williwaw

The labor negotiations for the pilot’s union is heating up. While this request for authorization is a long way from seeing an actual strike or lockout - it’s worth monitoring.

https://www.alpa.org/news-and-events/news-room/2022-04-22-alaska-airlines-pilots-strike-authorization-vote

Tack

Its about time. I was wondering why the MEC didn’t authorize a strike vote sooner. It doesn’t mean that ALPA will strike or even be allowed a work stoppage, but it does show AS management the membership numbers in support of the MEC negotiating committee. It also turns up heat on mediation and usually helps speed up the negotiations. Based on the AS internal communication to employees after the 1st Quarter earnings report, I can’t see this dragging on much longer and not hurting AS in their quest to get new hire drivers on the line. Their pilot training numbers show the schoolhouse full for the next few classes. If AS keeps screwing around, you’ll see students pull the loud handles for other carriers.

sfozrhfco

It is obvious that things are not going well with the pilots. It was less than a month ago management announced that the Airbus fleet would be retired by the end of 2023. Here we are 3 1/2 weeks later and they will now be gone by the end of 2022 or Q1 2023 at the latest---paying even higher penalties to do so. At the same time they are saying it is not worth training people on the Airbus fleet given its quick exit---which would indicate that as attrition ramps up, they won't have nearly enough people to fly those planes through 2023 and thus have to offload them sooner. For a carrier of AS's size that is a very large number of planes to get rid of in a matter of months--especially as the delivery schedule of new aircraft did not account for them having no Airbus aircraft in the fleet in 2023.

I guess that is one way to get rid of the pilot problem. Just keep shrinking.