now that the pilots contract WAS NOT abrogated

[Hopeful]

You no voters need stop being stupid. Those 48 yes voters saved your rear ends.

Stupid?????
Are you for real with this asinine comment?

It is apparent where the judge was coming from. He actually cited TWO specific provisions and denied the abrogation request on THOSE TWO PROVISIONS,....

Have you actually read our contract language? He would've had a party with ours.

 

[Realityck]

With Capacity tight in the MRO world the question is would AA have been able to take advantage of the higher outsourcing allowances in the Term sheet vs the 35% of "Maintenance spend" plus whatever else they decide to add? UAL, Delta and SWA have been bringing work back in house over the last few years. SWA, despite merging with Air Tran continues to hire mechanics away from AA in Dallas as well.


SWA – AMFA Current Contract Language:

“The new contract also includes a Letter of Agreement restricting the Company’s ability to perform maintenance at international locations to a maximum of four (4) lines should the need arise. This new language removes the Company’s current unlimited ability to take non-customarily preformed work out of the United States” (If I recall, a new (4[sup]th[/sup]) line was authorized for San Salvador).

“Southwest Airlines Mechanics shall continue to perform the existing Three (3) Heavy lines that are currently being conducted at Southwest Airlines facilities”


Note:

By comparison, a quick check of the AA Title I seniority list (AMTs, Crew Chiefs, and Inspectors only) indicates an approximate current staffing headcount of 13.9 AMT’s per aircraft. Even with the potential future layoff of 2155 AMTs, we would still be at an approximate headcount of 10.2 AMT’s per aircraft, far above that of SWA.

 

[Hopeful]

I don't think M&R would have won with the outsourcing provision.
But do your realize that the new aricraft coming will not need heavy maintenance for way longer than the current generation of aircaft do? Do you realize that there is no guarantee we will ever do the heavy maintenace on any new aircraft? We may not even do line maintenance on certain new aircraft.


But so many open ended provisons would have no doubt got the judge's attention.

 

[Realityck]

Owens - Schalk - Peterson, and all remaining AMFA clones:


All of you are missing the point. The judge was evaluating the term sheet, not the Company’s LBFO to the pilots. All the Company has to do to achieve abrogation is to change its term sheet to match up with its LBFO on these two items. On everything else the term sheet is far worse than the LBFO, and they will be allowed to impose the term sheet. So tell me what have they gained except, possibly, a few weeks? The judge approved of the Company’s business plan and rejected every one of the pilot’s valuation claims. He acknowledged that they will now be near the bottom of the industry, a result which he said is typical in a bankruptcy and gave him no problem. He has allowed huge concessions in scope. This is why the APFA has correctly stated that the judge ruled against the pilots on every significant item.

You keep saying that the judge would have found problems with the tentative agreement and told the Company to improve it. The judge wasn’t looking at the tentative agreement, he was evaluating the term sheet. If he found problems with the term sheet provided to the TWU (which is speculation because he only took issue with pilot specific matters) this decision makes clear he would have temporarily denied the motion and allowed AA to correct the term sheet. Once this happens we would have been exposed to the balance of the term sheet which calls for more lay offs, less pay, less, pension, and more outsourcing. So tell me how more jobs would have been saved if we rejected the LBF.

 

[Hopeful]

Owens - Schalk - Peterson, and all remaining AMFA clones:


All of you are missing the point. The judge was evaluating the term sheet, not the Company’s LBFO to the pilots. All the Company has to do to achieve abrogation is to change its term sheet to match up with its LBFO on these two items. On everything else the term sheet is far worse than the LBFO, and they will be allowed to impose the term sheet. So tell me what have they gained except, possibly, a few weeks? The judge approved of the Company’s business plan and rejected every one of the pilot’s valuation claims. He acknowledged that they will now be near the bottom of the industry, a result which he said is typical in a bankruptcy and gave him no problem. He has allowed huge concessions in scope. This is why the APFA has correctly stated that the judge ruled against the pilots on every significant item.

You keep saying that the judge would have found problems with the tentative agreement and told the Company to improve it. The judge wasn’t looking at the tentative agreement, he was evaluating the term sheet. If he found problems with the term sheet provided to the TWU (which is speculation because he only took issue with pilot specific matters) this decision makes clear he would have temporarily denied the motion and allowed AA to correct the term sheet. Once this happens we would have been exposed to the balance of the term sheet which calls for more lay offs, less pay, less, pension, and more outsourcing. So tell me how more jobs would have been saved if we rejected the LBF.

Why don't we all wait to hear from a PILOT if even altering those TWO provisions benefit them?

 

[Realityck]

APFA Special Hotline - August 15, 2012

Late this afternoon, the Bankruptcy Court issued a blistering indictment of the labor unions on American Airlines' property. The Court summarily rejected all but two arguments the pilots made in the Section 1113 hearing, including convergence - the argument that the company's ask would put the pilots below industry standard. Most of the pilots' arguments were identical to ours.

The Court's decision to reject the Company's motion, as it pertains to the APA, was based on two specific arguments that were unique to the Company's demand of the pilot work group. The Court decided that American did not need unlimited code sharing capabilities to reorganize its business. The second argument pertains to the Company's request for permission to make unlimited furloughs to the pilots. The APA contract, as it stands, limits the number of furloughs American can impose at 2,000. The Company's business plan stated that it needed 400 pilot furloughs in order to reorganize. The Court, therefore, decided that American did not need the ability to furlough an unlimited number of pilots. None of our arguments were equivalent to the two the Court sided with the pilots on.

APFA's legal counsel has stated that if the judge finds against AA's motion to abrogate (as he did in part with today's announcement), he will provide a clear roadmap to remedy any defects. Today's decision contains that roadmap. American says it intends to re-file its motion to abrogate the pilots current contract this Friday.
To reiterate, the remainder of the court's 100+ page decision validated each of American's arguments for its business plan and dismantled each of the unions' cases against it.

In fact, only two APFA arguments remain un-ruled upon by the Court: The first is our convergence argument, which included different evidence than the pilots'. The second is an information-sharing argument whereby we requested term sheets that pertained to non-unionized employees on the property and were not provided with them. The pilots requested other information from the Company that was not shared. The Court was unmoved by the pilots' similar information-sharing argument.

In short, today's ruling postpones the inevitable abrogation of the pilots' contract. Given the fact that most of our arguments have already been dismissed in this ruling, and that our LBFO addresses our arguments that are left outstanding, we do not expect the Court's 1113 ruling to go in our favor - should we vote to reject the LBFO.

It is more clear today than ever before that the best path for our membership is to accept the LBFO and continue to work towards achieving a merger with USAirways. We can now say with certainty that the Section 1113 process will leave flight attendants worse off than the LBFO. There is little doubt that the end result, should we reject, will be 2,000 furloughed flight attendants and many many more on reserve.

The Court's ruling, in it's entirety, is posted on our web site. Please take the time to examine it. Additionally, our professionals have excerpted certain pertinent facts and provided helpful explanations. Those will soon be available on the APFA website as well.