AA canceled flights

IAs far as the airline goes, management broke it, and they alone are responsible. If their employees ARE engaging in a sick-out, it's management's fault for not doing the right thing to keep them happy, and the responsibility falls squarely on their shoulders. (Legal complications aside)

Collateral damage is cool then. Noted. Pax don't necessarily only buy tickets that are the cheapest. Some buy long in advance, before any of this crap ever came up. But of course, they should pay the price. And worse, couching all this crap under the "safety" card is such a gross misuse of the spirit and intent of that word, that it sickens me as a safety professional when people do that for their own agendas.
 
Collateral damage is cool then. Noted. Pax don't necessarily only buy tickets that are the cheapest. Some buy long in advance, before any of this crap ever came up. But of course, they should pay the price. And worse, couching all this crap under the "safety" card is such a gross misuse of the spirit and intent of that word, that it sickens me as a safety professional when people do that for their own agendas.

Been on 4 AMR mainline flights this week, all severely delayed, none because of pilots.

Some of this is management trying to shape public opinion. No agents at gates, congested alleys/etc
 
Collateral damage is cool then. Noted.

It's not "cool", but it IS management's responsibility to deal with. They would be "the company" I was talking about earlier. Further, if you think they give a damn about the passengers, the employees, or anyone except themselves and their shareholders (and that only as an extension of "themselves"), you're sorely mistaken. It's an issue of fiduciary duty to their shareholders, and they take that seriously. The operational side of things is just an expense.

But of course, [passengers] should pay the price.

Not at all. They should be refunded/vouchered/compensated, as follows the terms of the contract they signed with the airline when they purchased their tickets, at management's expense. That they're delayed/inconvenienced/canceled certainly sucks, but the fault lies with management and the responsibility as well.

And worse, couching all this crap under the "safety" card is such a gross misuse of the spirit and intent of that word, that it sickens me as a safety professional when people do that for their own agendas.

If you're referring to my own use of the word "safety", please tell me and I'll try to clarify. If not, I'm not sure what you're addressing.

~Fox
 
Collateral damage is cool then. Noted. Pax don't necessarily only buy tickets that are the cheapest. Some buy long in advance, before any of this crap ever came up. But of course, they should pay the price. And worse, couching all this crap under the "safety" card is such a gross misuse of the spirit and intent of that word, that it sickens me as a safety professional when people do that for their own agendas.

It's certainly not the pilot group's fault that AMR has chosen to inadequately staff the airline with reserve crews. From what I've heard, reserves have been flying their butts off for a LONG time, which is not how a company that wants to avoid crew cancellations uses reserves.
 
MikeD, have you worked as an airline pilot before? It seems like you're experienced in darn near every other aviation job on the planet, but I honestly can't remember if "airline pilot" was ever one of them.

I'm not trying to call you out or say your opinions aren't relevant. I just know, from my own experience, working for a year at a small commuter airline and jumpseating all over the continent on my days off has really opened my eyes to what airline pilots are dealing with and the dynamics of this whole industry. It's one thing to hear stories and intellectually know the problems of the industry, but it's another thing to see and experience them firsthand.

I'm also not saying if the AA pilots are right or wrong...but I can definitely understand where they're coming from.

The ethics of war are difficult to define, and this conflict is no different. I wish there were never wars, and I wish this whole mess weren't happening at AA to begin with. Unfortunately, that's about as far as I can get in an ethics debate before saying, "I don't know."
 
And worse, couching all this crap under the "safety" card is such a gross misuse of the spirit and intent of that word, that it sickens me as a safety professional when people do that for their own agendas.
^THIS^
 
If you're referring to my own use of the word "safety", please tell me and I'll try to clarify. If not, I'm not sure what you're addressing.

~Fox

Not your use of the safety word; Im just referring to how the word gets generally thrown around by any number of people/entities/unions as a "convenience" word, when whats really going on is more than obvious.
 
MikeD, have you worked as an airline pilot before? It seems like you're experienced in darn near every other aviation job on the planet, but I honestly can't remember if "airline pilot" was ever one of them.

I'm not trying to call you out or say your opinions aren't relevant. I just know, from my own experience, working for a year at a small commuter airline and jumpseating all over the continent on my days off has really opened my eyes to what airline pilots are dealing with and the dynamics of this whole industry. It's one thing to hear stories and intellectually know the problems of the industry, but it's another thing to see and experience them firsthand.

I worked cargo, and jumpseated any number of times, much like you, although dated. But thats neither here nor there. I think it's wrong all around, with one side begetting a reaction from another side, and it never ends.

From what I understand.....from what Todd wrote......the APA got themselves in this corner and this far in the mess with management. Of course, AMR isn't a lovely place to work, from many Ive heard from, but the problem is management vs APA; not take it out on the pax time.

I'm also not saying if the AA pilots are right or wrong...but I can definitely understand where they're coming from.

The ethics of war are difficult to define, and this conflict is no different. I wish there were never wars, and I wish this whole mess weren't happening at AA to begin with. Unfortunately, that's about as far as I can get in an ethics debate before saying, "I don't know."

As I said.......speaking of war: I may disagree heavily with US foreign policy on our wars and how our own government is screwing our troops; but that doesn't mean when I get deployed overseas that I go bomb civilians with my jet just so I can make a point.
 
Not your use of the safety word; Im just referring to how the word gets generally thrown around by any number of people/entities/unions as a "convenience" word, when whats really going on is more than obvious.

That's because you're not understanding what flying S.A.F.E. means.

Slow And you-can-guess Expensive.
 
I fly 2 times a week commuting from DFW to IND and back on AA...crews have been fantastic... I thoroughly enjoy jumpseating on the MD80 with those crews...have not yet experienced what the article suggests...
 
:) Fly slow and expensive all they want. But at least get the pax to the destination!

Only if the company staffs enough reserves!

Listen man, don't feel bad for the managers in this situation. They've made their bed and now they'll sleep in it. While they're doing that, they're going to launch a media campaign blaming everybody but themselves for things going to pot. Heck, maybe they WANT things to fall apart just a little bit so they can walk into a judge and say, "Your honor, look at what these greedy pilots have done!"

I mean don't any attention to the man behind the curtain in manpower planning that decided reserves should be flying 90 hours a month out of open time. No don't do that, because then you may realize that if you want your airline to run like anything other than a giant piece of crap, you'd know that you want your scheduled crews flying 70 hours a month and your reserves picking up maybe 20 hours a month out of open flying. That way you can extend the scheduled guys to 90 hours, and the reserves to 60 hours to cover the unexpected crap.

So when guys call out sick because they've had 10 days off a month for the past 12 months, and have been flying 90+ hours a month in the Mad Dog and got a cold, you can blame it all on the greedy pilots union.

And don't feel bad that you thought the managers were being honest to the media about it. These guys are professionals, they WANT you to believe that they're doing the right thing here.
 
Collateral damage is cool then. Noted. Pax don't necessarily only buy tickets that are the cheapest. Some buy long in advance, before any of this crap ever came up. But of course, they should pay the price. And worse, couching all this crap under the "safety" card is such a gross misuse of the spirit and intent of that word, that it sickens me as a safety professional when people do that for their own agendas.
I understand what your saying but exactly what can the pilots do that hurts management but not the passengers? It sounds like you are telling them to just bend over and take it for the sake if the passenger.

FYI, the passengers won't die if a flight is canceled.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2
 
The AA pilots are screwing themselves so hard that even the Wall St Journal is advising against flying AA now.

In the mean time, AA pax are being accommodated by AA putting them on competing airlines flights at which AA pays a pretty price for said seats. Other airlines are essentially getting free revenue here.
 
.from what Todd wrote......the APA got themselves in this corner and this far in the mess with management. Of course, AMR isn't a lovely place to work, from many Ive heard from, but the problem is management vs APA; not take it out on the pax time.

From what Todd wrote? I respect Todd and value a lot of what he has to say. But when it comes to talking about other unions his posts have a taste of a rabid Steelers fan trashing a rival team.

Unless I'm missing something, AA management declared bankruptcy, offered the pilots a crap sandwich that other than hourly rates, are worse than most regionals. They said no, then management throws the entire contract out, and its the pilots fault? Its time that front line employees stop having to sacrifice to make up for bad management. What's the point of making sacrifices for your company, when it results in 11,000 job cuts? To sacrifice so you can still see silver planes flying around from the unemployment line? This isn't like patriotism where even though they're not paying you, you feel proud of your country. As soon as that paycheck stops coming, you'll probably regret the sacrifices you made to keep it ticking.

All that being said, I highly agree that its not right to take it out on passengers. This is my frustration with my management when they send us emails talking about how our on time performance and completion factor are somewhat lacking. To them on time performance are green or red numbers on a spreadsheet. To us they are standing there like an idiot in front of your passengers, who were going to job interviews, weddings, vacations planned for years, etc, because you have a maintenance problem that could have avoided with a little bit of foresight. I'm a big fan of fly it now, grieve it later, purely for the passengers sake.

Unfortunately there really aren't any ways you can stick it to management in this industry. Our job is to show up, ensure the airplane is safe to fly, then go fly it. Other than being where you need to be at the time you need to be there and doing your job the way you're supposed to, performance is very much out of our control as pilots. If the plane is broken, the plane is broken. If there's an ATC delay, there's not a damn thing you can do about that either. Job action is illegal unless approved by the government. Bankruptcy laws favor management 9 times out of 10.

So I guess my question is, what do you do? Your company you've been with for 20-30 years is mismanaged (or possibly uses creative accounting to make it appear so) they cut your pay and benefits drastically, and the job market sucks so you can't really take your ball and go home. What do you do?
 
The AA pilots are screwing themselves so hard that even the Wall St Journal is advising against flying AA now.

In the mean time, AA pax are being accommodated by AA putting them on competing airlines flights at which AA pays a pretty price for said seats. Other airlines are essentially getting free revenue here.


Right, because management is completely innocent here. Do they not teach responsibility in MBA school?

Given the changing policies at AA pilots have to work under and the increased scrtuiny from their own company, the public and the FAA I can't say I blame them for following each manual and every policy to the letter right now. As I'm sure you know, doing this and running an on time operation don't mix well. I doubt the pilots have malicious intent but their actions clearly say they'd rather protect themselves and risk losing their jobs, potentially sending their company into the ground than capitulate to the idiocy they've worked under for so many years. That says a lot given how long most of those guys have been there.

I don't advocate illegal job action and I'll be the first to admit unions don't always handle things as well as they could. Between companies using Ch. 11 like a mulligan and the RLA, pilots aren't even fighting with one hand tied behind their backs. We're more like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail after he's lost all his limbs.

You can't crap all over your labor, take huge bonuses, poorly run the company, then expect your employees to bail you out and be surprised when things don't go so well. Likewise, as labor, we can't try and screw the company and nickel and dime the operation and act surprised when the contracts of the late 90s aren't offered to us at the negotiating table.
 
You have to be a moron not to see that the APA is advocating a 'sickout.'

Pilots are very short-sighted individuals. Airline pilots seem to be more so.

Look at the work ethic of employee's at successful companies; outside aviation as well. There is a mutual understanding of how success works.
Funny how I don't see airlines on here; nor are the top ones Unionized...

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5 Edward Jones 1% 36,937
6 NetApp 30% 6,887
7 Camden Property Trust -2% 1,678
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9 CHG Healthcare Services 17% 1,312
10 Quicken Loans 20% 3,808
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17 JM Family Enterprises -1% 3,685
18 Chesapeake Energy 23% 10,502
19 Intuit 9% 7,102
20 USAA 7% 23,211
21 Robert W. Baird 5% 2,509
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24 Alston & Bird 3% 1,645
25 Ultimate Software 15% 1,209
26 Burns & McDonnell 5% 3,165
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41 Adobe 11% 5,296
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45 National Instruments 7% 2,708
46 Intel 4% 44,209
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50 World Wide Technology 23% 1,470
51 Allianz Life Insurance 2% 1,711
52 Autodesk 5% 2,798
53 Methodist Hospital 8% 12,152
54 Baker Donelson 3% 1,142
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85 Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts 6% 12,439
86 Hitachi Data Systems 7% 2,200
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92 Accenture 9% 34,000
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94 KPMG 5% 20,823
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100 Intercontinental Hotels Group -2% 14,508
 
Been on 4 AMR mainline flights this week, all severely delayed, none because of pilots.

Some of this is management trying to shape public opinion. No agents at gates, congested alleys/etc

They may be pushing for an injunction.

When things got a 'little crazy' during contract talks and things weren't going well, a lot of people stopped 'volunteering for voluntary overtime at historic levels' and the company wanted to press for an injunction. Granted we did have a staffing issue, but I was actually in the jet, ready to pushback when agents got onboard and said, "The flight is cancelled because of cockpit crew availability" on two occasions.

Full complement of FA's in back, the captain and I were good to go, FMS loaded, checklist read and voila, flight's cancelled.

That swayed public sentiment HUGELY -- even though most of the damage from 'not volunteering to fly voluntary overtime at historic levels' was from the company trying to draw-the-foul like an NBA game.
 
Nark said:
Funny how I don't see airlines on here; nor are the top ones Unionized...

What are your thoughts on Southwest being heavily unionized, Nark?
 
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