Atlas Air preparing to Strike

[Beaver Driver]

747400CA

I can answer some of those questions

--Did not the STN-based pilots each have an individual employment contracts not with Atlas but with the wholly-owned subsidiary company?

True but they are flying ATLAS aircraft and Atlas generated freight as AACS has no aircraft, contracts, or even sales department of it's own.

- With no union representation at the STN base and no provisions in their individual contracts to withhold their services in support of their 'mainline' cousins, would not the STN pilots who did support the strike likely forfeit their jobs with no hope of going back to work?

Also most likey true. However, they were all told numerous times that this was likely to happen. Now that they have put themselves in this situation they must make the decision.


- Would the 'mainline' pilots protect those AACS pilots who stayed out in sympathy by refraining from a 'back to work' agreement ending the strike until the AACS jobs were restored (as the UAL pilots did for the '570' pre-hires in the mid-eighties)?

Of course.


I further asked if their was sufficient excess capacity at Polar to generate a revenue stream that would see the company through an extended strike, to which the group responded "the Polar guys won't screw us".

Polar guys won't screw us if they know they are flying Atlas generated freight or using an Atlas call sign. In any case there is not currently sufficient capacity at Polar to take all of Atlas flights.

I then went on to ask "what if Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings [the parent corporation to Polar, Atlas, and AACS] sells, and they (sympathetic Polar pilots), are assigned 'extra section' flights under their own call sign - in other words, not 'struck work')"?

This is something that Atlas will try to do and is taken right out of the Lorenzo Playbook. There will be no recriminations from mainline pilots if the Polar guys are hoodwinked into this.....volunteering to work days off to do so, however, is another matter.

Would not Polar pilots who withhold their services from their own company in sympathy to the Atlas pilots

(a) be conducting an illegal job action since they have not been released by the National Mediation Board to pursue self help?


(b) expose ALPA to potential legal action and penalty in the same fashion as the AA pilots after their illegal 'sickout' some years ago?


(c) expose Polar pilots individually to potential discipline or termination in similar fashion to AACS pilots who withheld their services?

No their contract should have a clause that will protect them individually and ALPA if they should decide not to cross any picket line, or fly freight that is obviously struck work.