Air Canada grounds Boeing Max 8s until at least July 1

[Fanblade]

Ironically everyone is going to bid off it as soon as it's not free money, ruining the whole plan. Because imagine how annoying it will be to explain to people you're a MAX pilot for the next few years. "Oooooh."

Really?

[Old fella]

Hope against hope this ‘37 issue gets sorted poste haste for the sake of the affected airlines and their customers. I had a few non aviation knowledgeable acquaintances who were put out( in their view) because of this and are not happy. Some of them thought airplanes can be acquired like cars, simply go to a dealership pick out a bunch and the idle pilots can just hope in, start up and go. I gave up trying to explain this isn’t how it works.

[a220hereicome]

Deleted, duplicate post.

[altiplano]

Plus the union made concessions to achieve that. Primarily in wet lease pay credits, scope ratios, and training rights.

Really though, the union had immense leverage here but squandered it... Had AC decided to not pay, they would have had to reduce on the type, not only would they have paid more in salary (80hrs/month training/transition pay), they would have paid for 100's of courses, and the 100's of more courses the reductions would have triggered, all that lost productivity, only to have to retrain/reinstate for the type at some point...


The 737 guys deserve better given all the uncertainty and bullshit here. ACPA shouldn't be bending at all.

I was under the impression that the ACPA MEC has shifted to a more militant stance given the recent elections.

Not what you were expecting?

TD

The new MEC Chair, and other recently elected National member, who I believe will be positive for the association, don't take their positions until Apr1.

[altiplano]

Plus the union made concessions to achieve that. Primarily in wet lease pay credits, scope ratios, and training rights...

Really though, the union had immense leverage here but squandered it... Had AC decided to not pay, they would have had to reduce on the type, not only would they have paid more in salary (80hrs/month training/transition pay), they would have paid for 100's of courses, and the 100's of more courses the reductions would have triggered, all that lost productivity, only to have to retrain/reinstate for the type at some point...

Plus the manufacturer will be paying for all this Abid record profits for them and the airline... this is a business choice that we labour should have done better on...

The 737 guys deserve better given all the uncertainty and bullshit here. ACPA shouldn't be bending at all.

I was under the impression that the ACPA MEC had shifted to a much more militant stance. If the airplane is down for two to three months (seems to be the general educated guess), what leverage do you think ACPA had knowing that the Company had language of 'grounding through no fault of their own' that could let them walk away without paying the MAX crews a single dollar for three months? I don't think that would have been a good idea, as they would have needed the rest of the crews to pick up the slack, read in goodwill, but do you think the MEC could have squeezed more?

TD

I don't think they had to squeeze. Just offer nothing in terms of concessions.

There was worry from some, but that one line in the contract got them worked up about nothing... it did not say that the company could not pay people, it said mbg limits/ratios/pri-rating in that article didn't apply... if the flying target is 0, how can you ratio a guarantee from that? It really protects both sides. There are other protections for crews too.

If the company decided to grasp for that interpretation of that one line and not pay-...
- Most FOs were covered under a completely different guarantee, not mbg... that's why they are getting 75 hours anyway,
- There is layoff pay provisions in the contract based on your best months which would well exceed 70 hours for most,
- There are requirements to give notice of layoff in the contract and in law,
- There are labour laws that prevent a company from just stopping paying 100s of people,
- There would have been down bids, triggering a ton of training that far outvalues the cost of salary,
- They needed goodwill from the pilots to cover flying,
- They need 737 crews onboard and ready to train on the fix and get the fleet airborne again as soon as possible...

Not to mention there is no way the Liberal government or Air Canada, reaping record corporate profits, want that headline "Airline Stops Paying 500 Pilots Amid Boeing Grounding" the controversy surrounding this is enough...

We could have very likely extracted gains in all this had we taken a different tone... at any rate, we certainly didn't need to make concessions.

[fish4life]

Most contracts have a “force majeure” clause in it which I’d think a complete grounding of a portion of the fleet could be argued in court would trigger.

[Fanblade]

Most contracts have a “force majeure” clause in it which I’d think a complete grounding of a portion of the fleet could be argued in court would trigger.

The ACPA contract does. But most people are reading it wrong. Force Maajeure in our case is in the scope section. The block hours it refers to are overall block hour guarantees and domestic block hour guarantees. These gauantees are in the 100’s of thousands of hours. They represent a minimum number of hours that AC guarantees to its pilots every year. Those gauantees can now be prorated down.

Their is no provision to lay-off out of seniority. An attempt at laying off in seniority would take over a year in training to accomplish.

What they could have done though is dropped the Designated Monthly blocks to minimum. This creates a window. Then put everyone on reserve which then would put everyone at the bottom of that window. 60 hours. This would not impact flat pay. Instead there was a deal cut for 70 hours.