Latest Eagle AIP rejected

ATN_Pilot said:
Honestly, the only way I see is for some to "take one for the team." I see no other way to attain leverage but to eliminate some of the competition for feed. It's just too crowded a market for the limited amount of business that exists now.
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I see your point, but at the same time that also just plays into managements hands. Some people will get out of the industry, some will start over at PSA in a shiny new E170. I think much like the republican's war on poor people, some of the criticism is being misguided right now. Instead of picking on those who are trying to make things better, maybe we should focus elsewhere...
 
Screaming_Emu said:
I'm not putting words in your mouth, but rather reading some of the implications of the ones you really are saying.

If we are truly replaceable (which I agree with) how do we get improvements? This section of the industry NEEDS to improve.
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YOU don't make improvements. YOU die with your boots on.

OTHERS get the improvements.

Let me put this in historical terms.

Comair struck for better pay and working conditions. They got them, for a little while. But quickly those improvements went away, and then the airline went away. They were punished for standing up just a little too tall.

Now they're starting over at other regionals, where they may or may not take the benefits that they fought for at Comair with them.

The guys that really got the improvements were the folks at a rapidly expanding ExpressJet in 2004. A great contract that was built on Comair's, and a rapid upgrade to boot. Lots of people got paid well, upgraded fast, and moved out quickly.

The Comair guys are looking up from the bottom of the ExpressJet list. The Comair guys died with their boots on.

And now history will repeat itself.

ExpressJet has stood up and said "Enough is enough." But ExpressJet won't take any benefit from this. Nor will Beagle. Both of those companies will show the industry, as a whole, that the bottom has been found when it comes to paying labor, and then those companies will go away. The beneficiaries of this will be the airlines that get the flying from ExpressJet and Beagle. Skywest, Republic, PSA, or whoever steps up and takes those airplanes, while making modest gains (or even taking losses) in their new contracts, and guys will upgrade quickly, make ok money, and move out.

So let me simplify this even further: pigs get fed, and hogs get slaughtered. It's like that with almost anything in life, and you never want to be the guy out front.

Because the guy out front dies with their boots on.
 
Seggy said:
Well, if you read the Eagle's MEC Letter they are done talking to the company....
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That's probably a message more to the company than it is to the general population, as in Realpolitik.

As you've hopefully seen before, at this level, the volume of "propaganda" becomes deafeningly loud.

I've been on the end of "sign this or the company will absolutely liquidate" in 1997 and also I think it was 2005 during bankruptcy.

You guys think I'm talking out of my ass, and that's your right, but this isn't new and has brought ALPA and other labor groups to their knees each time because of risk. And you will see this at your current carrier each time negotiations get nasty and we will support you the way you HOPEFULLY are supporting the pilots at Eagle, right?
 
Seggy said:
So, @Firebird2XC, think that is still a bluff? Did you really win if you have to fly one of your former American Eagle aircraft at another airline?
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Define "have to." When did we become so myopic? Nobody from eaglevoy "has to" do anything, at least as far as chasing airframe from carrier to carrier. You think the 15 year captain from eagle is going to apply, take a jeopardy training event, 2 leg commute to reserve on probation to make $25k? I don't. I haven't flown with or talked to a single eagle pilot who would. You'd make more on unemployment and receiving wic for the family.
 
jtrain609 said:
YOU don't make improvements. YOU die with your boots on.

OTHERS get the improvements.

Let me put this in historical terms.

Comair struck for better pay and working conditions. They got them, for a little while. But quickly those improvements went away, and then the airline went away. They were punished for standing up just a little too tall.

Now they're starting over at other regionals, where they may or may not take the benefits that they fought for at Comair with them.

The guys that really got the improvements were the folks at a rapidly expanding ExpressJet in 2004. A great contract that was built on Comair's, and a rapid upgrade to boot. Lots of people got paid well, upgraded fast, and moved out quickly.

The Comair guys are looking up from the bottom of the ExpressJet list. The Comair guys died with their boots on.

And now history will repeat itself.

ExpressJet has stood up and said "Enough is enough." But ExpressJet won't take any benefit from this. Nor will Beagle. Both of those companies will show the industry, as a whole, that the bottom has been found when it comes to paying labor, and then those companies will go away. The beneficiaries of this will be the airlines that get the flying from ExpressJet and Beagle. Skywest, Republic, PSA, or whoever steps up and takes those airplanes, while making modest gains (or even taking losses) in their new contracts, and guys will upgrade quickly, make ok money, and move out.

So let me simplify this even further: pigs get fed, and hogs get slaughtered. It's like that with almost anything in life, and you never want to be the guy out front.

Because the guy out front dies with their boots on.
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Well aren't we a little dramatic today?
 
For everyone else
After Wednesday’s vote by the Master Executive Council, we talked to MEC chairman William Sprague about the vote to turn down a tentative agreement with American Eagle Airlines and not send it out to pilots.

In a release, MEC for the Air Line Pilots Association at Eagle said management has indicated it would shut down the regional carrier if the union didn’t approve a proposed contract.

So we started with that question to Capt. Sprague:

Dallas Morning News: Are you calling management’s bluff or is there truly no bluff here?

William Sprague: We’ll have to wait and see. It’s kind of a combination of the two. They’ve made their position abundantly clear that they’re going to source these aircraft elsewhere, and that they’ll be able to do that, and because of the type of operation we have, they’ll have no choice but to move the aircraft that are profitable elsewhere and then as we attrite pilots and people leave, they will shrink us down to a manageable size and shut us down. They’ve made that abundantly clear from the meetings we had last summer through as recently as yesterday morning.

There’s some question of whether or not they’re going to be able to succeed in that effort given the state of the industry right now and the supply of pilots. But we’re taking it very seriously, and we do understand that it’s possible, maybe even likely, that they will move in that direction.

DMN: Do you think a number of American Eagle pilots will not wait to see management’s direction and will begin leaving for pilot jobs at other airlines?

Sprague: Absolutely. In fact, they’ve already been doing it to a large extent. Our attrition rate right now is 30 a month on the non-flow-throughs.

Several of our pilots over the last year have already assumed that the future here wasn’t going to provide them the career progression that they were looking for and they’re going elsewhere to find that and other opportunities.

My guess is that that number is likely to go up significantly as our pilots recognize that the company has said they’re shutting it down. Seniority is everything in this business, so the sooner you get on another seniority list, the better. I would imagine that to be the case.

DMN: Did you convey the voting results personally to management?

Sprague: Yes, to Pedro Fábregas. [American Eagle Airlines president and CEO]

DMN: What was his response?

Sprague: He appreciated me calling him directly and giving him the news instead of hearing it from another source. Fortunately, I think I got to him before. You know, news travels fast in this day and age.

But as far as his reaction, he was disappointed and is concerned that this puts the company in a very difficult position on what the next step is going to be for American Airlines Group.

I do believe that Pedro is sincere in his desire to see this company succeed, and so are we. We still want to see that our carrier succeeds in this environment and that we’re able to move forward. I know he’s very, very invested in that. This was a real blow to his efforts to start that process now.

DMN: It’s been indicated that this vote is it and that there’ll be no more negotiations. Do you think there’ll be new negotiations? Is the MEC quite strong that this is something that it cannot accept no matter how items are moved around?

Sprague: You know, I don’t know that I could go quite that far with what the status of the agreement is, other than to say they’re not willing to entertain it in its current form. The pilot group was not willing to entertain it.

As far as any negotiations to the current agreement, the MEC really hasn’t decided because they don’t really see that as an option at the moment. I think that’s going to be largely up to the company on how they respond.

The only information we have in front of us at the moment is that they aren’t coming back and that a “no” vote is the equivalent of them moving the flying elsewhere and shutting us down.

In so far as how we would react to any kind of an overture from the company to try to resolve this in a different way, it’s kind of hard to characterize what our response would be without knowing what that looks like. But there is some sentiment that we would have to start from scratch. There is also some sentiment in the group that we could work with this agreement and try to figure out a way to make it something that the pilot group would be willing to entertain. But that’s speculation at this point because that’s not really in front of us.

DMN: Do you think that if this had been sent out as a tentative agreement to the pilots, the members would have voted it down?

Sprague: I’d like to believe it would have, yes, given that the MEC vote represents what the pilot voice is, and we have done an enormous amount of work over the last several months, even preceding the initial meetings with the company, to figure out what the pilots want and make sure that voice was coming through the individual members of the MEC. So the voice they brought today to the table, which was not an easy thing for these guys to do, was that the pilots were not willing to entertain this. By such, I do believe had it gone out for pilot ratification, it would have failed.

DMN: Did you recommend approval or rejection? Did you vote for or against it?

Sprague: I didn’t have a vote. … I did not provide a recommendation to either approve or reject.

And a final comment from Sprague: One of the things this demonstrated today is that the pilot group just isn’t willing to work for less what they’re already paying other people to do the same flying. They’re paying Republic Airlines to fly aircraft with the same passengers on it, with the same aircraft they were offering us, and they’re willing to pay them more than they’re willing to pay us. And that’s just not something we were prepared to do.
 
jtrain609 said:
Drive by posting is fine, but do you have an actual response? You can, of course, just tell me that I'm full of it and wrong if that's what you think.
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That was my response.

I hear a lot of "oh my god, we're doomed!" from the ERJ guys. That may be the case, but even if a draw down happens as laid out by the company before the vote even closed, neither XJT or Eagle are on the verge of closing the door tomorrow.

Between the people bailing for other regionals and natural attrition, I think staffing this place is going to become more of a problem than the company pulling the plug.

I'm down on falling on our sword if we have to, but I really don't think we're quite at that point. Thus, I think people saying we are, are being a little dramatic.
 
Screaming_Emu said:
That was my response.

I hear a lot of "oh my god, we're doomed!" from the ERJ guys. That may be the case, but even if a draw down happens as laid out by the company before the vote even closed, neither XJT or Eagle are on the verge of closing the door tomorrow.

Between the people bailing for other regionals and natural attrition, I think staffing this place is going to become more of a problem than the company pulling the plug.

I'm down on falling on our sword if we have to, but I really don't think we're quite at that point. Thus, I think people saying we are, are being a little dramatic.
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"I think" isn't analysis.

Run the numbers.

Brad's updates with the number of draw downs happening over the next few years are in his December 2nd update. Most airlines staff about 10 pilots per airframe, but you can figure it out exactly by seeing how many people are on the list vs how many airframes there are.

Look at the historical attrition data, and figure out how much the company needs to hire/furlough moving forward.

I already ran the numbers, and you should do the same.
 
ATN_Pilot said:
After reading his interview with Maxon, I'm not so sure.
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That's cool.

Everyone involved knows that everyone is reading everything so that's how you communicate through the impasse.

Get ready for the board to start leaking strategic plans to scale back the company. Pilots will read it, panic and storm union leadership again but implore them to go back to the table to saaaaaaave us.
 
jtrain609 said:
"I think" isn't analysis.

Run the numbers.

Brad's updates with the number of draw downs happening over the next few years are in his December 2nd update. Most airlines staff about 10 pilots per airframe, but you can figure it out exactly by seeing how many people are on the list vs how many airframes there are.

Look at the historical attrition data, and figure out how much the company needs to hire/furlough moving forward.

I already ran the numbers, and you should do the same.
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And he's going to paint the absolute worst picture he can using what little data is convenient for him to divulge to back him up.

Look at his most recent update. All kinds of vague doom and gloom.
 
Screaming_Emu said:
And he's going to paint the absolute worst picture he can using what little data is convenient for him to divulge to back him up.

Look at his most recent update. All kinds of vague doom and gloom.
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Bro you better check yourself and run that data past the 10-K, because I'm willing to bet that it's accurate.

Saying, "I think," "my opinion," or "they won't" never suffices are analysis. Check the numbers, don't trust your gut.

My gut told me to stay around, but the numbers don't lie.
 
jtrain609 said:
Bro you better check yourself and run that data past the 10-K, because I'm willing to bet that it's accurate.

Saying, "I think," "my opinion," or "they won't" never suffices are analysis. Check the numbers, don't trust your gut.

My gut told me to stay around, but the numbers don't lie.
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I don't doubt we have contracts that are coming due. But we've been extending contracts the entire time we've been in contract negotiations. Its an easy card for them to play.
 
So, to recap, the company has said if we didn't take it in the ass, we would shut down. So we called them out.

Then, today, in an official Eagle Wire statement, Pedro says, "The ALPA MEC's statement asking us to provide a timetable for the company's 'liquidation' is not something we can provide as we are not planning to shut down the airline."

REALLY?

Gee. Glad I didn't take concessions.

A few points- he mentions parking some of the smaller jets- those have been scheduled FOR YEARS.

He also mentions realigning or reallocating the CRJ fleet. Well, duh. That was never offered, and ALPA asked for fleet protection for them in the TA and the company said no. So that was always happening.

In OTHER WORDS, voting no didn't trigger anything that wasn't already in motion anyways.

And time continues to change the landscape of things.

Their move. And man do they look weak right now.
 
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