Absolutely! Thanks for putting it together!

It took over an hour to drive from sbm12ville to roloville:rolleyes:
Every road that could possibly be closed , was closed :mad::mad::mad:

I did not get a yummy dinner yesterday. :(

I think everyone is missing the big picture here.
The reason for posting union items on here is to show the "other side" of the issues. Everyone here is used to getting the management slant of things. Now, you might ask "what do I care?" or "how does this affect me?". Well..it is simple...the pilot union is in negotiations with management and with recent events (USAirway Hudson landing and Colgan BUF crash) you should ask yourself: "Do I want the most motivated, happiest pilots flying me around?" Trust me...work rules, pay, union-management relatonships etc all affect how a person performs his or her job. Now..not to say that the pilots will be less professional but you "get what you pay for". A year ago some (overseas) airlines actually raised their pilot pay because they were not attracting quality candidates, they were not happy with hiring 600 hour pilots.
So before telling them to shut up or hijacking the thread with dinner comments, realize that certain actions by people that show love to you the OP elite also have a nasty side that could come back to bite someone later.

The piece comes off as a rant from the start. Combine that with the fact that most people do not think that this is the appropriate forum for union discussions and you wind up with people telling you that they had a delicious Tinga de Pollo at Luchita's last night.

First......to say in before the lock.

I find it difficult to argue against this point. :D:D:D:D:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

Go SOX!!!!!!

But the question is do you (we) want to know about these issues? Would it inspire you with confidence to know your captain is a disgruntled, unionized, bitter worker who may or may not like his first officers bracelet or stickers so could even be grumpier the whole flight?

I would say what you dont know doesnt hurt you. There are some things it is best not to know - especially if you cant do anything about them - what happens to pilots in the cockpit, in the unions and how they ae treated by management is one of them. That said i am becoming more enlightened as to how badly these airlines treat their staff. What quality, skill and dediation would we expect if all some pilots are paid to fly a commercial jet is $24,000? Still I dont like these posts.

The posts make us uncomfortable. But I actually would like to have some information relayed to us from the pilot's point of view and I do find it interesting to find out difficulties they face. But the post is really not designed for us, but designed for fellow pilots. There are references in there that I don't know etc. and comments that just aren't relevant to us (although I wonder who is going to be flying on June 10th?). And the tone and exaggerations devalue the comments. I do think that having some PR agent would help these guys. I would welcome posts that were directed to frequent flyers as frequent flyers, in a way that is not so confrontational. In general, one reason I like this forum is for the tone of civility that is generally maintained.

Maybe the OP should follow his own advice and spend more time being a Captain and less time writing a soap opera.

I dont think the OP wrote this - the authors are listed at the end.

It is shaping up to be a real nice day here in the atl. I may go out to the local range and shoot some trap.

I agree that posting union issues on FT is not the appropriate venue.

It's one thing, however, to point that out and move on, it's quite something else to post pages and pages worth of very disrespectful posts about what kind of meals you all had the other night.

After all, while you may not have any interest in the behind-the-scenes minutiae of the pilots' union, you all have an interest in having a cadre of professional, happy pilots, for the obvious reasons.

In some ways, actually, the issues described in the newsletter affect us all.

It is interesting to note that FT'ers complain ad naseaum about gate agents misprocessing upgrades (see multiple recent threads on this topic) while the pilots' newsletter makes a similar point. But here the complaint is not about a "perk" (whether or not a customer gets a free upgrade to FC) but the pilot's ability to get a jump seat so he or she can get to his or her next assignment.

The next time you're sitting around delayed because the pilot isn't there, this might perhaps be one of the reasons.

I also do not find it surprising in the least that the diminution in the pilots' status began with Bob Crandall and AA. What we're witnessing in the industry is the implementation of Crandall's view of pilots as bus drivers of the skies, not a vision for this business any passenger should feel comfortable with.

While I'm not quite sure it's accurate to extrapolate Larry Kellner's compensation from 2007, because this total is a function of many items that are driven by factors such as stock and P&L performance, it is interesting to see how much LK makes as CEO of a money-losing airline and that his compensation alone accounts for a fairly significant portion of the losses incurred by CAL.

I do have a couple of questions:

1. What was the EWR-HKG incident that Captain Fred Stankovich dug his heels in about?

2. I read the FUPM bracelet incident with besument. How many of you out there know what a FUPM bracelet is? Let's just say it stands for f*** you, pay me.

EXACTLY! Shut up and fly my D@MN plane. Maybe you could also do double duty and get me a pre-departure drink too??? :D:D:D

I wonder if that remark would seem a little less funny if the plane you were on lost both engines and your life depended on the skill of your pilot to safely land the aircraft....