donotblink

According to Paddle Your Own Kanoo

Concerted and expensive efforts by American Airlines to avoid another operational meltdown over what is expected to be busy Thanksgiving and Holiday travel season has been dealt a serious blow after the Allied Pilots Association (APA) rejected a bonus pay offer late on Tuesday.

The labor union which represents around 15,000 pilots at the Dallas Fort Worth-based carrier appeared to use the prospect of holiday travel chaos as a bargaining chip in a long-running dispute with American Airlines for “meaningful” permanent improvements to pilots contracts.

The 20-person APA board outright rejected the bonus offer put forward by American Airlines but the union reassured pilots that its committee had “thoroughly considered all aspects of the proposed LOA (letter of agreement) before voting 20-0 to reject it.”

Under the proposed offer, AA was offering to pay pilots 50 percent extra for working on peak days during the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year periods. Reserve pilots who agreed to work on their days off over the same peak periods would have been paid 100 percent extra.

Similar deals have already been struck with labor unions representing flight attendants and engineers.

Flight attendants will rake in 150 percent pay if they turn up as scheduled to work flights between November 23 and November 29, as well as between December 22 and January 2, 2022.

Those earnings could then be doubled to 300 percent pay if flight attendants don’t go sick between November 15 through January 2, 2022.

travelinmanS

Plenty of people who want to be pilots out there. Many with lots of hours in jets. Pilots are highly paid button pushers. I have no sympathy when they try to extract even more pay by disrupting people’s holidays.

donotblink

Yeah, people like Sully Sullenberger. Just a highly paid button pusher.

When the .... hits the fan, who do you want flying the plane? The guy who works the point of sale system at the McDonald’s drive through?

mvoight

Maybe he could have made it to Teterboro...........Seriously though, aren't professional pilots, with a lot less hours, knowledgeable enough to know what to do in case of engine failure. I just hope they are not going to have labor callouts on Nov 18. That said, does anyone have anything to say about a charter on Omni International?
The day my Celebrity Apex cruise ends in Ft Lauderdale, and that night I have a charter flight out of MIA to USH (Ushuaia, Argentina the southernmost city in the world)

757FO

What an absolutely ridiculous comment. I'd like to see you try it, especially at night in a 40kt crosswind with weather right down to minimums.

enviroian

IADCAflyer

There are uninformed comments on FT and then there are stupid comments on FT. This one falls into the latter category. It takes a good deal of skill, training, practice, and money to become a commercial pilot. I disagree with their stance here but I absolutely disagree with your viewpoint on the skillsets required to engage in the profession.

Spanish

With a freakish 100% safety record. You'd have to round off well past the decimal point to come off of that 100%.

I have a friend who flies private aviation jets and Air Force reserves jets and he's always in training of some sort. Reading, sim time, classes, etc. Missions, flying routines, aeroplane systems, more aeroplane systems, and is always looking up the weather. It's a lot of (detail oriented) work.

He also has a 2-seat PITTS biplane -- words cannot describe how much fun that little aeroplane is!

Either way, it's a career with tremendous educations required.

nachosdelux

Omni is a reliable airline with good equipment and pilots. I know several who fly there. As far as I know they are not having any labor issues, as I believe they recently got a new contract. Should be no issues, hopefully. Have a great cruise. The one you are on is on my bucket list.

Catbert10

I for one am not flying with AA over the holidays. Even if there are no weather events to trigger a scheduling meltdown like there was over Halloween, it sounds like APA may see this as an opportunity to stage a sick out or a work to rule action.

D3Kingg

At least the news source is paddle your own kanoo. For now just hold short of Lima- Golf - Bravo.

enviroian

Although I find the button pusher statement absurd that being said I don't think it's going to be operational excellence for AA over the Thanksgiving weekend. In fact I think it's going to be a nightmare.

MarkOK

I thought this was a very generous offer of AA and really lame of the pilots to reject it. Of course, I work at a university, and we have zero overtime, zero bonus pay, zero holiday pay, and even keeping everything afloat with COVID by doing tons of extra work we got zilch.

GrumpyYoungMan

I'd be upset if my employer offered OT/bonus pay but I never had the chance to accept it because wannabe politicians need to flex some muscle.

azepine00

You think this way until your employer decides to kick you out on moments notice. I am no huge fan of unuons either but there must be a reason most employees in that industry are unionized and support unions.