Serious Discussion About The New Plan

[USA320Pilot]

usairways_vote_NO:

Your comments above are misguided. From a historical perspective ALPA has provided concessions in other forms to prevent furloughs. Does this always occur? Certainly not, but I believe furloughs will not happen to the pilot group.

However, every other work group would rather have furloughs than cuts.

The difference is that for all employee groups accept the flight attendants, active employees can offset pay cuts with furloughs.

However, that does not occur with pilots. With pilot furloughs come downgrades and displacements. This causes additional pay cuts with pilots displaced to lower paying equipment, block holder to reserve, or from Captain to First Officer.

It's clear you do not understand different work group sentiment.

The point is, if we don't look forward and figure out what will work in this marketplace, we will be saying "but" when they start selling the pieces of this airline. That isn't a pleasant thought, but it's today's reality.

In my opinion, US Airways is headed for another Chapter 11 again, regardless of what the pilots do. The question for each union is whether or not they go into it with S.1113/1114 protection and if there is no agreement with enough of the unions, will any financier provide debtor-in-possession financing?

I believe the naysayers on this board do not understand this or they are in denial helplessly searching for the "good ol' days".

They are like someone taking a multiple choice test with a choice of three answers, who insists that there is only one choice rather than three. Whatever the unions decide in the next couple months may determine whether or not this company survives.

Separately, two areas that will effect pilot manning are mandatory age 60 retirements and attrition.

Approximate Age 60 Retirements

Year Number Cumulative Total
2004 127 127
2005 146 273
2006 216 489
2007 264 753
2008 199 952
2009 248 1200
2010 199 1399
2011 272 1671
2012 277 1948
2013 320 2268
2014 305 2573
2015 311 2884

Source: ALPA R&I

January 2004 through August 2004 Pilot Attrition

US Airways had the following pilot attrition from System Bid 04-01 through System Bid 04-05:

Age 60 retirements: 50
Early retirements: 9
Medical disability: 70
Total: 129

Pilots returning to the line from medical leaves, leave of absences, military duty, ALPA work, and supervisory positions offset the attrition above. The pilot headcount on December 31, 2003 was 3,176 and on August 1, 2004 will be 3,076.

Source: US Airways Pilot 2004 System Bids

The company plans on rolling the Philadelphia hub, using different Philadelphia runway patterns, increasing aircraft block hours from 10 to 11.5 hours per day with existing crews, reducing Pittsburgh service, and adding about 180 point-to-point flights per day from key Northeast airports in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington.

The productivity gained from going from a 85 to 96-hour pay cap will not permit the current pilots to fly the 279 fleet 11.5 hours per day. In addition, the company wants to expand the mainline fleet to 320 aircraft, which will require more pilots.

Could furloughs occur? Absolutely, the the information to date suggests that will not occur.

Respectfully,

USA320Pilot

P.S. By the way, I do not have time to read every post, but I received an email that said you posted PM message in a public forum. In my opinion, that is abuse of a private message and unprofessional, therefore, since you broke my trust by posting my private message to you, I will no longer respond to you via the PM forum because of your lack of decorum.

 

[700UW]

blah blah blah,

The horse has been beaten to death, post something new.

 

[Rico]

No, post something exactly like that, hard numbers that mean something. Thanks for the information A320...

 

[mweiss]

Like how about an explanation for why RASM dropped so substantially?

One thing I noticed was a decrease in yield, which was the largest decrease of all legacies. AS was the only other "network" carrier with an appreciable yield decrease.

As a side note, AS's yield decrease corresponds to their shift to simplified pricing. Remember how I said before that nobody got more than 9c RASM that way? AS broke the 9c barrier, but not by much. They're at 9.75, the lowest of all network carriers, though still higher than all LCCs. Regardless, it appears, based on comparisons to other network carriers, that the simplified pricing costs about 0.5c in RASM. Granted, this is only one data point, so it's hard to call that a firm rule...

In any case, since US's yield decreased by a little, and RASM decreased by a lot, it appears that not only did yield drop, but so did load factor. That's not supposed to be a result of rational pricing. So what's going wrong?

 

[usairways_vote_NO]

usairways_vote_NO:


Respectfully,

USA320Pilot

Hold on now you told me never read my posts USA320Pilot or is it you read them and choose to reply when you want to? Even choose what ones to reply to when you ask for a debate?

I PMed you and your reponse was in direct in direction conflict with you posted in this forum, therefore I posted my PM and yours in unedited form in this forum to prove what a liar you are. You know as well as anyone does do not PM anything you wouldn't wanted repeated in a public forum.

I am sorry you lost your trust in me but you lost my trust long ago and you will never earn my respect.

No worries my one and only PM to you served its purpose to expose you for what you really are and you did a fine job.

USA320Pilot says:
They are like someone taking a multiple choice test with a choice of three answers, who insists that there is only one choice rather than three.

I say: I don't know where you take your tests but the tests I take with multiple choice questions only have one correct answer so it wouldn't be normal to insist on one choice if he knew the answer.

Thank you

 

[diogenes]

Sane Reasons for a No Vote

1. The company hasn't fixed the other problems. dave himself said there were still 2 cents in non-labor costs to wring out of the CASM's. This should have been done during BK - why should labor help them out until it IS done?

2. Management has not leveled with the employees. For instance, why are the costs of operating the affiliates (landing fees, baggage delivery, employee services, etc) not allocated to those carriers, so that mainline would know what it's true costs are? Employee believe it is to make mainline costs higher than they actually are, to justify paycuts.

3. And the number one reason is......

if you are unwilling to work for the new, lower wages and bennies, why would you vote yes?

 

[BoeingBoy]

diogenes,

"dave himself said there were still 2 cents in non-labor costs to wring out of the CASM's."

I mentioned it in passing in another thread, but here is what the company is now saying in answer to ALPA's questions:

"The company's CASM (excluding fuel) in 2006-2007 will be approximately 2.1 cents lower than it is today if the Transformation Plan can be enacted."

Jim

 

[mweiss]

It's worth noting that if the 2.1c were wrung out in Q1 2004, the airline would have broken even from an operations perspective.

It's still not good enough, since there are plenty of non-op costs that can't be cut, such as debt service. There has to be more cut somewhere to survive.

 

[BoeingBoy]

mweiss,

The secret is not to necessarily cut other costs (though there are places to cut) but to spread the costs over more ASM's.

USA320Pilot frequently mentions increasing a/c utilization 15% (from just over 10 hours/day to 11.8). Just rough math (assuming a 15% increase in ASM's with 1/2 the cost per ASM for the extra) shows that the extra utilization reduces CASM by approximately 1 cent.

That's why I said in another thread that we "must" increase mainline ASM's to have a chance of surviving. The old axiom that "you can't shrink to profitability" is pretty true. Shrinking reduces ASM's faster than costs (because of the costs that can't be reduced, as you mentioned), while growth adds ASM's faster than costs.

Jim

 

[mweiss]

Jim, I think you and many others around these parts misunderstand what I mean when I say "cut costs." I'm talking unit costs, since ultimately US and every other airline sells units. Naturally, this can be accomplished a number of different ways:

• Cut variable costs
• Eliminate unnecessary fixed costs
• Amortize fixed costs over more units

The third approach requires, as you noted, increased production. It's a good approach, provided the demand exists to absorb the additional supply at a cost-effective rate.

My sense is there's a great deal of room to be cut in variable costs, but I think the 2.1c in the Transformation Plan covers most of it. I don't know how much unnecessary fixed cost exists in the US system...clearly the number of gates US has in PIT as a focus city is excessive, so that'd be one area to examine. Ditto BOS.

As for the increased amortization, I would expect US to take a page from B6's book...those transcon redeyes generate revenue. The only reasons an airplane should be on the ground are:

• Taxiing
• Unloading pax
• Loading pax
• Weather ground stops
• Maintenance
• Insufficient demand to cover the cost of fuel, staffing, and wear
• A small amount of slack to prevent irregular ops from carrying over into multiple days

If it's not on that list, the airplane had better have the wheels up. No excuses.

I'm really curious to know how much CASM could be eliminated there.

 

[ErinSaoirseOBX]

I'm glad everyone knows a res agent's job so well that they can just wave a wand and reduce call handling time. Has anyone stopped to consider, oh, "little things" such as weather delays, cancellations and schedule changes? I want to see someone explain to an irate customer that there is no crew for their flight (which just happens to be the last flight of the night) because they used up all their flying time for the month, in 3 minutes. And what happens when the 3 minutes are up? Do we disconnect them? Make them call again after they have already been on hold for 20 minutes? What happened to customer service? Or is that as ancient as the Etruscans?

Our customers don't trust the internet. If they did, there wouldn't be so many calls regarding internet bookings. Customers don't make reservations for a living. We do. They want a human being to talk to, not a machine.

But since we are all for saving time and money, how about making the flight attendants do the beverage service for a full 333 in under 15 minutes? Mechanics could do an engine overhaul in an hour or so (hey, Jiffy Lube can have you in and out in 10 minutes, so why can't we speed things up?) Or maybe instead of jetways, we can reconfigure the plane so at the end of each flight we simply push a button and drop the passengers to the tarmac?

Time may be money, but our customers are our livelihood. And all the time saving measures in the world aren't going to help if we don't have customers. Happy, satisfied customers deserve our attention. Even if it does take over 3 minutes.

 

[BoeingBoy]

mweiss,

Got it now - I generally try to not use "cost" and "unit cost" interchangably but see what you mean. And you've cited the ways to cut unit cost pretty accurately.

Jim

 

[Smartest Loser]

What concerns me is that, I have NOT seen any major re-investment back into the corporation. This is a very bad sign…!!

Oddly, when you need to find 250 million it’s there. Now, something doesn’t add up.

 

[NeedForSpeedNFS]

blah blah blah,

The horse has been beaten to death, post some

700, I realize through reading through these threads that you obviously disagree with 320 pilot on most of his posts. You and I have had some go-arounds. Many posters have had disagreements. Thats a good thing ,though. This is the purpose of these threads. Everyone expressing his/her opinion. But I must tell you, although I do agree with you that 320 may repeat alot, I think his thoughts and insight are very informative. You obviously are very attuned to what is going on, and a lot of the info you post is greatly appreciated. I realize how much your involved, and thats great!! BUT....I feel the same about 320. He obviously has a sound insight into what this company is GOING to turn into, for example, he has been mentioning the "transformation plan" for a good bit now. 6/17, in Pit, there is meetings for all management at the PIT Hyatt Regency....to "explain" to all supervisors and managers, all aspects of the "transformation plan". You know, so they will be better able to "explain" it to all us people that don't know anything about what is needed to "save" this company!!! All i'm trying to say, is I feel he gives a lot of good insight as to what is going on, as you do also. Thanks for letting me ramble on!!!!!!GOOD DAY!!!.......MORE LATER!!

 

[NeedForSpeedNFS]

No, post something exactly like that, hard numbers that mean something. Thanks for the information A320...

Ditto!!