US Airways Slams it's own crews !

[ghost-rider]

Check this out from BBC News ! :rolleyes:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_1692000/1692398.stm

:confused:

edited for my own stupidity !

[ 05 December 2001: Message edited by: ghost-rider ]

[Pete Otube]

Ghost-rider

Shouldn't your post be titled "How to inspire the shareholders and travelling public"?

More stupidity by pilots?

[ghost-rider]

So is there an orchestrated 'sick-out' by the crews ? Kind of hard to believe in this climate ! Look what happened to Sabena !

[The Guvnor]

As you say, Pete O'Tube ...!

Reminds me of those Belgian idiots at BeCA... :rolleyes: :eek: :rolleyes:

Actually I think a better title would have been "How NOT to Keep Your Job in a Recession" :D

[Wino]

When you operate multiple fleets you can only furlough as fast as you can hire.

AA was trying to furlough faster and started running into problems. What happens in clumps of pilots are at various seniority levels. At AA, a well managed company, for example they almost shut down the A300 in NY with what they were planning to fulough, and had to rescind the furloughs to keep the airplane flying as they couldn't retrain fast enough. They can still furlough later if they want, but not faster than they can train the shifts throughout the fleet.

AA is a well managed company. I suspect that USAIR furloughed all the copilots in a particular fleet faster than they could downtrain and screwed themselves. They are the worst managed company in America after all, but go ahead and blame the pilots. With them reducing flying it shouldn't be possible for pilots to leverage a company like that.

Wino

[NorskAir]

There is quite a bit more to this story than what was written in the press.
Us Airways furloughed around 430 Pilots the day following the so called "sickout" with 400 more to follow in January.
I was on duty on Dec. 1st and there were several pages of open 3 and 4 day trips starting on Saturday, so with a furlough coming the next day many of the soon to be out of work Pilots could not fly these trips.
Granted there were an above normal amount of sickcalls, but many Pilots felt they were to stressed to go out and fly, due to worries how they will be able to feed their families in the near future.
US Airways managment has always run this Airline by understaffing, and that combined with its callous regard for it's employees has created this situation. Management has refused to negotiate with the unions to mitigate some of these furloughs and some of their actions over the last few months are enough to make you sick.
Me and every US Airways employee want this airline to survive and prosper, but the blame for the terrible morale and poor corporate culture falls squarely on Mr Wolf's shoulders.

[737type]

Could it be that USAir is laying the PR groundwork for any upcoming battles?

If so, then I'd have to say that they pulled off a good one on this. They managed to make the pilot group look self-absorbed and uncaring of the economic condition of the company and the country.

I hope the union responds quickly to this.

[Roadtrip]

Unfortunately, U's management doesn't have a recovery plan as a stand-alone airline. I think Mr. Wolf has a sell-it-off-in-pieces plan and to heck with employees. He sure doesn't seem to care about what any of his employees think.

[Raas767]

Mr. Wolf is definately part of the problem, not the solution. He is the most highly paid airline CEO in America and also the most inept. The only thing Wolf is good at is repainting airplanes and selling airlines. He sold Republic to Northwest, Tigers to FedEx and United to the employees. He tried to sell US Airways to United but failed. So here he is, way over his head and the people who are going to have to pay the price for his incompetence is, once again, the employees.
People like him make me sick. :mad:

[ExSimGuy]

From what I have seen, when the airline should be doing its best to counter the low moral and difficult conditions for the staff since Sept 11, they are doing the opposite.

I don't work for the company myself but I gather from some who do that the best moral booster they could give the staff is to furlough a certain "executive"

The furlough package is not very attractive either - staff keep their medical cover - but have to pay the cost; at least they still have their non-rev travel to go for job interviews!!

[iflyboeing747]

could it be that the "sick out" is not related to any special action by the crews..?

that it's simply worries about being hi-jacked and feeling afraid of ending up as some of their unfortunate colleagues..?

everyone has family to prefer over risk - haven't they..?

being a pilot has always been a very personal fulfilling profession - but i think that recent events has made pilots - and other aircrews - more aware of some risks which none had expected - and maybe these risks are becoming so big that they can potentially jeopardize own life and family life.

Is it really worth it..?