AA/BA decision soon
- Thread starter Hopeful
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thanks for update
JFK Fleet Service
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Ya, your right. When I read this I just laugh, her name doesnt help..or maybe it does 🙂)
Your COPE dollars at work!
Last year, at a Presidents council a vote was taken as to whether or not the TWU should support the application for immunity. This was dumped on the committee suddenly,(no agenda was forwarded ahead of time) with all sorts of positives by Bobby Gless. He made it sound like it was a winning deal for us and all the other unions were in favor of it as well. I was unimpressed, I didnt know enough nor did I have the time to think about all the possible implications. I abstained from the vote because I didnt know enough to vote against it or for it, in hindsite I've learned always vote NO if you dont have enough info, if they want it passed, which they obviously did or they would not have even brought it to the committee (this way they can blame the committee later when we lose jobs), you will always get the opportunity to vote again.
The Fleet guys felt that the alliances would bring them more work, we haven't seen such a connection in maintenance. No guarantees were given, the only thing they did say is that no AA employees Overseas would lose their jobs.
When the company explained the process of revenue sharing that cemented my opposition to the plan. The company explained that whoever does the actual flying gets most of the revenue. They kept insisting that the incentive was there to do the actual flying because of that. Thats why we would probably not see job losses as a result of these alliances.
I didnt see it that way.
If AA could sell the tickets under the AA name and keep a significant portion of the revenue without providing the equipment, fuel, labor, landing fees and other expenses then that revenue would be pretty much pure profit(since all the infastructure is already in place to sell tickets on their own flights). Doing the actual flying may garner you the lions share of the revenue but it also garners you pretty much all the costs.
I see this as a job killer.
FrequentFlierCA
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So the one big airline left that hasn't offshored your jobs is suddenly going to kill a bunch of American jobs because of an immunity agreement? I don't see it.
If you have some evidence from other, previous agreements (UA/LH, NW/KL or DL/AF) I'd be curious to see it. Otherwise I see this as a growth prospect for AA into international markets, which more more work, not less, overhauling big birds.
If you have some evidence from other, previous agreements (UA/LH, NW/KL or DL/AF) I'd be curious to see it. Otherwise I see this as a growth prospect for AA into international markets, which more more work, not less, overhauling big birds.
Hopeful
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Years ago when Lufthansa partnered with United, US based Lufthansa employees in maintenance were all terminated with one years pay. United handled Lufthansa planes in the uS where they both operated.
In Europe all United employees were taken over by Lufthansa.
I could see a similar arrangement here. Possibly.
You still don't understand that the JV partners will be sharing revenues and expenses as if they were one airline on these routes, and that the profits will be divided up depending on how much flying each partner does. Just like what NW and KLM have done for more than 16 years.
You'd be right if the subject was traditional code-sharing, where AA sells tickets on other airline flights and nets as profit whatever difference there is between the price AA gets and what AA agreed to pay the other airline. Essentially, no-risk flying that risks AA becoming a "virtual airline."
What you still don't understand is that with an immunized joint venture, the parties have agreed to act as one airline (that's why they need antitrust immunity to do this) on the transatlantic routes and will share profits depending on how many seats they flew on the route, not that they sold codeshare tickets. AA, BA and IB will pool the revenue, pay the expenses and then share the profits based on how much metal each airline flew - which should provide an incentive for each airline to continue flying as many transatlantic flights as they can (and still produce a profit for the joint venture).
eolesen
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When I worked on the previous iteration of AA/BA ten years ago, each airline was keeping employees on both sides of the pond to the extent *required* under union rules (BA has unionized employees in the US), and where possible, staffing would be consolidated.
One scheme I saw had AA employees in the UK being seconded to BA (similar to what you say happened to UA employees in Europe) -- they'd still be AA employees for payroll & benefits, but would wear BA uniforms and get day to day direction from BA.
Frankly, airport staffing is such a small component of all this that it probably doesn't matter if each airline keeps their own employees or not. The real benefits are in the cross-selling of each other's flights and tapping into the local feed at their respective hubs.
Hopeful
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