Pdt And Alg Pilots Fight Back

[WOpropTrash]

It seems that a group of pilots at Piedmont and Allegheny, who think ALPA has put the interest of mainline pilots above that of the wholley-owneds, are now more organized in the quest for fair representation.

http://www.pilots4fair.freeservers.com

 

[BoredToDeath]

It seems that a group of pilots at Piedmont and Allegheny, who think ALPA has put the interest of mainline pilots above that of the wholley-owneds, are now more organized in the quest for fair representation.

http://www.pilots4fair.freeservers.com

I see theres a place for PDT to send contributions to and a place for ALG to send contributions to, but what about a place for PSA pilots to send a contribution to? Just because we're getting jets doesn't mean it was fairly done. I think its only right to include your fellow brothers and sisters in the fight. Or at least ask if we want to.

 

[xoxo]

hello...I am a former Allegheny F/A..now I am furloughed from U...but, while I was at Allegheny we were all waiting to get those RJ's then...and now PSA is getting them...My Question is..Do you think that eventually Alle and Peid.. will get RJ's? Just curious. I think that the wholy owns should have those 70 seat ac that U is getting for the MidAtlantic thing. Why start another commuter thing when you own 3 commuter airlines that are profitable? What is Dave thinking?????? :down:

 

[USAirBoyA330]

xoxo:

MidAtlantic is a division of mainline and is reserved solely for furloughed mainline employees. It was specifically made that way in our contracts to "offer jobs" to F/A's and Pilots that are currently out of work. Sorry that the express division was overlooked but it was the only fair way to ensure seniority rights for these displaced mainline people. I don't think you would like furloughed mainline F/A's & Pilots coming over to Allegany,PSA or PI and inserting our seniority and flying those regional jets while your still flying a DASH 8. It was made this way to cause as little friction as possible. Hopefully you guys might get some of the 50 seat jets but, the 70/75 seat EMB will be painted mainline and will be certified as a mainline aircraft.

 

[exagony]

What about all of the WO pilots that have much more senority then the ML pilots who have been furloughed? Why should they get screwed?

 

[xoxo]

USAIRBOYA330....

I said...."I am a "former" Allegheny f/a....now furloughed at U since may 2003...I was just wondering why Allegheny did not have RJ's yet. I will be one of the f/a offered the job at MidAtlantic....for chicken feed I might add......Less then what I left Allegheny at....and I was there for 3 years and at U for 3 years also....so I will be back at square one. I really just was asking because I did not understand the whole reason why we are starting MidAtlantic......Now....you are the first person that has ever said it is only being started to give us furloughed people jobs. If that is the case I would rather start on a Dash 8 at 2$ more an hour than I will be payed at MidAtlantic. Do you know how much the F/A will be making at MAA? I will start at 18 and some change....but those junior to me will be offered from 13 to 17.....The wholly owns start more than that. That to me and all the other furloughed f/a is a slap in the face. I am sure you will not find one furloughed f/a who will argue that.

 

[USAirBoyA330]

I understood your post. And yes, MAA was started to "offset" job losses at mainline. Your totally right!...the pay is beyond substandard and the work rules are draconian. I have 5 years and will get slotted into MAA where I started out at 5 years ago! My friend was furloughed from mainline in 2001 and is now at PI. I told him if he goes to MAA he is insane because he makes more at PI than he will 4 years at MAA. Might as well stay at PI and wait for recall to mainline making a little more money.

 

[ONTHESTREET]

What about all of the WO pilots that have much more senority then the ML pilots who have been furloughed? Why should they get screwed?

Please clarify your post....more senority on what?

If you want W/O senority to directly compare to mainline senority then I am sure that can be arranged, Just go ahead and add me to the top of your list since I will surly demand my original W/O hire date, which by now is senior to 95% of the total W/O list.

You see it is a double edged sword. Another option that would seem to accomodate your sense of senority would be to go that route and use DOH at your first ALPA carrier.....in which case the W/O pilots still end up junior to 95 % of the mainline furloughed. Although you would gain some ground here since many of the furloughed are military pilots and this is their first ALPA job.

I am not advocating displacing any W/O pilots by any means but your argument that you should have total senority rights over the pilots whose routes you are now flying in an RJ does not hold up.

Most of your senior Captains at the W/O's were our first officers at one time. And you can live in the fantasy world that states that your RJ's are not flying our old routes all you want but we all know (even you) that these RJ's are direct replacements for those 150 or so 737's, F100's and MD-80's now parked in the desert.

If this were a fair and balanced world you would have gotten a 1 for 1 replacement jet for your dash -8's and Dorniers, and we would have kept ALL of our mainline routes with the remaining RJ's. I mean come on guys....U's routes keep on shrinking but some how PSA now has 85 RJ's worth of NEW routes that were NEVER flown by mainline (You know the ones your mad at because we are taking YOUR seats!) The math does not add up.

Or hey how about YOUR routes being taken by MESA......ahhhh yes, but of course that is different because now you are the ones getting boned!


It is a messy situation. But I am all for the Nationwide ALPA senority if you want to go that way. The other option is to totally scrap the senority system nationwide and go the normal business route, the best attitude and most experienced get to be Captain........I will go for that too if you want to go that way, but just on the experience catagory alone the W/O's will lose most of their seats to those mean old mainline guys.

I know the W/O's have a few people with 10 to 20 years experience at the top of their senority lists, however the rest of the list is comprised mostly of 1 to 5 years of flying experience. The most Junior pilot on the mainline list probably has 15 years of flying professionally or if not, it was because he/she was getting shot at over IRAQ and didn't have time to be a commuter Captain.

Fire away!

 

[BoredToDeath]

Please clarify your post....more senority on what?

If you want W/O senority to directly compare to mainline senority then I am sure that can be arranged, Just go ahead and add me to the top of your list since I will surly demand my original W/O hire date, which by now is senior to 95% of the total W/O list.

You see it is a double edged sword. Another option that would seem to accomodate your sense of senority would be to go that route and use DOH at your first ALPA carrier.....in which case the W/O pilots still end up junior to 95 % of the mainline furloughed. Although you would gain some ground here since many of the furloughed are military pilots and this is their first ALPA job.

I am not advocating displacing any W/O pilots by any means but your argument that you should have total senority rights over the pilots whose routes you are now flying in an RJ does not hold up.

Most of your senior Captains at the W/O's were our first officers at one time. And you can live in the fantasy world that states that your RJ's are not flying our old routes all you want but we all know (even you) that these RJ's are direct replacements for those 150 or so 737's, F100's and MD-80's now parked in the desert.

If this were a fair and balanced world you would have gotten a 1 for 1 replacement jet for your dash -8's and Dorniers, and we would have kept ALL of our mainline routes with the remaining RJ's. I mean come on guys....U's routes keep on shrinking but some how PSA now has 85 RJ's worth of NEW routes that were NEVER flown by mainline (You know the ones your mad at because we are taking YOUR seats!) The math does not add up.

Or hey how about YOUR routes being taken by MESA......ahhhh yes, but of course that is different because now you are the ones getting boned!


It is a messy situation. But I am all for the Nationwide ALPA senority if you want to go that way. The other option is to totally scrap the senority system nationwide and go the normal business route, the best attitude and most experienced get to be Captain........I will go for that too if you want to go that way, but just on the experience catagory alone the W/O's will lose most of their seats to those mean old mainline guys.

I know the W/O's have a few people with 10 to 20 years experience at the top of their senority lists, however the rest of the list is comprised mostly of 1 to 5 years of flying experience. The most Junior pilot on the mainline list probably has 15 years of flying professionally or if not, it was because he/she was getting shot at over IRAQ and didn't have time to be a commuter Captain.

Fire away!

I am not advocating displacing any W/O pilots by any means

By taking a Jets4Jobs position at any WO, you are in fact advocating that very thing. What gives you the right to hold a Captain position at my company?

 

[BoredToDeath]

I am not advocating displacing any W/O pilots by any means

By taking a Jets4Jobs position at any WO, you are in fact advocating that very thing. What gives you the right to hold a Captain position at my company above those already on our seniority list?

but your argument that you should have total senority rights over the pilots whose routes you are now flying in an RJ does not hold up.

I'll tell ya what doesn't hold up sunshine, the fact that mainline was able cr@p all over our seniority rights by giving you people Captain positions on our property.

Just because mainline jets aren't making money from PIT to CRW and the company decides to actually catch up with the rest of the industry, now you think your entiled to ruin the monetary posibilities of pilots on another seniority list?

Let me ask you this. What about if all of the flying that the WO's do was turned into mainline flying and we were all gonna be furloughed, would you give us Captian positions at mainline. After all, you would be taking our flying. Don't bother answering, I already know what your gonna say. See the thing is you mainline folks never seemed to grasp the concept that the Mainline is a WO too! And the flying is just as much ours as it is yours. You may have been a WO pilot in the past, but it sure sounds like you've changed your colors.

And you can live in the fantasy world that states that your RJ's are not flying our old routes all you want but we all know (even you) that these RJ's are direct replacements for those 150 or so 737's, F100's and MD-80's now parked in the desert.

Replacement or not your group should have fought for One List a long time ago and you would not have found yourselves in this position. If the flying turns Express, then it turns Express, oh well. Like I said earlier its just as much ours as it is yours. You would not hear us complaining one bit if some of the flying we did turned into mainline flying, that would mean the opportunity for advancement and the flying would be kept in house, but your group droped the ball on that one too.

I mean come on guys....U's routes keep on shrinking but some how PSA now has 85 RJ's worth of NEW routes that were NEVER flown by mainline (You know the ones your mad at because we are taking YOUR seats!) The math does not add up.

Mainlines routes are shrinking because this mgt has no idea how to grow an airline. And where oh where are these 85 new routes. Do you just make this up as you go along? I've been flying the same routes for years. Long before mainline was furloughing. Once in blue moon we go to a new city and then its usually given back to PDT or ALG. The three WO's have been interchanging routes for years and sometimes a mainline jet is there and sometimes it's not. What fault of ours is that? Remmember mainline is a WO'd too! And what math are you trying to add up? PSA is getting 60 jets, all of which should have been here years ago instead of the contract carriers, but guess who we have to thank for that.

Now to top things off we have to give you 30 of those jets because for some unknown reason your more important than us! BS I for one would have had no proplem with some sort of preferential hiring or even that flow through thing that your group shot down years ago. Ohhh.... But not you, you people want to come here and get the whole nine yards. And so now I think the time to sue ALPA has never been better. By allowing jets4jobs to happen they have said that one group of pilots is better than the other and left themselves open to a world of trouble.

Or hey how about YOUR routes being taken by MESA......ahhhh yes, but of course that is different because now you are the ones getting boned!

Guess what, if its not done by the US Airways Group, we all get boned. Yes even mainline too. Most WO'd pilots don't care where it goes, so long as it stays within the Group.

It is a messy situation. But I am all for the Nationwide ALPA senority if you want to go that way. The other option is to totally scrap the senority system nationwide and go the normal business route, the best attitude and most experienced get to be Captain........I will go for that too if you want to go that way, but just on the experience catagory alone the W/O's will lose most of their seats to those mean old mainline guys.

Personaly, I would rather see One List within the US Airways Group, meaning Mainline, ALG, PDT and PSA under one seniority list doing all the US Airways and US Airways Express Flying. This would be the best thing for us all. Whether it be DOH or a Staple it does'nt matter, all that matters is that we work together instead of against eachother.

however the rest of the list is comprised mostly of 1 to 5 years of flying experience

This would be an extreamly incorrect statement.

MidAtlantic is a division of mainline and is reserved solely for furloughed mainline employees

You need to inform yourself a little better with the LOAs that deal with the staffing of MDA. Your statement is false.

 

[SilentWarrior]

70/75 seat EMB will be painted mainline and will be certified as a mainline aircraft.

Sounds like Express too me :blink:

 

[ONTHESTREET]

Bored,

Don't get too ruffled, You and i probably sat in the crew room and discussed this very issue not many years back. I too beleive that U group should be on one list, but that contrary to popular opinion was not my call. As to getting W/O preferential hiring we did do that (Discussed at length several months ago) but before it did you any good the United merger came up and hiring froze. We (mainline) voted for and pushed to have all the jets go to the W/O's. This was back in the "We need 140 jets" days of Gangwal. I probably still have the ALPA stuff from that lining my junkdrawer. U MEC told them that 140 jets would be fine as long as ALL went to W/O or Mainline. The Wolfster did not want that (Too much money) so the interum (Read permanant in wolfanese) rj agreement for 70 jets went into effect.......all to contract carriers. I know this is probably all news to you as our MEC has never done a good job communicating, even to us.

As to your statement that 1 to 5 is not accurate, I submit that at a carrier that I think you know well, by the time I left one year Captains were the norm and 800 to 1200 hour F/O's made up most of the new hires. This was a little under 4 years ago and most of the bottom half of blockholding Captains were under 3 years with the Company so I stand by the statement of "Most" of the list is 1 to 5 years.

Not to worry I am not taking a J4J position, It would be a horribly large paycut for me to accept a Captain position with a W/O. Hope this belays your fears of having me back.

As to the sunshine comment, thank you, my crews always did have fun on trips

OK so it is 60 Jets at PSA, That is double PSA's traditional size fleet of 30 (give or take 5 depending on the year.) And yes it came directly from the 73's old routes. Not a problem except for the 1852 on furlough. We dont want your seats, we just want ours back. Our guys would gladly fly the RJ's on mainline and include all W/O's on the list also. Management will never let this happen as long as they can pay you and the contract carriers less than a King Air C90 pilot makes.

You have a point about the old head MEC screwing the W/O's. Change was in the works before hiring shut it down. The junior guys were very active in ALPA and VERY vocal concerning the feeders (Lot of us came from w/o's of some brand AA,US,Cont. etc.) You would probably be in a shiny jet with a flow thru if things had not turned ugly. Those old guys are in their last 5 or so years and the newbies (us) will be the MEC very shortly if this T*%D manages to survive.

The preferential hiring clause for the W/O's is still in the contract by the way. That was not the old guys doing, that was the J4J guy sitting next to you that got that added. I know, you probably never heard of this one either, but nevertheless it is in there. Included in the interum jet side letter I believe, and as far as I can tell it was not altered by our shafting....err I mean restructering agreement.

So my point of this whole mess is to agree with Piney bob. The mainline guys (Junior) were not out to screw you, we were you and we did not forget. However managment is a master at pitting you against us. As far as the J4J junk, we had two choices, 1852 sit and rot until recall or try to get 50% of your (PSA's) 100% growth. You will not lose a single job at PSA. All you will lose is 50% of the Captain seats for a time. When recall comes due to the age 60 rule it will be fast and furious, we have a ton going out in the next 5 years. So the result is that you will reap the benefit of doubling your airlines size almost overnight and experiencing seniority movement that you never had a chance at when you were hired at PSA. Traditionally PSA had 350 to 400 pilots for 30 birds, so 800 on your list is coming. At the time you were hired 60 grand and Captain on a 328.. (or Brazilia if your a 10 year guy) was all you could expect, and the best you can do is #### because some poor slob is trying to feed his kids on welfare payrates until this mess gets turned around.

Like it or not, those J4J guys are the MEC 5 or so years down the road. Last time they tried to change things and help you out........they did not forget, nor will they forget the help they had during furlough....or lack of.

For what it is worth, any W/O is an abomination, Comair, PSA, PDT, ALG whatever. It is designed to do exactly what it does, created a sub class of pilot. I always said at the W/O and ML that all pilots that wear the uniform of the parent company need to be on the same list as the parent company. Maybe someday.


Oh and the MDA statement that you quoted was not mine, I will beleive MDA when I see it..........

 

[Light Years]

Just to reply to some of the flight attendant issues regarding the wholly-owneds....

I agree with xoxo. I am also a furloughed mainline US Airways flight attendant who has also previously worked for an Express/regional/commuter whatever you want to call it. Our management wants to bring on jets that have 70+ seats- planes that ten years ago were mainline planes. They are offering these positions to furloughed mainline FAs at lower pay than most "commuters" that operate 30 and 50 seat aircraft, including our wholly-owneds. This is, again, a slap in the face.

Another slap in the face is our wholly-owneds, exclusive, company owned employees whose paycheck comes from the same place- being replaced by cheaper, less quality airines that go wherever the $ is and have no vested interest in the company's success. Management would rather farm out this work just like maintenance because its cheaper than doing it in house, and if they had thier way Mesa would have a broken 330 in PHL delaying the Paris flight.

So now we have this MidAtlantic farce. Fortunately mgmt has been forced to keep those 170s in-house. So they want to spend the time. money, and recources to start a new airline. Why? TO KEEP THINGS SEPERATE!!!!! Divide and conquer!!!

I've talked to mainline flight attendants who think US Airways Express is one big airline. I've talked to some who have NO IDEA what MDA or an Embrear 170 is, or that we now consider two class, two cabin crew, 80 seat aircraft that can serve most of the nation to be "Express" (even if it doesnt say it on the side). This is how they want it--- divided labour groups, and even divided WORK groups. This is why the WOs are seperate, and this is why MDA is not a division of mainline- leaving Express off of the fuselase doesnt make it a division. It has seperate management, facilities etc... mainline flight attendants will now find themselves employees of a different company all together.

In regards to placing the EMBS at the wholly-owneds. USAirBoy330 pointed out that its not fair for us to take away thier jobs in a J4J type scenario- and hes right, its not. But these are hundreds of aircraft Group has on order, EMBs and CRJs. The current wholly owned FA group would not be able to accomodate these aircraft as is--- in fact I know for a fact PSA and Allegheny are both hiring. It would be possible to place the jets there in either a fenced agreement or on a stapled seniority list without further job loss. Later, they could be merged and there would be two divisions and contracts, long haul and short haul. In return, flow thru should be offered to WO FAs if all former MLers return to the ML. Keep it in the family, and "promote" those who have put in time in the smaller "BlueShamus", providing quality, safe service to our customers. Get rid of the contract carriers. This is OUR work, none of us should be on the street.

The industry has changed. We dont send DC9s, F100s, 737s to every little village anymore. We have smaller jets that can not only serve Bumble, PA but can criss cross the country (anyone looked at some of the latest Continental Express routes?) Our management is taking advantages of 1970s/80s industry mindsets at ALL of our expenses. Its time to take back the airline- it may be cheaper to have 15 different companies dress up as US Airways, but having a single, proud group of employees working toward a common goal, rather than against each other, I guarantee you, will generate more revenue than you can imagine through the consistent and quality product offered.

Wow, that was a rant. xoxo, I think we both feel the same way as do many other furloughed FAs with an interest in returning.

 

[Furloughedagain]

Onthestreet said, "You have a point about the old head MEC screwing the W/O's. Change was in the works before hiring shut it down. The junior guys were very active in ALPA and VERY vocal concerning the feeders "

The ol' PIT captain rep John Davis once asked me if I only went to the union meetings for the free food. Nice huh? :huh:

I'm very pleased that somebody out there realizes that we were not just trying to be a bunch of loudmouth jerks by going to those meetings and trying to change the status quo -- we were trying to do what was right and, hopefully, at the same time provide better job security for everyone.

Sure we may not always have chosen the right direction, the best methods, or the best political allies. But we tried. We tried to bring together over one-thousand junior pilots and get them involved in an issue that directly impacted their careers.

We may have failed in that attempt but at least somebody remembers that we were there and we gave it our best shot.

Thanks Onthestreet.

 

[ONTHESTREET]

Furloughedagain,

Yea I remember the union guys used to hate to get cornered by a bunch of us junior pukes in the crew room....too many questions that they did not have answers to!

If U survives maybe we can get something done next time.........see ya in 2008.............maybe