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Why is Airways sucking up?

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psyops

Active member
Joined
Jan 28, 2002
Posts
31
Why are the US Airways pilots sucking up to anyone and everyone? It's because they are just a few weeks away from filing bankruptcy. A move that will release Airways management from the Scope provisions that are strangling the airline. The Airways ALPA pilots know that, and are scrambling to make a deal with anyone in an effort to put off the inevitible. The fact of the matter is that scope relief will either come under negotiated terms, or a judge's terms. Consider the following excerpt from a recent Aviation Daily article:

AVIATION DAILY February 5, 2002
Copyright 2002 by The McGraw Hill Companies, Inc.

Regionals, Low-Fare Airlines
Face Post-Sept 11 Challenge

Regional carriers continue to make growth plans and remain optimistic about the future of the economy and the industry, according to speakers at last week’s Raymond James Growth Airline Conference in New York. Raymond James analyst James Parker said about $1 billion worth of business had shifted to regionals and continues accelerating because of Sept 11. He predicted that fixed-fee contracts are not likely to be substantially altered, even if a major partner goes bankrupt. Parker said fixed-fee contracts are revenue builders and remain part of the solution to profitability problems. Bankruptcy gives the majors more flexibility in their pilot scope provisions to use regionals. While air travel will “largely recover by mid-2002, we do not expect the majors to rebuild to 100% of their pre-Sept 11 flying, which should leave several billion in incremental market share for regional and low-fare airlines over the next few years.”

Parker said low-fare airlines will be the prime beneficiaries of the majors’ capacity reductions “because once airline industry traffic recovers, the majors are expected to bite the bullet on much of their low-priced, discretionary traffic.” Lower priced, discretionary traffic”. Lower priced traffic has become unprofitable for the majors, Parker said, because of rapidly rising labor costs and the proliferation of low-cost airlines, such as Southwest and Jet Blue. Stock prices among the low-fare carriers have climbed since Sept. 10, he said. AirTrans stock as of Jan. 23 was up 4%, Frontiers was up 58%, and Ryanair’s had climbed 321%. United’s stock price, in contrast, dropped 52% and US Airways 56%. US Airways partner Mesa saw its stock price drop 43% in that period, and SkyWest, which flies for United and Delta, had a 13% decline in it’s stock price.

End.

The Airways pilots' world class arrogance has finally come back to bite them in the ass. I can't wait to watch them bleed.
 
psyops said:
Why are the US Airways pilots sucking up to anyone and everyone? It's because they are just a few weeks away from filing bankruptcy.

The Airways pilots' world class arrogance has finally come back to bite them in the ass. I can't wait to watch them bleed.

psyops,

I'm not a USAirway's pilot but I have many friends that are. From what I have seen, they don't have an arrogant pilot group...maybe its you.

I find it morally disgusting that you are so happy these people are loosing their jobs. I hope your world class arrogance comes back to bit you in the ass!!!!!

R.F. :mad:
 
Mr. Fitzwell:

I also know people who are on the Airways seniority list. However, with the exception of one, they forgot where they came from. They should have thought of that, now shouldn't they have?

Take flow through for example. A friend of mine flies for one of the wholly owned subsidiaries. Until this desperate attempt to find jobs for it's furlougees, the Airways MEC (and henceforth their pilot group) refused to offer bi-lateral flow through from the wholly owneds to the mainline. The best that they did was a pathetic offer to put 1 in 6 in each new hire class, waive the $75.00 application fee, (interesting considering they work for the same outfit), and force them to undergo the same simulator and interview screening as everyone else. That was real big of them. Still with no guarantee of hire. That was the thanks they got for supplying those arrogant bastards with passengers for their jets.

Now their balls are in a vise (or at least their most senior pilots country club memberships are) and suddenly they want to talk.

The Airways MEC has spit in the face of the wholly owned subsidiaries for as long as they have been around. Now it's time they got a taste of their own medicine. Let them bleed.

How many of your pals at Airways stood up for the wholly owned pilots? That would be zero.... now wouldn't it?
 
I find it morally disgusting that you are so happy these people are loosing their jobs. I hope your world class arrogance comes back to bit you in the ass!!!!!

ALPA mainline pilots have done everything in their power to limit and destroy the careers of pilots at the group c & d airlines. While I do not condone posts like psyops, I certainly understand why pilots feel that way.

I have been under attack from the Delta MEC since the day I hired in with ASA and candidly, I'm sick of the hypocracy of the mainliners. The Delta guys say we should all be remorseful about Delta mainline furloughs - at the same time ALPA has filed a grievance which would furlough ALPA members at ASA and Comair. Anybody else see the problem with this?
 
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i would agree with fitzwell, my father and numerous family friends fly for usair and i dont understand why anyone would wanna see such a thing happen to any pilot. my dad busted his ass at airways for 24 years to put a roof over me and my family's head. now im only a 100hr private pilot half way through my commercial so i dont know much about alpa but i do know that my father is well respected and has never acted in an arrogant matter nor have any of his friends, and i dont appreciate anyone critisizing any airline just because they have a run in with a handful of pilots. if that was the case i should hope that all executive pilots lose thier jobs because i have had numerous conflicts with their cocky attitudes but thats a childish excuse to hate these people, the same should go for anyone incuding you.
 
~~~^~~~ said:


The Delta guys say we should all be remorseful about Delta mainline furloughs - at the same time ALPA has filed a grievance which would furlough ALPA members at ASA and Comair. Anybody else see the problem with this?

I sure do but it's because you are playing with the facts. If I'm not mistaken the grievance you refer to is where DALPA is contesting their management's interpretation of their contract provisions regarding furloughs, etc. While I know that one of the side effects of winning that grievance could mean ASA and Comair furloughs, that isn't its intent. I know all of this is a springboard for a rant about how you should be able to in on DALPA's negotiations. If that's your belief fine, I know I'm not going to change your view, but please don't twist words around to make your argument because IMO it weakens your position.

Among the many things I don't understand is that if I understand the RJDC correctly, they want to merge the lists, bargain together and then collectively scope ACA and Skywest. Besides the fact I feel that is hypocritical, my question is this: does RJDC believe ACA ALPA should be party to those scope negotiations? After all everybody's ALPA and they believe it's ALPA's responsibility to ensure that member carriers are party to negotiations that affect their pay and working conditions. I am guessing that the answer is no, and that the reason given will lie in the fact that DAL owns ASA and Comair. If that is the answer, that seems at odds with their belief that each ALPA group should be party to negotiations that affect their pay and working conditions. Under this mantra, I am sure the DAL pilots would like to be party to any concession negotiations at UAL!;) Speaking of UAL,one of the next big things for RJDC to jump up and down over will be the outcome of the SJ grievance at UAL mainline. Nobody knows what will happen, but whatever the outcome you can bet that there will be fewer UAX SJ's than planned pre 9/11 until mainline builds their fleet back up to contract levels. When this happens, I'm sure the RJDC will be up in arms, I'm just curious as to what the official reason will be. Since the UAL situation doesn't juxtapose well with the DAL and UsAirways situations, I imagine they will object under the catchall phrase of "harmful scope," and resort to the economic necessity of RJ's "now more than ever," argument( with mock civility for any of us major airline furloughees of course.)
 
"The Airways MEC has spit in the face of the wholly owned subsidiaries for as long as they have been around. Now it's time they got a taste of their own medicine. Let them bleed."

"ALPA mainline pilots have done everything in their power to limit and destroy the careers of pilots at the group c & d airlines."



Do you guys really think those mainline pilots have a hidden agenda to DESTROY OTHER PILOTS' CAREERS?? Maybe like a secrete handshake or password??? Come on.

It's called job perseverance. They are simply trying to protect the jobs they worked hard for by limiting the growth of their competition. Regional growth is proving to be their biggest competition. They are simply trying to survive. No hidden agenda.

R.F.
 
NSUDemon -
I'm sure your dad is a swell guy, but you're not where we are, working at the wholly owned subsidiaries of US Airways group. It seems that many mainline pilots at US Airways are unaware that there are wholly owned regionals, let alone that we do not operate jets. As far as we can gather, the MEC and very senior pilots there are mostly responsible for trying to hold us down, and much of the hostility that we feel gets misdirected towards all of the mainline pilots. I am certain that the majority of pilots working for US Airways are decent folks, just trying to make it in this world like all of us. They are not directly responsible for the three wholly owned regionals watching RJ after RJ show up in airports we service operated by the likes of Mesa, Chautauqua, and Trans States Airlines. They are not directly responsible for the MEC proposing flow through agreements with those airlines after Allegheny, Piedmont, and PSA begged for it for years. They are also not directly responsible for us being completely uncertain about our future, as the corporate wording is that "all turboprop flying will be replaced with small jet flying", when we are not allowed to operate jet equipment at all. You can certainly see why the three wholly owned pilots' groups are a little tense about things, I hope. Misdirected hostility doesn't do anyone any good, but anger is a funny thing, you know? It's not cool to watch anyone get furloughed, but when it's from the group of pilots that consistantly holds yours back, you can't feel too bad for them. I wish more mainline pilots were aware of the things that their MEC does to us. Good luck with your commercial, fly safe.

RF-
Trying to limit regional flying to protect a job is great, but why give extra limits to regional flying done by wholly owned carriers? Wording in LOA's specifically limit the wholly owned carriers from operating RJ's. Why not allow US Airways group to make more money and give the whole operation a little more to stand on rather than give RJ flying away to contract carriers? It makes no sense at all. Mainline pilots are not to blame directly, but the mainline MEC sure does some wacky stuff.

While I'm on it, what's up with Shuttle America doing PIT flying? We were told that it was cool for them to be operating Allegheny airplanes because they weren't taking Allegheny routes, and were operating into Hanscom field, which no one else can do. Now they are doing Lynchburg and Toledo? Anyone can do that. Why a contract carrier flying wholly owned airplanes?
 
here is a thought that no one seems to be checked out on. UAL, AA, DAL, USAIR etc. are not probably ever going to build back to pre 911 schedules, staffing etc. The growth of the parent companies will be at the "regional level" . Primarily because no one wants to fly into and out of big hubs any more. Security will always be an over blown hassle and the ridiculous knee jerk delays at the big hubs will stay now forever. What the traveling public will want to do is go to their small regional airport, get on a regional jet and go to another small regional airport. Bypass the whole big hassle the big hub airports entirely. So any union that intends to hold their parent company down to a set number of airplanes of one type or a set number of pilots or no more sj flying until all furloughed pilots are back in the saddle is going to find themselves flirting with disaster. There is no denying that the growth in the future is either going to be at the regional affiliate level or in the niche players ie jetblue, frontier airtran etc
 
the reason given will lie in the fact that DAL owns ASA and Comair....Under this mantra, I am sure the DAL pilots would like to be party to any concession negotiations at UAL!

You do not understand the difference between the UAL / DAL relationship - and - the relationship betweeen Delta and Delta Connection? Look - Delta, ASA and Comair are the same employer. United and Delta are not. (Check into the company's position on employees who come to ASA from Delta NOT having to cash out their retirement and roll over their 401K - according to the IRS it is the same employer)

My union is going to my employer and trying to get me furloughed - yes I have a problem with that.
 

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