Alaska Hawaiian Merger Serious Version

[BobDDuck]

Pretty sure you're not following. But anyway.

It's cold and the sun is setting so I'm back. Anyway, people could have prepared for this completely obvious outcome 10 months ago and made important decisions for themselves regarding the trajectory of their career and our employer.

Instead of bashing people because they haven't had a historically extremely rare meteoric rise in seniority like you and point out obvious issues with the contract. I think it's fair for people who are stuck at the bottom of the seniority list to at least speak about the issues they are facing.

Because it will only get worse from here until years after the SLI. Years. We simply can not get aircraft to grow and the SLI will be extremely painful. I'm planning on a very likely downgrade when the 2 year protection is up and I feel it is important for junior pilots to hear that. You can have a keyboard temper tantrum and call me miserable that is totally fine. But my expenses will be even lower than they are now when I'm forced onto the FO list and I'll be sitting on the biggest pile of cash possible for a post SLI downgrade and likely further reduction in hours if we furlough.

Don't like it? Prove me wrong. Please. Show me where the aircraft will come from. Tell me about how the current staffing levels will not necessitate trimming the fat.

Believe it or not, airlines survived just fine for many, many years, without the need to grow capacity. It was only once the ULCCs (well, the LCCs to I guess) started capacity dumping in markets that were easy to make money in, that everybody jumped on the growth or nothing else model. That fueled the STONKS! craze and suddenly if you aren't growing your stock in tanking and the market hates you.

If the air group was unable to get more than the amount of planes they need to cover the flying they have today, they will be fine. Sure, there probably will be a bit of contraction since the hiring was planned around some crazy level of growth, but once the staffing matches the actual schedule, things will be ok. Might that mean you are in a seat or with category seniority that you weren't expecting based on what the projections were before? Yes of course, but (like Beef mentioned about) if you are financially set up for that (and you damn well should be with the amount of money everybody from second year on up is making right now, you'll be fine.

 

[Roger Roger]

Dudes...

Being junior at an airline can suck. Full stop. Always been that way. Sometimes good(ish) things happen like holding a line in your first year. And sometimes bad(ish) things happen (like a base shrinking or new hires not getting hired, or retirees no longer having to retire for 5 years) and it gets ugly. Unless this is a second/third career for you, chances are you are going to have 20+ years of being on the seniority. A few years of difficulty at the bottom is totally normal and you will hardly remember it 10 years from now.

Tldr; this need for instant gratification or else is dumb.

I mean that’s fine and all, but it’s a giant pain in the ass to use your experience flying in ALASKA to get hired at an airline called ALASKA because you live in ALASKA and want to fly in ALASKA and everyone involved (not just recruiters who are always suspect) says it’ll be easy to get a base that flies in ALASKA and has an easy commute from ALASKA and our amazing new reserve system means you can sit reserve at home in ALASKA and now you can look forward to getting converted to short call in California forever. Commuting is a choice, I’ll get over it, or I won’t, in which case I’ll just do something about it and not whinge endlessly. None of us has precognition, but if I did have it, I might have approached the process of whether or where to go 121 a little differently. Or more likely I’m just tired from working 6 days straight and this whole thing is stressing me out and I need to chill for a while.

 

[BobDDuck]

I mean that’s fine and all, but it’s a giant pain in the ass to use your experience flying in ALASKA to get hired at an airline called ALASKA because you live in ALASKA and want to fly in ALASKA and everyone involved (not just recruiters who are always suspect) says it’ll be easy to get a base that flies in ALASKA and has an easy commute from ALASKA and our amazing new reserve system means you can sit reserve at home in ALASKA and now you can look forward to getting converted to short call in California forever. Commuting is a choice, I’ll get over it, or I won’t, in which case I’ll just do something about it and not whinge endlessly. None of us has precognition, but if I did have it, I might have approached the process of whether or where to go 121 a little differently. Or more likely I’m just tired from working 6 days straight and this whole thing is stressing me out and I need to chill for a while.

That's fair. But that's the downside of this industry. The Delta guys that got the boot from DFW. The USAir guys that got the boot from BWI and PIT and BOS. The Virgin guys that got the boot from JFK. Seniority isn't portable so you make a guess and hitch your wagon to someplace that sounds good and hope for the best. If you are lucky it works out like you dreamed. If you are slightly unlucky you end up with the same company but commuting or living someplace you didn't plan on living. And if it really doesn't work out you end up doing what the Eastern and ATA and Aloha guys all did and starting over after making it to the top of the ladder. It sure does suck, but it's the gamble.

And honestly (and don't take this as a knock)... how much more time do you have before 65? You've been doing the 121 thing for less than a year. Unless things go super weird, you'll be back in ANC within a few years at the absolute worst. Plenty of time to gripe about the commute up from JNU.

 

[///AMG]

But if you’re at the bottom of a 3,500 list in an airline that is merging with another, with zero visibility of what lies ahead. it’s not much better. Right?

Junior is junior no matter the list size, it’s all relative when they start the furlough percentages. If a 15k+ list retires 800 a year and hires 1000 a year. One is on track for a better climb in seniority than the place that retires 30 and hires zero

I get your point, and there is an element of relative comparison there. Add in that 3400 becomes 4600 in the not too distant future, for someone. But IMHO, there isn't a US major/big 3 that is long-term sustainable at 17,000 or (like UAL wants) 30,000. When an airline decides it can't keep footing the bill when there isn't the growth to support those numbers, a big chunk of that seniority list goes away.....maybe for many years, until the next big growth period. At 3400, AS is still just supporting its basic route structure. That isn't a huge growth number, like some of the big 3 are, in relative terms. In short, I'd be super afraid of being 16,000 of 17,000 right now. The time to jump ship was a couple three years ago. All my opinion, which isn't worth much, and certainly isn't as informed as many of yours. More like a gut feeling......like shooting from the hip