Lord Ratner

In short, yes, I think we'd have those things, or some other mixture of perks. You think the highly skilled employees at Amazon and Google are languishing away under harsh work conditions because they have no union? When your talent is free to leave to better compensating employers, you need to compensate better. Unions make it easy for many to do nothing and reap the benefits of the few that bust their ass negotiating, but it also traps us at a certain company, and delays improvements until the contract is up for negotiation. It's a logical fallacy to assume we only have the things we do because of a union. That doesn't mean there aren't benefits, but way too many things are attributed to unions in the airlines in my opinion. We're not grocery baggers. Our skill set is in high demand and limited in supply.

Exactly

Why would that be surprising? Like so many things, unions have outlived their utility. They were great in the era of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Now? Not so much. But I have no choice in the matter, all airlines are union, so I will do what I can to keep mine functional. I'm against socialism too, but I joined the military. The more you develop your beliefs, the harder it is to adhere to them in an imperfect world. Agreed though, this is a very good conversation.

What were some of his reasons?

Shack. I'm new to this industry, but I'm already amazed by how many pilots are almost pathologically against anything that improves the company efficiency and bottom line. Coupled with the common union belief that more union members = better, no matter what. Yeah, I'd like to do less work for more pay. But I'd also like to have this job for 32ish years without getting furloughed. Some of the old guys talk about the way it used to be as though it didn't have anything to do with the collapse of the entire industry. Yeah, PBS is good for the company. But it's also good for the pilots. Those two don't have to be mutually exclusive. I'd rather have my time off and QoL provided by simple contractual language rather than through conflicts and loopholes. Hopefully we get that in the upcoming negotiations. And before someone calls me anti-union (I am), I'm a volunteer in mine. It's the way it is, so I will do my best to support it. But unions are also why our 30-year captains can only look at Delta's profit sharing with a longing gaze instead of jump ship and reap the benefits. Everything has a cost.

Because while the 365 was the best example of the problem, it was not the actual problem. A better way of putting it might be: "I'm not willing to commit to an undetermined yet assuredly significant time away from my family, for a cause that is no longer obviously patriotic, led by people who are not concerned with minimizing that time away, compensated in a way that does not recognize dissimilar contributions, in an organization that prioritizes the bureaucratic process over the operational skill set. The 365 was just a bold, underlined version of that statement I think, but plenty of tanker pilots trapped in 2-on 2-off Qatari hell will tell you it still exists in smaller dose deployments

I stand by PBS being great. Most of the arguments against it are contractual, or just flat out misunderstandings and what PBS actually does. But at it's core, PBS offers the ability to build your dream schedule, so long as you have the seniority. You can't do that in a system where the lines are predetermined. Trading, dropping, and picking up trips to manipulate a schedule from line-bidding are contractual elements (that we also have under a PBS system) to account for the shortcomings of a line-based bidding process. PBS certainly does provide the company with the ability to more tightly manage manning, but the contract, rather than conflict bidding and other technicalities are where we should be securing our QOL protections. When I was getting out of the military a whole bunch of people kept telling me about PBS and how I should avoid it at all costs. Now looking back, I realize those people were at Southwest FedEx and UPS. I think United too before they switched over. They knew about as much as I did about it. Now that I'm here, all I do is fly with guys who were line bidders for 20 years and only recently switched over to PBS once American did. I would say about 75% or more of them prefer PBS. If you take the time, learn the system, and create a very nuanced standing bid, you don't even need to do anything month-to-month. Again, seniority allowing. There are many things at American that need to be fixed, probably even more than the other airlines right now. But PBS does not preclude those fixes from happening. And on a more mercenary note, PBS is generally a benefit to the new guys, because let's face it, the old guys as a group aren't too keen on learning new systems. That leaves a lot of opportunities for us to get sequences that we would not otherwise have the seniority to hold.

Agreed. Though the ability to select exact sequences doesn't exist in other products. I'd like to see 12ish layers. I'm not optimistic about coverage days getting fixed. Still better than line bidding

PBS is great. The only guys at AA who don't like it are mostly the same ones who refused to learn it.

That was great!

Hard to imagine anything is easier than the American interview

United has called people as far as 2 years out, then told them to give hiring a call at the 6 month point to schedule the interview

I don't see it happening. The people in America who care about the deficit don't care as much as the people who care about their welfare. The idealistic liberals don't believe that debt is a bad thing, and the career liberals know it gets them votes. The idealistic conservatives can't build a group with enough balls to do something, and the career conservatives are largely indistinguishable from their liberal counterparts. And I'll place money on the federal government buying out the ~$1.5 trillion in student debt sometime in the next 5ish years. There's no way for a significant portion of the millennial generation to pay off the $100k+ they took on as teenagers, and the economy cannot function if an entire generation can't buy new cars, houses, vacations, etc. Buckle up

Exactly. I've said it before: the globalism experiment, and it is very much still an experiment, yielded unanticipated results in the form of dispossessed workers almost 40 years after the experiments began. The positive results from the experiment (incredible profits) were immediate, and so vast we could afford to have the most progressive tax structure in the Western world. Now that we are seeing the other side of the coin, abandoning the idea that everyone, even those with low incomes should contribute to the government as a form of buy-in was a big mistake. We won't fix this passively. It's probably going to take a rather extreme event, much bigger than 9/11. And the slithery Democrats who created a massive dependant underclass out of minority communities will join the slithery Republicans who convinced the middle class that globalism was a slam dunk with no downsides, disappearing into the fog as everyone else is left to figure it out.

Marty, A few pages back you mentioned your experience with custom houses. We now know we're moving to Dallas in a year and looking to build. Your advice on the process would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Seth

Anyone have experience with a good VA rep they can point me to? I'm in Pittsburgh, but if I need to travel somewhere to sit down with someone who knows what they're doing, I will. The one I had in Columbus, OH was pants-on-head stupid, so part of my claim was denied. I'd like someone who knows what they're doing to help me with the appeal. Thanks in advance

Whining? No, it will be a full on tantrum. I'm mostly convinced the reason he picked Kavanaugh is because he wanted to save Coney-Barrett for the possibility RGB dies in the next couple years. The left will go nuclear if RGB is replaced under Trump, and the optics of the Dems yelling at a woman about abortion is exactly the type of thing that Trump exploits perfectly.

All this at least indicates that some level of leadership is convinced that there is literally no way to retain currently serving pilots. Therefore very dramatic and very immediate steps are required to replace them. They've gone from thinking there's no problem at all (under reaction) to thinking the problem is so dire it can't be undone (over reaction). I wonder if any of this will ever be attributed to their unwillingness to properly present the problem to Congress for so many years.

I guess so. I'm not sure which is crazier, this tunnel, which is clearly impossible given the water table and hurricane activity in the region, or that a bunch of educated adults who literally fly through the air on the magic of (decades-old) human innovation think that we couldn't find a way protect small airplanes from wind and water. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Miami_Tunnel

Shut up. Holes are too expensive to dig in Florida.

I retract my suggestion. The solution already exists

Ok ok ok ok. Then make it a swimming pool big enough for airplanes. Tens of millions of dollars in damage, maybe hundreds. Stronger together. We are the change we've been waiting for. Hakuna Matata.

I can't imagine how they built all those hotels in Miami Beach with this impossible feat of engineering to overcome. Besides, why pump? Wrap the jets in plastic and let it flood. This is not something we should have difficulty overcoming.

I wonder how many F22s it would have cost to dig underground plane shelters. And no scoffing. If we can land on the moon, build a missile tracking base in a mountain, and drive floating airports all over the ocean, we could have built a few big basements for planes as small as fighters in hurricane land.