Charter airline Champion Air going out of business

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SkiHigh2002 said:
I can't believe you guys sometimes. You hope Skybus is the next to go?
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Yep. And then VA would be nice, too.

Regardless of what you think of the company and the politics involved those are fellow pilots
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They certainly aren't my "fellow pilots." They aren't professionals, and they deserve no respect.

Another good ALPA carrier goes? As if Champion had been non-ALPA it'd be good riddance? Give me a break.
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No, only if it was a non-union carrier.
 
You still cannot tell me that you hope someone looses his/her job just because it is non-union. If you truly think that then you are more selfish than I could ever be. People like the one's on this forum are the reason I am totally turned off by pro-union propaganda that is spouted by ALPA and their ilk.
 
Then, by all means, go work for a non-Union carrier. Then the first time you stub your toe out on the line, have fun defending yourself with no support of any kind.

Good luck, Champ.
 
SkiHigh2002 said:
You still cannot tell me that you hope someone looses his/her job just because it is non-union.
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Yep, that's what I'm telling you. Anyone who takes a non-union job in a union industry doesn't deserve to be employed. They are undercutting the rest of us and not contributing to our profession. It's unacceptable.

If you truly think that then you are more selfish than I could ever be.
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Protecting a proud profession is not "selfish." SCABbing is selfish. Going to work for a non-union company that undercuts real professional pilots is selfish.
 
PCL_128 said:
Yep, that's what I'm telling you. Anyone who takes a non-union job in a union industry doesn't deserve to be employed. They are undercutting the rest of us and not contributing to our profession. It's unacceptable.
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So Seggy is included in this?
Also anyone who has ever started at an airline when the doors opened.
 
Velocipede said:
Good luck, Champ.
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Thanks, Dad. I'll enjoy my airline job at an ALPA carrier and the representation that offers me. However, I'm not going to dance in the streets when another person, much less a pilot, looses a job. These are real people. Not some pawn in your game of Union chess.

Sad to see Champion go--not because it is an ALPA carrier. I am sad to see those workers (pilots and all) on the street looking for employment in an economy that is quite unhealthy.

I'm also sad to see one less passenger carrier flying the 727. Damn, she's a beautiful airplane.
 
I had a feeling that something like this was up. I was calling charter companies a few weeks ago for an 80 pax trip to Latin America in 2009 and CMP was the only company that said "I'm sorry, we can't give you a quote for anything that far in advance".

Sad, I loved their paint scheme, and they seemed like a reputable operation.
 
mikecweb said:
So Seggy is included in this?
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You can't compare regionals to mainline carriers. Pilots that go to work for regionals usually don't know about ALPA, unions, contract negotiations, etc... Pilots that go to work for mainline carriers like Skybus and VA are experienced pilots that should know better. They make a conscious decision to work for an undercutter. Big difference.
 
What is the Union fight with Jetblue pilots? According to APC pay scales, Jetblue A320 rates are higher than US Air, United, Northwest, and USA 3000
The only other airlines that I could find that operate the A320 for a better rate is air canada* Frontier

Virgin Pay scale only goes to year 6. Is that the top of the scale, or will it be further developed when in fact they actually have a +6 year employee, if the airline even makes it that far?
 
The JetBlue Airbus rates are subsidized by the horribly low Embraer rates, with the EMBs making up almost a quarter of the fleet now. But it's not really about the rates. This is a union industry. If you want to be an air line pilot, you need to be in a union. You need to be contributing to the profession. The isolationist "go it alone" idea harms all of us, no matter what your pay rates are. I wouldn't care if they paid $300/hr for the EMBs, it would still be unacceptable to be non-union.
 
The Union fight with JetBlue probably has a lot to do with ALPA wanting the Union dues from those pilots and being upset because they aren't getting it.
 
Who-hoo, another union argue-fest. Just what we need. <-:sarcasm:

A bunch of guys just lost their jobs with a days notice, save that crap for another thread.

Best of lick to all the Champion employees in whatever their future endeavors may be.
 
It seems that the alpa guys always bring up the same argument on every thread. Let us compare fed-ex pay rates to champion pay rates on the same aircraft. Who is under-cutting the others?...not to mention the 74 drivers who fly for well below industry standard wages.
We live in a world of "cut operating costs" to sustain an airline. If we battle eachother, managment wins. Lot of alpa guys out there making sub-par wages too. And a lot of other non-union places with happy pilots.
I'm not saying that I am against unions, but, I sometimes wonder about the motives of the people on this forum who are pro-union when some of the union carriers out there are doing the same stuff..
People talk a lot of crap about mesa,pcl, and go-jets, but, when a thread pops up about street Cpts at mesa, there seems to be a lot of interest.
I wonder what the union guys will do when the "no-pilot-airplane" enters the market. If current union pilots react the same way that they do to pay decreases nowadays, what will become of you when that situation presents itself in the future?...:o
 
OldTownPilot said:
Who-hoo, another union argue-fest. Just what we need. <-:sarcasm:

A bunch of guys just lost their jobs with a days notice, save that crap for another thread.

Best of lick to all the Champion employees in whatever their future endeavors may be.
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not that it makes it any better, but it was a 2 month notice it appears:

Champion Air, a Bloomington-based charter carrier, announced early this afternoon that it will go out of business on May 31.
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I wondered what was up as all recent job ads for Champion Air have had the tag "temporary position".....

I was [this close ] to taking a job with them last year.
 
PCL_128 said:
This frickin' sucks. Another good ALPA pilot group out on the streets. :(
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Now, I do not like seeing any pilots out on the street, but they weren't exactly the darlings of the industry. Terrible pay and terrible work rules. Their ALPA-negotiated contract was actually worse than non-union JetBlue. Their pay rates are actually a LOT worse than Virgin America (I know nothing about VA work rules, so no comment there). I prefer not to discuss SkyBus.

http://airlinepilotcentral.com/airlines/charter/champion_air.html
 
You're comparing apples to peanuts. Champion wasn't a scheduled passenger operation, they were a niche charter operation. You shouldn't compare them to scheduled passenger operations, you should compare them to other charter operators. When looked at compared to their true peers such as Miami Air and Ryan, they were right in the standard.
 
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