The 25th arrives and now L-UAL can bid. Bid comes out 1-2 months later, effective 3 months from the closing of the bid. 4-5 months after the arrival of #25 means L-UAL is effectively bidding for ~ no 28.

My hat's off to L-CAL(scabs excluded) for a highly effective fence.

As long as we're playing "guess the bid cycle", it could be 20 months, or possibly no bids ever again.

Contractually however, L-UAL pilots can bid the 787 after the 25th airframe is delivered. From a more practical perspective, with planned retirements of a few 747's and other possible regauging of the airline in Q4, the 787 becomes an option for bumps with the delivery of #25. As for the effectiveness, I suppose it depends on how you look at it. 5 years, or until #25 - it seems like 2 years early to me.

It's great to have options, but I don't want to fly it!

Uhh, thanks? Never knew I had a vote as a line pilot, but I'll take the congrats…I guess. I didn't know the L-CAL merger committee wanted that "highly effective" fence in the first place. Maybe I read and heard wrong from the SLI award. It wouldn't be the first time.

I love these completely broad brush posts that vilify or "congratulate" (which really isn't a congratulations as well all know but a subtle jab instead) an entire pilot group that had zero to do with the pre-merger Capt slots or this so-called "highly effective" fence. 99.99999999% of the L-CAL line pilots are just that…line pilots…and have zero to do with the internal politics.

But yeah…I guess thanks…for your congrats. :confused:

I agree with your post. And it was the LUAL side that pushed for the fences, not LCAL. In retrospect, it would have been more advantageous for LUAL to push for a better SLI without no fences.

Actually, it was very sincere without vilification. You greatly benefited from the fence. My congratulations to the fo's and non scab captains. If you still want to play us vs you, knock your socks off.

Yep, quite sincere. And thank you so much! :):):)

Anytime.......

Since you brought it up; when will they start retiring the 747?

They already are. I believe 2 have been parked in the last year and I believe it was 3 more in the next year. I heard the dates, but forgot them...

The earnings call covered future 747 retirements ---
2 are being retired in 2015 but the rest of the fleet is now planned to fly until 2020. When they get to 2020, they'll reevaluate, as heavy checks will be due at that time.
From the earnings call, it sounds like the 2 being retired had reliability issues.

From the call:
Jeffrey Dastin - Thomson Reuters
How does the 747 fits into United’s fleet --planned fleet, retirement plan in 2015 and how do you only considered retiring a significant portion of 747s going forward?
John Rainey - CFO
The 747 is something that we do intend to keep for a few more years we have a couple coming out of our fleet in the near future but some of these we’ve made some improvements to the operating reliability of the aircraft and we could expect to keep them for another few years. They have another sort of big maintenance events in the 2020 time frame that that will be another decision point for us whether we want to extend them further at that point or go ahead and retire them.


If you look at United's cargo revenue, it increased 15.8% year over year. A lot of that's probably due to the Long Beach dock workers' strike, but is probably a factor in deciding to extend the life of the 747. With fuel prices down (after hedge losses/writedowns) more than 30%, the profitability numbers on the 747 are probably looking pretty good.