In 07 or 08, ALPA polled all of us about age 65. We voted no. The then current ALPA leadership supported it, despite the desires of the membership.

Large employee groups have lots of negotiating power. Outsourcing RJ's to lower paying regionals instead of fighting to keep them at the mainline has been disastrous for thousands of regional pilots, and our profession. Ask a ACA, Comair, or soon to be former Eagle pilot.

I would expect a former LEC rep, or anyone associated with "ALPA work", to disagree with me.

Then there is the fact that our current Sr VP of Flight Ops spent almost his entire airline career in Herndon VA.

 

Go here to Enforce Open Skies With Gulf Carriers

Emirates should come clean about its non-A380 business seats.

Up Front - This week at the Arabian Travel Market event in Dubai, Emirates Airline CEO Sir Tim Clark reportedly said passengers would prefer the experience found on Emirates over a United narrowbody or small Delta widebody aircraft.

Passengers don’t want a United 757 or 1988-era Delta 767, Center for Aviation (CAPA) analyst and RGN contributor Will Horton tweeted Clark as saying.

One of the very reasonable responses to the Open Skies complaints by the US big three airlines — American, Delta and United — is that the Gulf carriers often offer better passenger experience (#PaxEx) and therefore are a better choice.

Yet the #PaxEx comparisons don’t always stack up in Emirates’ favour, at least on the hard product, and especially in business. American’s Zodiac-produced Boeing 777-300ER business class seat is superior to Emirates’ business class (pictured above) on everything but the Emirates A380.

United’s ex-Continental B/E Aerospace Diamond seat is also more spacious than anything in the Emirates fleet other than the super jumbo. Ditto Delta’s long-haul business class, all of which are at least fully flat (with a Thompson Vantage fully flat bed with direct aisle access on the 767, B/E Diamond fully flat seat on the 757 and Contour fully flat bed with direct aisle access on the 777).

Emirates seems content to use the halo of its Airbus A380 flagship fleet – the sixtieth of which has just been delivered – to give the impression that all its aircraft are as well appointed as its super jumbos.

The thing is, if it’s going to bash the competition, the Dubai megacarrier should come clean about the substandard passenger experience on its 777s and Airbus A330 fleet. Business travellers these days — whether they’re flying Delta or China Southern or LAN or Ethiopian or BA or Qantas or Etihad — should be able to reasonably expect a fully flat bed as a minimum product.

Yet even some of Emirates’ newest 777-300ER long-haul aircraft feature an uncompetitive angled lie-flat business class product in a 2-3-2 configuration, though Emirates says online that it offers flat-bed seats on all of its A380s “and most Boeing 777 aircraft”.

Incidentally, that 777-300ER product and layout is what American Airlines is replacing with its new (if delayed) Zodiac yin-yang herringbone on its 777-200ER fleet (also on the AA 787).

I’ve flown on Emirates’ 777s in that long-haul business product. It’s narrow, angled and suffers from the midnight problem, where passengers in either window or aisle seats must recline their footrest (with the accompanying mechanical noise) and launch themselves across the lap of the passenger next to them.

But I can confirm that the #PaxEx is worse in A330 business class, where passengers will find an even narrower 2-3-2 sleeper seat product in the smaller A330 widebody diameter. The seats, which don’t even go angled flat, more resemble an international premium economy seat than an international business product.

(In fairness to Emirates, the soft product is as good as Emirates’ fully flat business class with direct aisle access on board its flagship A380, although there is of course no upper deck bar on the single-deck A330 or 777. But Emirates’ longstanding issues of integrating and standardising the training of its global crew are just as problematic for the passenger experience as the US carriers’ ever-mediocre standards of service and seniority-based crew assignments.)

In economy, things are a little less categorical, although with a ten-abreast 3-4-3 layout on Emirates’ 777 fleet the only good things to say are about the 32” pitch and the top-notch Panasonic-based ‘ice’ inflight entertainment system with thousands of content options. American’s ten-abreast 777-300ER decision, recently followed by United if reports are to be believed, means that Emirates wins on the basis of an extra inch of pitch.

But Delta’s 767s are superior in width and 2-3-2 layout to Tim Clark’s 777s, and United’s 757s are no worse than 3-4-3 on a 777.

 

Doesn't the fact that the ME3 airlines derive nearly all of their traffic as connections raise any red flags since they happen to serve alot of questionable destinations? Seems like this is more a national security issue as anything, and as such should be an open-and-shut case despite the cash they are throwing around

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/flight...092701099.html

This should be on all US news networks (if not already)

 

Go here to Enforce Open Skies With Gulf Carriers

 

Go here to Enforce Open Skies With Gulf Carriers

 

Go here to Enforce Open Skies With Gulf Carriers

 

ALPA--U.S. HOUSE PASSES TRANSPORTATION SPENDING BILL WITH ALPA PRIORITIES
On Tuesday, June 9, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the FY2016 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill to fund the nation's federal transportation programs, including the FAA. Included in the House legislation were provisions addressing Norwegian Air International, open skies agreements, and secondary barriers.
Specifically, the House has acknowledged the concerns that U.S. airlines and their employees have voiced regarding existing open skies agreements and whether subsidies have resulted in market distortions. ALPA had advocated for the language that calls on the U.S. Department of Transportation to report to the Committee on Appropriations within 90 days on its review of stakeholder input, including potential corrective actions within the framework of existing open skies agreements.
The bill also included the same language that was passed last year affirming the House's broad opposition to any foreign air carrier permit application that conflicts with the U.S.-EU Air Transport Agreement. The passage of this language makes it clear once again that U.S. lawmakers adamantly oppose business models such as Norwegian Air International's (NAI) and that the Department of Transportation must reject NAI's foreign air carrier permit application.
An amendment offered by Representative Michael Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) was adopted by voice vote to stipulate that no funds can be used in contravention of existing flight deck safety regulations. During the bill debate, Representative Fitzpatrick made an impassioned speech on the need for secondary barriers. Watch it here.
The funding bill must be considered by the Senate before it is sent to the White House. All funding bills must be finalized before the end of the fiscal year to avoid a government shutdown.