(us Air) Pilots May Aid Airline's Survival Plan

[AP Tech]

If I happened to be an employee of U I would like nothing more than to have Dave and his band of Crooks pull the airline out of its current tailspin and into profitablity! My question is how much more do you expect the employee's to give? Where do you draw the line on givebacks and say no more? Are the employee's expected to work for free?? :blink:

 

[USA320Pilot]

I have no current reason to believe this could occur, but the propsoed sixty A321s, A320s, and A319s could come from another business entity with their employees.

Moreover, US Airways has one A320 and six A319s available above the 279 fleet count that is about 11% of the total projection.

Let's not forget that David Bronner has 51% US Airways board voting power and owns aircraft at other companies.

Respectfully,

USA320Pilot

 

[AOG-N-IT]

So in your opinion...We are looking at taking on another companies assets , as well as their employee's when we have 20,000 people of our own on the street.

Sir....the term Hypoxia comes to mind.

 

[USA320Pilot]

AOG:

I did not say this was my opinion. I have talked with senior management about pilot staffing and they say they can fly 60 more aircraft with the current pilots.

However, I do not understand the math to significantly increase the current 279 aircraft flying plus add 60 A320 family aircraft in two years. Thus, I believe for this to occur there would need to be additional employees, but where will they come from to quickly add capacity and not retrain the most of the pilot group?

Regardless, according to today's Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article, "Leaders of US Airways pilots' union plan to meet here Monday and Tuesday to review the company's rocky status and decide if they should sit down with management to hear their airline rejuvenation strategy, said the union's chairman Friday.
"The meeting will be about the elected leadership of ALPA to determine whether they are interested in deeper discussions about potential opportunities," said Capt. Bill Pollock, chairman of the Air Line Pilots Association's US Airways unit." (Complete Story)

Remember, there will be one or maybe two corporate transaction(s), but it's unclear what will be the final format.

Respectfully,

USA320Pilot

 

[700UW]

The horse is dead.

 

[28yearsnojob]

:down: If you open the contracts you are dead in water.

 

[AOG-N-IT]

USA320Pilot,

Sir , You will just have to pardon me for not being as eager to accept the ramblings that take place during yet another episode of the "Cockpit Confidentials" with our upper management.

Many reasons tend to spell doom for this increase of 60 Acft taking place. First and foremost is the rule changes in your contract alone that would make this viable , with the current staffing levels. This doesn't even begin to take into account what would be asked of the other laboring groups.

Acft availabliity is but another concern. Unless we were to obtain Acft configured exactly like our current fleet is oufitted? We would in fact be digging ourselves another long term hole...for a short term splash. To say an Airbus is an Airbus...or a Boeing is a Boeing , based on exterior observances is to say the least naive...or to say it best foolish.

Many within the ranks...and the majority of the flying and lurking public have no idea
just how involved and cost restrictive "Mis-matches" become. We did afterall
persue an all Airbus Fleet in 1998 to avoid the mistakes of the previous 40 plus years via numerous mergers and short-sighted leaders making cheap purchases.

The issue of being 60 to 100% dependent on Airbus alone is a nightmare scenario ...as you pointed out , crew training will become an issue again....and a quick and easy resolve wood be to cash in on the availability of Rolls-Royce powered 757's that are in fact available....along with added A320's that fit the bill to a tee.

 

[ClueByFour]

I have no current reason to believe this could occur, but the propsoed sixty A321s, A320s, and A319s could come from another business entity with their employees.

I'm sure there are 1,879 guys who the US MEC shoud do the right thing and protect at all costs, but will probably sell short if they could get the sixty aircraft if they had to take them with pilots.

 

[Boeingguy]

http://www.despair.com/despair.html

 

[CynicalResAgent]

A company with Airbuses that makes a profit????hhmmmm???

Do the AWA Airbuses use the same engine type as ours? Could AWA buy the majority of U's assets?

 

[flyin2low]

I said it before and I'll say it again. Ever hear of TED!

 

[AOG-N-IT]

A company with Airbuses that makes a profit????hhmmmm???

Do the AWA Airbuses use the same engine type as ours? Could AWA buy the majority of U's assets?

AWA dos not use the same engine on their Airbus narrow body fleet. They use the IAE V2500...where as we use a variant of the CFM-56 much like what is on both of our B737-300/400's

UA, Jetblue, also uses the V2500 on their baby-buses...US,NW and Frontier are the only US based operators using the CFM on the Airbus at present...and a fine choice it has been for us too ! One of the few strokes of brilliance we've exercised over the past number of years.

AWA would have been a nice fit minus this one area...and of course AWA's ability to make money would have become diluted by their employee's jumping up to US payscales. Well that's managements version anyway.

AWA's B757's are in some cases identical to ours...some are in fact production run sister-ships in regards to the Ex-EAL examples that they obtained like U did.

 

[L1011Ret]

Geeze, you guys are on a ride. One week the end is near - just waiting for the doors to close. Next week trying to figure out where we could get 60 airbusses and staff to man them. From doom and gloom to euphoria. This outfit is bi-polar.

 

[AOG-N-IT]

Geeze, you guys are on a ride. One week the end is near - just waiting for the doors to close. Next week trying to figure out where we could get 60 airbusses and staff to man them. From doom and gloom to euphoria. This outfit is bi-polar.

Well at least one of us in the laboring ranks is Bi-polar...the rest seemed to be pretty well aware of what is smoke and mirrors...and what may become fact rather quickly.