United Airlines pilots may be heading back to the bargaining table after their counterparts at American may have been offered a better deal. Last week, United and the Air Line Pilots Association made a lot of noise about the 14.5 percent pay increase included in their proposed contract and sent it out for a vote with a deadline of July 15. On Friday, news came out that American had offered a 17 percent raise for pilots in their negotiations with the Allied Pilots Association. That may have put the brakes on the United deal.
Shortly after the American offer was made public, United’s union leaders announced they were taking a second look at the tentative agreement reached last week. “We are collecting information regarding the (American) offer, and the master executive council (MEC) will meet in special session next week to consider the impact it has on our TA,” United MEC said in the letter. “We will carefully consider all available options and, until we have greater clarity, we will suspend the town hall meetings, P2P deployments, and other presentations related to the 2022 (tentative agreement.)”
If an airline reneged on an agreement after a competitor got a better deal everyone’s heads would explode.
It’s not a deal until ratified by the pilot group. It’s a tentative agreement. Until ratified, it’s in the MEC’s hands.
Well… let the “Greed Monster” loose! Oh, woe is me… I am soooo downtrodden by the airlines.
These whiners are always quick to tell you how much they are overworked and and underpaid, as if somehow, more pay cancels out the “overworked” part.
As a retired pilot that did 23 years in the AF then another 20 or so in the airlines I am convinced that these folks could use a large dose of reality. They do NOT come even close to the workload that my generation faced in the air and yet they will whine about being worked too hard. They never have to show up 2.5 hours before departure to actually “plan” the flight, find their own weather, fill out numerous forms, preflight oil dripping equipment, sometimes even help the loading process, coax 18+ cylinders to get it together and run, do actual run-ups out at the oily spots near the end of the runway, try to convince themselves that the dime sized torque gauges vibrating like a misloaded washing machine on spin really are showing enough torque to continue, bounce along at less than smooth altitudes for hours because she will never get high enough to find smooth air, pray that the radar actually lasts the full trip for a change, hope that the triple beacon approach is actually “up” for a change at the destination, etc, etc, etc.
Sure pilots, like everyone else deserve fair compensation but come on. Today’s “crowd” has it easy compared to almost everyone else in the industry. The baggage handlers, counter staff, reservation people, fuelers, mechanics, et al, have it far worse. They work far harder 5 days every week (can you imagine?) for far less money and pretty much every one of them can make an error that could cause serious problems with the aircraft. Sure, the pilots are actually “driving” but with modern autopilot systems, far better climate control, noise reduction in the cabin, seats that are actually fairly comfortable, only 8 hour duty days, highly accurate navigation systems, and planes that will pretty much always land themselves…. oh they have it sooo bad that the big paychecks are necessary to sooth that strain… really?
As you can guess… I am not in favor of their general attitudes. Oh, my experience… C-141A+B, B-747(Classic), CV-240/340(T-29/ C-131), DC-6 (C-118), ATR-42, NA-265(T-39), ATP and about 29K hours.
And, I am not interested in their whines about how much the Execs make either… everyone in most every company has that gripe as well. I will be in the mod to listen when they get concerned about cutting exec compensation and raising the pay of the rest of the ground staff.
Mistype on my rant above… 20K hours not 29K… mea culpa.
Doesn’t sound like you grasp the modern purpose of a union. (Make employees hate their job so that you can “fight” for them).
You forgot “and get off my lawn!”.
Damn whipper snappers!!! We are experiencing some of the same attitudes in the ATC world too. I am a firm believer in fair compensation for risk based work. For far too long entry level pilots (in my opinion) have long been under-compensated. Brendan’s comment struck me particularly hard too. Unions are nothing more than antagonists this day and age.
Just to be sure, we’re on the same page.
All that experience, really just the average military to airline stack, and you learned little, boomer.
Yeah, professional athletes do drugs and beat up on their wives and girlfriends and everybody’s completely ok with them getting millions FOR PLAYING A GAME but God forbid an airline pilot should be compensated well ! BTW the United offer was really not that good to begin with – quite a few concessions for a small raise.
The marketplace speaks.
This will work it’s self out in probably less than 20 years, when passenger planes will be totally flown by computers, and only one pilot sitting there like a fireman waiting to go to a fire.
This is going to have consequences pilots arent seeing. The airline will make up that money and its not going to come from only ticket sales.
Gotta love all the “knowing comments” from the non-airline pilots about the actualities of airline flying.
A lot of folks obviously wish they’d gone down that road in their own careers.
And they complain about the airline pilots being whiners…
Has nothing to do with knowing anything other than economics that most people took in high school. I support the pay hike, but it will come with consequences. It happens in corporations regularly with “realignment” of staffing levels.
Gotta love all the “knowing comments” from the non-airline pilots about the actualities of airline flying.
A lot of folks obviously wish they’d gone down that road in their own careers.
And they complain about the airline pilots being whiners…
If people saw all the incredibly money-wasting things the airlines are doing to cover their trips even as badly as they are doing now, they’d never talk about the pilots again.
The amount of money being thrown at solving a somewhat self-induced situation makes this pale in comparison.
Of course all the jealous wish-I-head’s will keep carping…
If inflation is at 50%… pay raises had better be matching it… plus some.
Exactly. That’s it in a nut shell. Nothing else needs to be said.
You mean they didn’t put a “me too” clause in their T/A?
Don’t look at AA pay increase, which was turned down btw. Look at Envoy pay raises, 55-65%. I’m thinking to “flow back” to Envoy to a check airman job and get an $80/hr pay raise!
And that’s from 777 CA pay!!