Airhoss

Big picture boys and girls.

Does any of this matter anymore?


Answer for some of our non MENSA member here;

No

Airhoss

I vote that this guy gets the management boot licker of the year award!! Well done sir WELL DONE!

UAL T38 Phlyer

From Wikipedia.


Inedia (Latin for "fasting") or breatharianism is the belief that it is possible for a person to live without consuming food. Breatharians claim that food, and in some cases water, are not necessary for survival, and that humans can be sustained solely by prana, the vital life force in Hinduism. According to Ayurveda, sunlight is one of the main sources of prana, and some practitioners believe that it is possible for a person to survive on sunlight alone. The terms breatharianism or inedia may also refer to this philosophy practiced as a lifestyle in place of the usual diet.

Breatharianism is considered a lethal pseudoscience by scientists and medical professionals, and several adherents of these practices have died from starvation and dehydration.

Reportedly, most airline pilots agree with the scientists and medical professionals. ALPA Aeromedical had no comment.

Management, however, has embraced Inedia, and is seeking to end all crew meals and per diem.

24/48

And you should never go full retard!

pilot64golfer

Please do not volunteer for any position in the Union where we negotiate working conditions or work rules.

Knotcher

No ****...I'll take cash over the cube of pot roast any day...but we showed them right ? I guess we also owe a debt of gratitude for the gas station frozen Salisbury Steak dinners in the break room. Showed them again!

The last thing I want to do at the schoolhouse is eat. Get the briefing done, two short breaks between sims, and get the hell out of there until next year.

Sunvox

Hoss, Hoss, Hoss . . . he's not lickin' boots 'cuz he don' need to eat. He just needs a big 'ole pile of cash to role in.

C'mon Beek. Use common sense. Our pay rate is not dictated by whether or not we get crew meals. In fact I would argue that crew meals didn't matter one penny in how much "cash" you get to take home. We traded crew meals for some other "get" whatever that was, but not cash.


And,

while we're talking pay rates how 'bout a "thank you" for bringing CAL pilots up to the top band of legacy carriers. I know, I know . . . you'll want to explain to me how 737 drivers were making more than 747 drivers in 2005, but let's not forget that UAL pilots were working under a BANKRUPTCY imposed contract. For the 30 years prior UAL rates were ALWAYS significantly HIGHER than CAL rates and we had every expectation of getting back to rates that matched DAL. Did CAL-ALPA really have a chance in 2009 and 2010 to argue for rates equal to DAL's rates when they just lost money for 9 quarters straight? Yeah . . . yeah I know of course you think they did . . . whatever. Fact is CAL is at rates higher now than ever before and higher than they would have been minus a merger so you're welcome.

Now quit talking like a SCAB management wannabee and admit that crew meals are a good thing and not a bad thing.


You simply have no basis on which to compare and that is the problem. It may not matter much when you're only training for 3 days for your annual, but when you're in the training center for 5 weeks straight it sure is nice to have a simple cafeteria with some decent food to make life a little more pleasant. Denver has an excellent cafeteria; Houston does not. Having a cafeteria is better than not having a cafeteria and to argue otherwise is simply idiotic and a classic example of the CAL inferiority complex.

I have been on the 756 fleet for almost a year now. I go out of my way to try doing things the "CAL" way and guess what . . . some of the stuff is great, but guess what some of the UAL stuff is pretty good too.

Take for instance the "Howgozit". Not one CAL pilot with whom I have flown is using it because they think it's pointless. Pointless that is until I ask how do they check for fuel leaks during a flight? Did you know that 2 Air Canada planes flamed out from lack of fuel because of boarded fuel errors and that one UAL plane almost flamed out because they failed to identify a fuel leak. The Howgozit gives pilots a super easy tool to check fuel on board versus what the plan says you should have and if you see more than 1000 lbs difference at a waypoint then you begin to ask questions. Some CAL pilots used the Phoenix plan to check this but now that we're all using Sabre I haven't seen anyone checking fuel domestically. So why not adopt the super simple UAL habit of printing a howgozit and checking fuel and time at waypoints along your route. . .

I know . . . we can't do that because that's the way UAL used to do it and we don't want to change our CAL ways because our ways were the best.


Give me a break. Crew meals are good to have and so is a cafeteria at the training center, and if we don't pull together we're gonna lose both.

CALFO

Just in case anyone wants a reality check on backstop financing and the state of the industry just prior to merger:

Airlines Need Manufacturer’s Financial Help

Douglas W. Nelms - July 28, 2009

With traditional sources of financing getting more and more dicey, airlines have to scramble to find cash…and both Boeing and Airbus need to leap into the breach to help them get it, according to a top financial analyst.

Mark Streeter, managing director and senior analyst, JP Morgan Credit Research, said today’s airline industry is in a “very difficult capital market environment,” and “if you look at the traditional sources of aircraft funding -- banks specifically -- banks have not been as aggressive and not played the same roles they traditionally play. Nor have the capital markets. That has necessitated an increasing role by Airbus and Boeing Capital to step up and finance aircraft as well.”

The actual role the two manufacturers will play involves backstop financing, where the airline comes up with a modest down payment, say 20%, and the manufacturer covers the rest. Unfortunately, backstop financing tends to be more expensive to the borrower, Streeter said.

“Backstop financing is always the least favorable alternative if (financial) markets are up and running and efficient,” he said. “But if markets are closed, sometimes backstop financing is the only alternative. And if you really need the plane, then you’ll take the backstop financing. But if you don’t need the plane, you might say to Boeing or Airbus that ‘We know you’ll finance this for us at 10 or 12%, but we’d rather defer the delivery until we can finance it at 8%’.”

That deferment, in turn, increases speculation on what is going to happen to production rates for 2010 and how this will all play out for the supply forecast for new aircraft production.

The airlines are certainly trying to raise capital in a difficult time “where demand is very weak, oil prices are lower but still not low enough to offset the deteriorating demand and with the capital markets not opening widely everywhere. They are not generating a lot of free cash flow, they are burning a lot of cash and are looking to raise capital. Basically, they aren’t paying for aircraft in cash because they really don’t have it.”

Some few airlines do have the ready cash and no problem raising additional capital funds. Lufthansa reported that despite a $10.4 billion loss for the industry last year and a projected loss of $9 billion this year, it actually had an operating profit of $1.91 billion in 2008 and a positive operating margin of a round 5% during the four quarters April 2008 through March 2009. It also just announced a bond issue raising €750 million ($1.06 billion) with a fixed rate of 6.5% that was oversubscribed sevenfold. Lufthansa, however, is only one of three worldwide airlines, and the only European airline, to have an investment grade rating---a BBB- with Standard & Poors and a Moody’s rating of Baa3-.

(Story continues below chart)


However, for the less fortunate carriers, there are sources of financing that help ease the tension, one of which is Enhanced Equipment Trust Certificates (EETCs or “double E-T-Cs”). These are bonds secured by the aircraft which have the credit quality of the airline behind them.

“Investors sort of weigh the two -- how good is the airline credit and how good are the aircraft supporting any collateral in the notes. Then they price it accordingly.” Streeter noted that Continentaland American are already involved in EETCs, with Continental able to issue a $390 million note at 9%, backed by 737-700s and 800s, and 737-900ERs, and American issuing a $520 million bond “that actually had a lower leverage, but was priced at a wider cost to them…10.375%. The reason Continental priced the deal at 9% and AMR priced it at 10.38% isn’t really a difference in the collateral differences in the deal; it’s a function of the perceived credit quality. People are more worried about American's survivability than they are about Continental. People view Continental as having a higher chance of avoiding bankruptcy, and American as having a higher chance of actually filing for bankruptcy. So that is reflected in the bond price.”

The important thing about the EETC financing for the two carries, though, is that more than $900 million was raised, “the vast majority of which directly lowers Boeing Capital’s need to provide that backstop financing. Boeing Capital has provided backstop financing to AMR and to Continental. So with American and Continental raising money in the public capital market, the vast majority of these proceeds go to reduce the 2009 backstop requirement from Boeing Capital.”

Boeing Capital’s requirement to provide backstop financing will be reduced to the extent that more EETCs are issued. Boeing Capital has already stated that it expects to reduce the amount of funding they will need to provide as backstops this year, with Boeing Capital President Walt Skowronski initially saying that he thought his company would only be providing $1-2 billion this year, then further reducing the project funding to less than $1 billion.

A key issue to focus on is whether the EETC market will remain open for American and Continental, or possibly Delta which has some aircraft they would like to finance, Streeter said. “United doesn’t have any aircraft to finance, but they needed to raise some money and just did a deal collateralized by spare parts, the yield on which was 17%.

Also helping relieve the tension in the financial market, “and what has been one of the biggest safety valves,” has been the Export/Import Bank of the United States and the European Credit Agencies.

“Looking at the Ex/Im Bank specifically, they are probably going to print something close to $8-10 billion in aircraft loans this year,” Streeter said. “That is a dramatic increase over their run rate over the past several years, which has been in the $4-6 billion range. That is for Boeing aircraft sold outside the United States.”

Unfortunately, the Ex/Im Bank is limited simply by the amount of work it can push through its system. “The Ex/Im Bank’s constraint is people, getting enough bodies in to manage what is a pretty high demand for their product, especially with capital market being somewhat mixed in terms of receptivity to the airlines and aircraft leasing companies right now,” Streeter said.

He added that the Ex/Im Bank is also looking to do capital market transactions, where it would simply provide a guarantee and a commercial bank would fund the loan on its own books based on that guarantee.

“Part of the problem now is that there are some banks that can’t fund the debt on their balance sheet even with the Ex/Im Bank guarantee,” he continued. “That kind of caused the Ex/Im Bank to look toward the capital market to issue a bond backed by Ex/Im Bank, which is the full face of the US Treasuryand US Government. They are looking to do that later this year.”

Streeter said that Aviation Capital Group, a subsidiary of Pacific Life Insurance Company, has publicly stated that they would look to work with the Ex/Im Bank on one of those type deals. “The real reason Ex/Im Bank is doing this is that they want to diversify where they place their paper,” he said. “Traditionally it went exclusively on commercial bank balance sheets, which are not as big as they once were. So now what they are trying to do is deal with the vast buy-side community that is buying treasury debt and is looking at Ex/Im-backed bonds as a cheap way to play US sovereign risk, because it will be priced cheaper than where treasury bonds trade because it will be this unique structure that is the first time it’s ever happened. So that is something we’ll see later this year.”

Leasing is, of course, still always an option, with a lot of leasing companies now doing sale leasebacks with airlines that are taking planes themselves.

“For instance, Southwest is taking a lot of 737-700s with Bank of China Aircraft Leasing,” Streeter said. “That is the old Singapore Aircraft Leasing, but now under the Bank of China umbrella. It has done a dozen sale leasebacks with Southwest. Bank of China likes the Southwest line of credit and Southwest doesn’t want to pay cash for these aircraft, can’t really finance them elsewhere, so they are doing sale leaseback transactions. That is one angle where leasing companies get involved.”

He noted that economic conditions are always cyclical. “The aircraft markets aren’t going away, the aircraft leasing markets aren’t going away and the airlines aren’t going away. Some of the airlines might go away, but the business isn’t going away. Right now demand is in the toilet, but it will eventually recover and the capital markets will eventually open up and we’ll get through this. But the potential is for a very long winter, especially with the U.S. carriers, where it is particularly dicey. U.S. Airways, United and American, in that order, are sort of the three more vulnerable airlines, although there is a big difference between all three in terms of how vulnerable they are. But it’s ugly out there. Keep that in mind.”

flybynuts

This thread, like many, is getting old and very embarrassing. We all need to let the stupid comments go and not try and get "your dig in." Please try and take the higher ground and refrain from grabbing the bait. It seems that most threads on this forum goes this way and even the new hires or potential candidates can't escape the tussle that my side was better and your side sucked? This forum and displayed threads do not represent the United pilot group at all and I don't want many to think it does.

Or....we can create a permanent Fight Club thread and let the usuals have at it?

oldmako

Those idiots in ATL have cafeteria as well. Full of hot young FA's last time I was there.