Okay, so far the company STILL hasn't announced the base. We're all betting on ATL since that's what most of the rumors center on, but LAX and MCO have also been tossed around. Then again, we have a new chief pilot, everyone knows who it is, and the company STILL hasn't made an official announcement even though he's been in the office for about a month now.
Pay rates. We're not flying them for -200 rates. They won't have enough guys bidding to cover the flying (at least on the CA side) if they don't have a higher pay rate for the -900. The way the contract reads is we've got a time frame to get a pay rate negotiatied, then it goes to an arbitrator. The union is already banking on it going to arbitration since they're pretty sure the company isn't gonna give us what we want for a pay rate on it. If it DOES go to arbitration, don't look for any big breakthroughs in pay. It's gonna be going off of existing -900 flying at Mesaba, Mesa and Skywest, all of which kind slit our harmstrings on getting a big raise. In fact, most of the FOs at those carriers fly for the same rate as the -200s. Comair's rate is the same as the -700, but thanks to banruptcy, they've gotten shanked, too.
Contract negotiations were going well in March, then BANG. The company realized there were issues we weren't going to budge on, NWA took the 15 airplanes and gave them to Mesaba (which may have been the plan from the beginning), and now things have actually gone BACKWARDS. We had a side agreement on scope, then the company backpeddaled on that. So, we're back to where we started. It's still down to compensation, hours of service and a couple more. Rumor had it the company was "highly motivated" to get a contract by June 1st. Apparently, they weren't that motivated since we're still not even close to a TA. ALPA's shunted $2 million ear marked for strike prep over our way, so don't look for this to end anytime soon.
