American Eagle pilots finally stand up

we will see what happens. I Wouldn't be suprised to see some other airlines congratulating us at the same time they agree to receive our aircraft.
 
Keep it up! My airline is likely looking at what you guys do so I am happy to see this. Lets stop the bleeding with pinnacle.

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Count me in.

I've been doing what I can already, but that's not saying a whole lot as one individual, toeing the line enough to keep his j.o.b. long enough to not have a break in employment. My vote will be with my feet, personally, but I understand a lot of folks like this lifestyle/career/whatever.
 
we will see what happens. I Wouldn't be suprised to see some other airlines congratulating us at the same time they agree to receive our aircraft.

Out of everyone's hands..... PSA told the company to pound sand 8 years ago on 900s for current rates at the time. Overwhelming it was voted down just to see RAH/Mesa grow like mad....... Neither Mesa or RAH took concessions to gain them and I'm still glad our pilots said no at that time.

They aren't our planes and AA can place them where they want their planes. These are also potential airplanes. We at PSA know what orders actually mean (14 Crj700s in reality instead of 40+ on order never delivered). We can only HOPE no one takes concessions to gain planes.
 
Anyone that takes concessions to gain planes is an idiot. It has been shown time and time again that it never works or at least never works like "they" said it would. ZW keeps throwing that at us. "Growth is in your hands...if you want to grow and get bigger plane, take concessions". No thanks, I will keep my current pay...thank you.
 
I know why the relationship exists such that management can use new planes as a bargaining chip, but it just sounds so incredulous to me. The number of planes an airline has should have nothing to do with the pilot contracts. The airline should be purchasing the number of planes necessary to fit the business, move the number of people they need to move, and make money. The idea that the business uses the number of planes as a threat/bargaining chip would be akin to my company saying, "Hey, Steve... tell you what, you take a 10% pay cut, and we'll get 40 new laptops here [under breath: well, actually, it'll be more like 10, but 40 sounds better...]. No guarantee that you will actually GET one, or have your own computer upgraded, but yes... you give up some money, and we'll get a handful of new laptops. Just sign here, please."
 
I know why the relationship exists such that management can use new planes as a bargaining chip, but it just sounds so incredulous to me. The number of planes an airline has should have nothing to do with the pilot contracts. The airline should be purchasing the number of planes necessary to fit the business, move the number of people they need to move, and make money. The idea that the business uses the number of planes as a threat/bargaining chip would be akin to my company saying, "Hey, Steve... tell you what, you take a 10% pay cut, and we'll get 40 new laptops here [under breath: well, actually, it'll be more like 10, but 40 sounds better...]. No guarantee that you will actually GET one, or have your own computer upgraded, but yes... you give up some money, and we'll get a handful of new laptops. Just sign here, please."


I think you misunderstand the relationship between who owns the aircraft, whether they're owned or leased, and how they're moved around the system.

Here's one example: Airline Holdings leases their RJ's from Big Huge Bank, and then sub leases them to Regional A in order to have Regional A operate them. Because of this relationship, Airline Holdings is able to move these aircraft around as they see fit to various other air carriers. Further, Airline Holdings would be able to negotiate things like a return clause to Big Huge Bank so that if the aircraft become unusable, they can offload them.

This allows Airline Holdings to send out RFP's to various RJ operators, that already have that aircraft on their air carrier certificate, so that they can quickly and seamlessly move them from airline to airline, signing short, 1-3 year contracts for small numbers of aircraft with each regional airline so that they can whittle the price down on the cost of operating those RJ's.

So they're actually doing exactly what you're describing, moving them where they need to be in order to make money. But as with any subcontractor relationship, you do whatever you can to move the price point for operations down as low as possible, and you remove as many things as you can from your own balance sheet so that another airline has to deal with items that may have cost overruns. Being able to move aircraft from carrier to carrier allows you to find the lowest price that the market will bear. Once you reach that price point, you exert further downward pressure on those airlines by doing things like charging fines if certain operational metrics aren't met. Once you've bled the subcontractor for everything they're worth, and put them out of business, where you can likely do the flying cheaper at this point, because you've already set an ultra low price point as far as labor costs go with other subcontractors, and now you can expect those prices to be met by your mainline pilots.

Just remember, it's not personal, it's just business.
 
I figured that's how things went. It just seems... well, I can't say what I think it seems like, or I'll get banned. So... yeah. Good luck out there, RJ pilots. I have much empathy for you.
 
I figured that's how things went. It just seems... well, I can't say what I think it seems like, or I'll get banned. So... yeah. Good luck out there, RJ pilots. I have much empathy for you.


Ok but step out of the shoes of a pilot, is it really any different than any other business?

If you're shopping for a plumber, do you just call the most expensive guy you can find because you want to support the plumbers of the world? No, you call the cheapest guy that you think will still get the work done.

If you're doing software development, and can do it cheaper overseas, do you continue to pay U.S. wages just because you feel like you should have code that's Made In America? No, you call your buddy in New Delhi and get things done cheaper.

This ain't personal, it just happens to affect us personally. It is, in the end, business. OUR job is to fight back against this by using our collective bargaining rights in order to prevent this stuff from happening. We HAVEN'T done that, but it's been OUR dereliction of duty, not management's.
 
Ok but step out of the shoes of a pilot, is it really any different than any other business?

If you're shopping for a plumber, do you just call the most expensive guy you can find because you want to support the plumbers of the world? No, you call the cheapest guy that you think will still get the work done.

If you're doing software development, and can do it cheaper overseas, do you continue to pay U.S. wages just because you feel like you should have code that's Made In America? No, you call your buddy in New Delhi and get things done cheaper.

This ain't personal, it just happens to affect us personally. It is, in the end, business. OUR job is to fight back against this by using our collective bargaining rights in order to prevent this stuff from happening. We HAVEN'T done that, but it's been OUR dereliction of duty, not management's.


I don't know. Some folks out there (myself included) very carefully weigh the pros and cons of what I pay for services. The airline industry does not seem to do that. And... apparently, they don't need to, because pilots keep on accepting concessions over and over and over again.

Side note in response to your earlier points in your post:

While we haven't ever shopped for a plumber (coincidentally, I will be removing and old toilet and installing a new one for the very first time when I get home tonight... yay!!! :sarcasm: ), we have shopped for other services, and are currently shopping one right now. When we had our house tuckpointed (the process of removing some old mortar between bricks and replacing it with new mortar - we have a 90-year old full brick house in St. Louis), we interviewed 7 tuckpointers. We did not pick the cheapest because he was cheap. We also did not pick the most expensive because he must be charging the most for SOME reason. We evaluated each based on their merits and weighed the cost/benefit. Ended up with someone right in the middle. I envision the same thing will happen with the new bid process we are going through to strip, seal, and paint the wood around our windows.

I did stop buying furniture made in China, and almost all of the furniture we've purchased over the past 8 years has been made right here in the U.S. Did it cost more? Yep. But I know that I'll never need to replace it. In fact, it'll last far longer than I will. Probably longer than my kids will (should we have any).

The company I work for had the option to outsource all of its work overseas when they lost the guy that designed and wrote their current eCommerce platform. They weighed the cost/benefit, and decided to hire me. I wasn't the cheapest, nor the most expensive, but I was, and still am (I HOPE!) worth their investment. They've since hired on two more rockstar eCommerce developers. Their labor expenses are far higher than they would have been had they simply outsourced. But the hassle of that outsourcing, which I have been through at another company, made them make the decision to hire us. In fact, we are a dance clothing manufacturer. Know where we make most of our clothing? 20 feet away from me. 700 people on the factory floor, manufacturing clothing while earning a TRUE living wage AND benefits. Could they save BUCKETS of money by making all of our clothes overseas? Yep. But they do some of that already, and know that the hassle would not be worth it, and quality control would go to the dumps.

I know that in the case of the airlines, it is a super complex issue whose blame cannot be placed on any single issue. Deregulation, escalating and unpredictable fuel costs, consumers whose only interest is the absolute CHEAPEST way to get from point A to point B, no matter what (which drives me nuts... I would GLADLY pay for something between coach and first class... the divide between the two is ridiculous), etc. It just astounds me that pilots are expected to (and expect to) put up with such a ridiculous pile of pewp and debt load to make $25k a year. And then, several years and some notches of seniority later, if they are lucky, their regional or mainline 'of choice' doesn't get bought by another one, and they just end up on the bottom again. It's such a backwards industry and profession any more that it just makes my head spin sometimes.

I know that I am preaching to the choir. This issue gets hashed, rehashed, bitched about, panned, etc. over and over here and on other professional pilot boards. No new news. Just some personal bafflement, especially in light of the new ATP rules.
 
The wild card also is that staffing is becoming an issue, simply supply vs. demand. With the exception of SKW and Horizon, virtually all the other regional's are starting to get pretty short. Its been about a year since we started running Q400 classes and were still not fully staffed, we shouldn't even be hiring on the 145 right now but people keep flying out the door. The 170 is the only one that's decently staffed and were still seeing attrition there too. The latest statistic from the union is that the company has hired almost 300 pilots in the last six months, but the net gain on the seniority list is only about 80 pilots.

So much for bidding reserve to pick up extra days off... :(
 
I wouldn't go that far about QX...on my reserve days, I get used for every one of them. I've not been able to drop a trip for vacation in over a year and we start most bids below min coverage.
 
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