Comair's TA flies

[aviator]

Comair Pilots End 3-Month Strike


Updated: Fri, Jun 22 7:33 PM EDT

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J.C. Lawson, left, head of the Comair chapter of the Air Line Pilots Association, shakes hands with Comair president Randy Rademacher after an announcement that Comair and the striking pilots had (AP)


HEBRON, Ky. (AP) - Comair's pilots ratified a new contract, ending a 3-month strike that crippled the regional airline, a union official said Friday.

Comair said it expected to resume some service by July 2.

Comair's 1,300 pilots walked out March 26, shutting down a company that served 95 cities in the United States, Canada, Mexico and the Bahamas. Comair had been the nation's second-largest regional airline behind American Eagle.

"Our strike is over. We are going back to work. We look forward to returning to our cockpits," said Capt. J.C. Lawson, head of the Comair chapter of the Air Line Pilots Association.

He said the pilots approved the contract by a vote of 733 to 408. The deal gives them a company-paid retirement plan and the best pay in the regional airline industry.

Comair and the pilots' union reached a tentative agreement June 14 after three days of talks with federal mediators. The airline also flies under the name of Delta Express and is owned by the Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines.

More than 1,200 Comair pilots will return to work Sunday and begin training. The contract wipes out Comair's action to eliminate 400 pilot positions that had been announced during the strike.

Because it will take time to safety-check airplanes and retrain pilots, Comair will return to service with 10 aircraft and flights to 26 cities, President Randy Rademacher said.

Comair expects to have about 50 planes in the air by the end of July and resume service to most of its markets by December.

"Our commitment to provide the absolute best service to our customers, of course, begins with safety," Rademacher said. "Now that we have the ratified contract with our pilots, we will be working harder than ever to focus on these goals."

Rademacher declined to say how much the strike had cost Comair or what the settlement will cost the airline.

Rademacher said Comair's fleet is down to 82 aircraft. Some of Comair's planes were put on the market during the strike, and there were negotiations to cancel sales of some of those planes, he said.

According to a contract summary released by the union, pay for first-year pilots increases from $16,000 to nearly $21,000, and pay for senior captains goes from about $66,000 to $85,000. The maximum duty day would be 14 1/2 hours, 30 minutes more than the union sought.

Since Comair and the pilots had been negotiating a new contract for three years, pilots will receive retroactive pay to June 1998.

[redfish]

Due to the "fine print" the deal at comair sucks

[tilii]

Forgive me for asking this perhaps naive question:

Would someone over in the US please tell me under precisely what circumstances (number of pilots in cockpit, duty start time, number of sectors, exercise of discretion, minimum off duty period following, etcetera) a Comair pilot can be rostered to work a 14.5 hour maximum duty period?

[This message has been edited by tilii (edited 23 June 2001).]

[411A]

Does the settlement compare well with the first offer that was rejected? I'm sure these guys would like to think it was all worthwhile.

[CONVAIR]

Don't believe everything you see. This agreement is essentially the same with some minor changes. The new one is for 59 mos and not 42 so it looks like they got an increase but it is only the spread out further. The did not get full retro so the company saved all that money. The retro is 5% of W2 for each of the first two years and 7.5% (I think) of the third. Max duty is now 12.5 hrs. But in the end they got the same as the rejected one just couched in different terms. They will never make up the loss of their pay over the next 59 mos and once again showed that ALPA is only there for the big boys.

[Huck]

US domestic rules - you can be on duty essentially forever as long as you don't go over 8 hours block time. That's a two man crew, as well. No compensatory rest - just the normal 9 hours after. And that's block to block, so you're left with about 6.5 hours of "pillow time."

My personal record back when I was flying RJ's was a 16 hour duty day, 8 legs, all of them with instrument approaches. Took thirty minutes off outside the aircraft to eat dinner and was written up by operations. That was back at the "other" Delta Connection down in ATL. A great place to be from....

[Ofnumbers]

tilii,

The regulations here allow airline pilots to be on continues duty for 16 hours. Fourteen and a half hours of duty is not unusual.

The rules have been redefined and, finally, the FAA is enforcing them. But only after the fatal crash of an American Airlines MD-80 in Little Rock where the crew had been on duty for a very long time. (Around fourteen hours if I remember correctly.) Before pilots could exceed the 16 hours of duty if there was bad weather etc. All the company had to do was schedule the pilots for less than 16 hours of duty time. Now we cannot depart if we cannot complete the flight without exceeding the 16 hours.

BTW, transportation to and from hotels is not considered part of the duty period. Tack on another :30 - :45 minutes at the beginning and end of your duty day for that.

[Wino]

CONVAIR

that they won't make up the money is put out by anti union activists. Its total crap.

Aside from the fact that many pilots received more in strike benefits than they would have in salary, an airline career is not 4 years long.

So while during the 4 years you might not completely make up the money, you will be negotiating from a much higher STARTING position when you negotiate the next contact. Over a 20-30 year career you make far more by having had the strikes.

That is why non union airlines pay 50k a year for A320 captains, and United pays 200k a year. They may not have made it up during the first contract, but collectively they sure made it up over their career.

Now that COMAIR has a contract, expect ASA (delta's other wholy owned commuter) to strike against the Delta. They will be using the Comair as a minimum, not a maximum. With the parent company actually owning several airlines, we are now in a position to see the parent company whipsawed by its various sub airlines, rather than the usual other way around.

And to all the other naysayers... PISS OFF, they are all going back to work, despite your gloom and doom ALPA bashing predictions.

Cheers,

Wino

[Brad737]

Convair, I'm not quite sure what you mean. Comair's MEC undertook this action against advice from National. Even then, once it was undertaken they were given support. If you could elaborate please?
Wino, as always you are one classy dude.

[DownIn3Green]

"Over a 20-30 year career you make far more by having had the strikes"

Hmmmm?

Are you including the EAL guys in that statement as well?

[Wino]

Certainly the EAL guys that are now at United <G>.

Cheers
Wino

[Huck]

The exception that proves the rule....

[Wino]

Huck,

You just dont get it, do you?

While the individual strikes may be a loss, the gain is for the industry as a whole. If not for the sacrifice of others, flying would pay like a bus driver.

It is your duty to leave the career better than you found it for the next person, and your duty to support others as they continually raise the bar. This is a dynamic process. No one side or MEC magically achieved united's or Delta's salary. Delta built on United. United built on the 1997 American Airlines contract, who built on the the best earlier one etc.

Pilots are only worth what they can negotiate. (that is true of all careers, but pilots are somewhat hard to replace).

The airlines support each other during strikes (Do you remember mutual aid, when airlines paid money to other airlines that were taking a strike?, well similar things happen now, Cincinnati was treated with Kid gloves, no one belly flopped in there with 100 jets like the could easily have done in this slowing economy) and it is the duty of pilots to equally support each other during strikes or we will be right back to minimum wage.

You folks are either defeatest or actually management looking to undermine morale. Or else you simply don't understand how we got to where we are today. Try reading "Flying the Line" and read part 2 as well which was just published relatively recently.

Cheers
Wino

[Brad737]

Flying the line is a good read but bear in mind that it'tells only part of the story. I just flew with a guy whose TWA father was deeply involved with ALPA. I heard about a destuctive push many years ago to include Flight Attendants in the union. His father felt that this would swing control of the union to the F/A's by sheer numbers. He opposed it and received death threats. This was back when there was 1 vote per CA, and 1/2 vote per FO. All this was news to me. I still support ALPA but I'll also still acknowledge when smoke's being blown up my butt. The truth is out there.

[Huck]

I'm sorry, but I thought "the exception that proves the rule" was a commonly understood term.

I am 100% in agreement that the profession must build on the progress found in many different contracts. That the Eastern experience has been so isolated simply proves how the system really works. Doesn't that make sense, or are my faculties fading?

[Wino]

I apologize huck,

As on AVSIG, this board has become a union bashing site to some degree, and I get somewhat springloaded.

Cheers
Wino

[Huck]

I agree. Notice the anti-union forces make many arguments, but they never ever compare the annual incomes of the crews - union vs. non-union....

"Watermelon, watermelon, watermelon rind,
Look on the scoreboard and see who's behind!"

[LevelFive]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Notice the anti-union forces make many arguments, but they never ever compare the annual incomes of the crews - union vs. non-union...</font>

And they never mention the huge incomes of management, stock options, bonuses etc.

[Ignition Override]

Wino: you described the COMAIR situation and general US airline realities very well on the previous page, along with the true nature of those who continuously hide behind their computer keyboards and ridicule the need (as if the lack of any "job actions", or serious threats of such in the world of [mostly] arrogant corporate CEOs and other upper execs, would achieve any solid improvements in the exhausting workrules and pay of regional propjet or fanjet pilots, not to mention in the minimum wage pay of regional First Officers,) to stand together, despite the conflicts and contradictions in any large professional organizations.

I remember years ago flying a short trip in a VR-60 DC-9 with a TAC (former TAR) FEDEX new-hire who, along with a retired Navy guy who visited the cockpit enroute, blamed unions as the cause of our industrial problems, displaying amazing ignorance about the fact that the FEDEX pay scales and benefits had used the ALPA pay/benefits as a benchmark, despite some improvements in comparison to the better ALPA contracts, if volunteering to work on scheduled days off...

It amazes me to think of the gall and pompousness of many US airline pilots to think that their good pay and benefits would ever have existed at even 50% of the present rates (at the majors) without the blood, sweat and tears of organized labor over decades, as has been said by many others, many times.

[This message has been edited by Ignition Override (edited 28 June 2001).]

[411A]

If the indication that CONVAIR gives is correct ie: little if any improvement in the second offer, what, prey tell was the idea of rejecting the initial offer in the first place? Seems to me to be only.....lost income. I still think these guys were sold a bill of goods by ALPA.

[Ignition Override]

Nothing personal intended by my previous post, regarding the shabby treatment and insulting pay of so much of our US airline industry, and the arrogance of many so-called corporate "leaders". Many of them are in it only for their own immense enrichment-most display no actual interest in aviation: just assets vs liabilities (the employees!). Look at huge bonuses paid at various airlines while thousands of employee "staff" took pay cuts or got laid-off. Check out Stephen Wolf's pay and stock options, for example, or John Dasburg's.

When we need a job, or a better one, we often could not afford to refuse the next job offer, especially a critical step in a career.

Those of us who worked for nothing at regionals had no chance of improving the pay there by simply avoiding the acceptance of work in such a 'market economy'. I'm not angry, just disgusted with our short-term "commodity industry".

No apologies here regarding my remarks about our business-after years we are "married" (committed) to our companies-no revolving doors available as with so many executives,and I hope that those who are indifferent to their employees read all of this.