ACA Furloughs

[davetheflyer]

Today my company, Atlantic Coast Airlines, officially notified our chapter of the AirLine Pilots Association that 87 pilots will be furloughed over the next two months. For those of you not familiar with the airline business, "furlough" is simply another way of saying "laid off."

I am not one of the pilots that will be affected by this furlough.

The furlough is due to the fact that the company has not been able to obtain financing for new aircraft. This is due in turn to United's bankruptcy, and the fact that they have not committed to use ACA in the future.

Also in consideration is the future of the fleet of Jetstream 41s. If the company decides to retire the J41s without having new aircraft to replace them, then there will be more furloughs.

For now the 87 furloughs are mostly pilots who are in training or who are very junior on reserve. I am sure that these pilots and their families would appreciate your prayers.

I personally believe that as long as United continues to operate and use ACA as a partner that there will not be any further furloughs. However, if United goes into Chapter 7, then thousands of pilots will be affected, not only at United, but also at their partners ACA, Air Wisconsin, Skywest, and Mesa.

 

[ready2fly]

And so it starts.

[ QUOTE ]
I am not one of the pilots that will be affected by this furlough.

[/ QUOTE ]

Glad to hear it's going to miss you, bud!

 

[Derg]

Hey Dave-

A good idea would be to see if your MEC is interested in setting up a program where you could cover the furlough's COBRA premiums in the duration.

I think what we've seen with our furloughs is that the closely second to the shock of earning $0, is trying to support a family without medical coverage.

I think I'm paying about a 1% premium which covers our 1100 furloughed pilots COBRA payments so they can keep medical coverage during their absence.

 

[Cheechako]

That totally surprised me when I learned of this! Skywest just announced 5-6 new city pairs starting up in May (all for United) and we're still getting new jets. I had just assumed that because we were growing so were the other United Express carriers. Interesting times are ahead for us, ACA, and Air Wisconsin.

Dave, I'm glad to see you're not in the furlough ranks. You're in the J41, right? Do you have a bid in for the RJ? If so how long until that happens?

 

[chunk75]

Sorry to hear that Dave...I am glad to hear that you're still on the line.

Let's all pray that United comes out of Ch.11

Chunk

 

[davetheflyer]

Thanks for the support and advice. Doug, I'll forward your suggestion to the MEC.

Chris, we also added several new routes for UAL as recently as a week or so ago. The problem as I understand it stems from the fact that UAL has not affirmed that they will keep working with ACA in the future. A couple of months ago, ACA filed a motion in the bankruptcy court to force UAL into a yes or no decision. The motion was denied so we remain in limbo.

Further, because we remain in limbo, the company is having problems finding financing for new CRJs. (We were supposed to take delivery of about 10 aircraft per month starting back in January.)

We were all surprised at the timing of the furloughs. We had assumed that unless UAL went into Chapter 7, that we would be okay. The problem is that we had about 20 reserves per seat per base that were mostly just sitting around, then more guys coming through training. They had been hired based on our taking delivery of all those new CRJs.

I am on the J41. We (the pilots) are estimating that they won't retire the 41s yet, since we don't believe that they have enough CRJs to handle existing routes. If they did ground the 41s, there might be as many as 500 furloughs.

BTW, I found out that I'm #207 on the furlough list, so I'm definitely okay for now.

Currently all classes and bids are cancelled until further notice.

 

[HankHill]

good luck to all those affected.

thanks for the info Dave

 

[Mahesh]

Dave,
Sorry to hear about this.

I had lunch with one of my really good friends who is a Senior Captain (and chief training pilot or something like that for the Dornier 328) at ACA. He told me about the furloughs and gave me the 500 figure. He painted a very bleak picture of ACA's future. He had just come out of a management meeting that morning so he was understandably upset.

I hope he is wrong

. My instructor had a class date in January but he has been told that things are delayed indefinitely.

I hope things improve for you guys, I will keep my fingers crossed!b


Mahesh