190 aircraft?

[USAirBoyA330]

Maybe Chip or someone can shed some light on this. I just walked in from a 3 day trip and I swear every time the aircraft door came open I heard a version of this rumor. From F/A''s...Pilots....Mechanics...ect....
The F/A''s bids for 01-03 we supposed to be out on Saturday at 10am....they never came out and were suspended until Tuesday at 12noon. Now everyone is saying that the company is planning to take the fleet to 190 if we don''t give into productivity changes within 7 days. Does our new agreement allow them to take the fleet that low? I mean they have not even taken the fleet down to 245 yet!
Is this just something that has no truth to it or is there something more there?

 

[willnotworkforfree]

[blockquote]
----------------
On 11/25/2002 8:52:13 PM USAirBoyA330 wrote:

Maybe Chip or someone can shed some light on this. I just walked in from a 3 day trip and I swear every time the aircraft door came open I heard a version of this rumor. From F/A's...Pilots....Mechanics...ect....
The F/A's bids for 01-03 we supposed to be out on Saturday at 10am....they never came out and were "suspended" until Tuesday at 12noon. Now everyone is saying that the company is planning to take the fleet to 190 if we don't give into productivity changes within 7 days. Does our new agreement allow them to take the fleet that low? I mean they have not even taken the fleet down to 245 yet!
Is this just something that has no truth to it or is there something more there?
----------------
[/blockquote]
wait and see.

 

[USAirBoyA330]

Oh....what an insightful post. Thanks.

 

[TransatlanticFlyGuy]

I find it hard to believe they will go as low as 190. I strongly feel that if more concessions are not agreed to in 7 days, the defined pension plans will be abolished. Just my thought.

 

[chipmunn]

USAirBoy330:

I have not heard the rumor regarding a 190 aircraft fleet plan. The ALPA restructuring agreement permits a minimum in bankruptcy fleet plan of 245 aircraft and a minimum in bankruptcy fleet of 275 aircraft.

The restructuring agreement does not state if the out of bankruptcy minimum requirement of 275 aircraft is before or after the court supervised restructuring.

The December pilot bid was for 279 aircraft and about 4500 pilots. The January pilot bid was for 279 aircraft, with reduced flying to the contractual limit of 10 hours per day, thus the furlough of 471 pilots, down to seniority number 4,017 in the first quarter of 2003. The company told ALPA the airline intends to fly less block hours in the first quarter to better match capacity with the soft demand.

In my opinion, if ALPA grants productivity changes, the company could increase utilization with less pilots that could be flown with the 4,017 remaining pilots.

I have not seen any information regarding a new pilot bid and I suspect the January bid could be rolled over into February, which occurred for December.

Also noteworthy, from a marketing perspective I understand the November 2 schedule change and hub realignment is most efficent with about 280 mainline aircraft. However, if the industry has another shock event like a terrorist attack or war breaks out in the Middle East, we could see the fleet further reduced presumably to 245 aircraft.

We could find out more on the fleet plan tomorrow at the labor leader-management meeting.

Chip