employee Equivalent

1995 24% lower
1996 26% lower
1997 18% lower
1998 0.6% higher
1999 8% higher
2000 7% higher
2001 4% lower
2002 26% lower
2003 0.5% higher
2004 7% lower
2005 9% lower

http://web.mit.edu/airlinedata/www/2...Equivalent.htm