Alaska opens new SAN pilot base

If you cant make it work on $400,000 a year, you've got bigger problems.
Will I make that much if I’m downgraded this year? Next year? After the SLI? After the Airbi are parked? There were 2 threats of downgrades from DM in 2024 and one reduction bid. 2025 was free from threats of downgrades with 3 bids and then we got the SAN opening. At my seniority I can’t count on anything.

Your statement is incredibly retarded or you’re trolling. I said don’t know what my monthly take home pay will be. CA or FO. Since I work for an airline that can’t be counted on for seniority progression. This makes it difficult to plan a multi year budget for a project like a remodel for example. I have zero issues with spending at the moment. I set my 401K deductions to 100% for January so I won’t have to worry about it when I’m back to FO pay later in the year.
 
Will I make that much if I’m downgraded this year? Next year? After the SLI? After the Airbi are parked? There were 2 threats of downgrades from DM in 2024 and one reduction bid. 2025 was free from threats of downgrades with 3 bids and then we got the SAN opening. At my seniority I can’t count on anything.

Your statement is incredibly retarded or you’re trolling. I said don’t know what my monthly take home pay will be. CA or FO. Since I work for an airline that can’t be counted on for seniority progression. This makes it difficult to plan a multi year budget for a project like a remodel for example. I have zero issues with spending at the moment. I set my 401K deductions to 100% for January so I won’t have to worry about it when I’m back to FO pay later in the year.

Drama queen. You know what you can expect, even if it doesn’t end up being the case: 8th yr FO rate. Plan on that financially, and you’re set. How do you not know what your monthly take home would be as a CA and FO? That math isn’t hard. Plan on CA pay for Jan-May, and worse case FO pay June-Dec this year. Budget that.
 
Drama queen. You know what you can expect, even if it doesn’t end up being the case: 8th yr FO rate. Plan on that financially, and you’re set. How do you not know what your monthly take home would be as a CA and FO? That math isn’t hard. Plan on CA pay for Jan-May, and worse case FO pay June-Dec this year. Budget that.
It’s very likely they aren’t running new hire classes after February so they can downgrade 50 captains or more and replace them with 20-30 upgrades. Since the rest will be base transfers. It will keep the training department busy until June. However the captain pay will end for us either when we are finished with training and downgraded which only takes a few days. Or when our training starts. IDK which one is effective first. Either way many captains will start being paid as FOs as early as March.
 
It’s very likely they aren’t running new hire classes after February so they can downgrade 50 captains or more and replace them with 20-30 upgrades. Since the rest will be base transfers. It will keep the training department busy until June. However the captain pay will end for us either when we are finished with training and downgraded which only takes a few days. Or when our training starts. IDK which one is effective first. Either way many captains will start being paid as FOs as early as March.

If I’m doing the math right, net 20 upgrades and 50 newhire FOs from this bid. Right?


And IIRC, it doesn’t matter when your training for downgrade is. If downgraded your new FO payrate is effective June 1st because that’s when the bid is effective. So even if you complete downgrade training at end of January, you should get CA until June 1. IIRC, again.
 
Is this what "red circle" (or maybe I'm forgetting the actual AS language term here?) CA's are?

Sorry, I meant Capt pay*



Red circle is gone. That was only for 5 yrs.

But the way red circle was supposed to work is he was a Capt who bid all bases and got downgraded cause he couldn’t hold CA anywhere, on the next vacancy bid he would get a CA slot before a more senior FO who was never Capt.

Apparently that’s not the interpretation of the company VS union. In the end, it didn’t matter because it was never used / no one was affected by it. But if push came to shove, it could have been sent to the arbitrator for clarification.
 
Good call on reducing LAX. It’s not like I’ve gotten a phone call everyday this week to cover flying on days off. And we are so well staffed that our ALV for Feb is 83 hours. Seems legitimately overstaffed to me lol
 
Good call on reducing LAX. It’s not like I’ve gotten a phone call everyday this week to cover flying on days off. And we are so well staffed that our ALV for Feb is 83 hours. Seems legitimately overstaffed to me lol
Aren’t we temporarily losing gates due to the terminal remodel?

I could see management causing pain that will never be forgotten by the pilot group to temporarily have less pilots in LAX for a remodel.
 
Good call on reducing LAX. It’s not like I’ve gotten a phone call everyday this week to cover flying on days off. And we are so well staffed that our ALV for Feb is 83 hours. Seems legitimately overstaffed to me lol

I assume for the holiday period that is Jan 1-5th. After Sunday, there’s just 8 opentime CA systems in the entire system of all bases. How does FO look systemwide? Historically, flying goes down and rsv utilization goes down Jan 6-8th til about mid March.
 
Good call on reducing LAX. It’s not like I’ve gotten a phone call everyday this week to cover flying on days off. And we are so well staffed that our ALV for Feb is 83 hours. Seems legitimately overstaffed to me lol
It’s remarkable to me how the numbers and names on the paycheck change but the problems always seem universal. I mean I get it; staffing is expensive and you can get away with whoring things out to a certain extent and for a certain length of time. The line values for a few of the narrow body categories at SJI are rather high as well next month and it is the stated preference to run hot again.

sighs
 
Good call on reducing LAX. It’s not like I’ve gotten a phone call everyday this week to cover flying on days off. And we are so well staffed that our ALV for Feb is 83 hours. Seems legitimately overstaffed to me lol
Same thing in SFO, what management will tell you is they’ve artificially anchored flying out of LAX and SFO to support the current sizes of the crew bases there and with the realignment they’ll do those trips out of bases that make more sense. How much truth there is to that I can’t say, probably some, but I bet it’s not wholly true.
 
It’s remarkable to me how the numbers and names on the paycheck change but the problems always seem universal. I mean I get it; staffing is expensive and you can get away with whoring things out to a certain extent and for a certain length of time. The line values for a few of the narrow body categories at SJI are rather high as well next month and it is the stated preference to run hot again.

sighs

But is your shop actively reducing bases that could potentially cause displacements/downgrades? I don’t think that one is universal at this point in time.

I also have zero idea how the monsters that are the big 3 shift flying and staffing between bases/fleets. I could be uninformed and they do displace people from time to time. I know when an airframe gets phased out those that wait it out tend to displace others on a different fleet, but other than that or a contraction in the airline I’ve never heard of our current situation anywhere else. I also have small ears so I can be hard of hearing :)

Not complaining too much about the efficiency in the schedule, just more so the efficiency of a base that’s been stated to be overstaffed during a slow month (Feb ALV)
 
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Same thing in SFO, what management will tell you is they’ve artificially anchored flying out of LAX and SFO to support the current sizes of the crew bases there and with the realignment they’ll do those trips out of bases that make more sense. How much truth there is to that I can’t say, probably some, but I bet it’s not wholly true.

Time will tell I guess, should I grab the popcorn? Do you like two squirts of butter??
 
I assume for the holiday period that is Jan 1-5th. After Sunday, there’s just 8 opentime CA systems in the entire system of all bases. How does FO look systemwide? Historically, flying goes down and rsv utilization goes down Jan 6-8th til about mid March.

There is probably some truth to that. Guess we will see if I continue to get phone calls the next few days..
 
But is your shop actively reducing bases that could potentially cause displacements/downgrades? I don’t think that one is universal at this point in time.

I also have zero idea how the monsters that are the big 3 shift flying and staffing between bases/fleets. I could be uninformed and they do displace people from time to time. I know when an airframe gets phased out those that wait it out tend to displace others on a different fleet, but other than that or a contraction in the airline I’ve never heard of our current situation anywhere else. I also have small ears so I can be hard of hearing :)

Not complaining too much about the efficiency in the schedule, just more so the efficiency of a base that’s been stated to be overstaffed during a slow month (Feb ALV)

I mean, I dunno, United used to have the N gates in Seattle. And a pilot base. They're all commuters now, those who stuck around at least. I could see SFO going away. They just spent like 3 years trying to stand up a Boeing base there. Nobody wants to live in SFO. Tech people destroyed it 15-20 years ago, the first of many cities they have turned into garbage.
 
FO buddy was showing me 200% trips are being offered in CA to SEA FOs. In January lol.

My guess is we are close to a contract that will have unlimited 200%. So the company is just limping the staffing model until it’s all yes votes for a staffing model that doesn’t allow for our careers to progress.

I kept hearing about this massive wave of retirements that would be so good for my career for the last god knows how many years. Now it’s hiring 47% of those who retire because the staffing model is propped up by guys flying 120 hrs a month of straight open time with DH built in and a select few that can snag premium. We are our own worst enemies.

What happened to not picking up during negotiations?
 
What happened to not picking up during negotiations?

If the negotiations were under Section 6, that would be considered a job action... don't do that.

With a JCBA process, neither party is under status quo rules, so technically you could (legally) reduce the amount of open time pilots are flying to get some kind of leverage on the company, but in theory during a merger, the conpany wants to get it done way more than the pilots do, so no additional leverage is needed.

Edit to add... I've already stated my opinion on allowances for whoring vs staffing pushes within a contract, and regrettably where the pilot group preference has been moving for the past 10 years.
 
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