SWOOP - A New Hires Future

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jjj
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Re: SWOOP - A New Hires Future

Post by jjj »

Cheers Alpha M.

JJJ
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MrTurbine
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Re: SWOOP - A New Hires Future

Post by MrTurbine »

JBI wrote: Sat Feb 23, 2019 7:57 am
eyebrow737 wrote: Fri Feb 22, 2019 11:58 am
As someone who has been in this industry just over 30 years, you have a very naive understanding of your fellow pilots
For the latest Swoop bid, a grand total of 6 of the 550 or so Encore pilots bid on the position. Of those 6, only 1 actually met the company's requirement of having been at Encore for over a year. Perhaps it's not sstaurus that is naive...

I've always said I won't judge a particular person for taking a particular position. I don't know their individual situations. I don't find the discussions about "scabs", "lowering the bar" etc. at all fruitful. Most of the pilots that I know that have gone to Swoop live near YEG or YHM, don't want to commute (or drive 2+ hours on the 401/QEW to YYZ) and while the conditions at Swoop suck, the benefit of not commuting outweighs that. All fair enough. Here's the thing though, there simply are not enough pilots in Canada that live in YEG or YHM that would be willing to take those positions with the current wages and working conditions to fill the 20 or 30 planes that Swoop has suggested it wants to grow to. As disappointing and frustrating as the positions are, my response is: Good luck filling those positions!
Attaboy, well put 👏
I don’t have any personal issues towards the pilots taking the swoop spots. Butnumbers don’t lie, people who are currently at swoop absolutely hate it there. Every single encore pilot there has looked into coming back to encore.

Let’s not get carried away. Swoop is going to always have a hard time filling their spots.

In other news, enerjet is on the rise, and is going to kick ass, my prediction.
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cloak
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Re: SWOOP - A New Hires Future

Post by cloak »

A business not responding to market forces is doomed to failure. While there may be emotional retorts from those whose personal plans have been disrupted due to no fault of their own, the reality of the market is different and has demanded a condign response from WestJet to ensure its continued success and longevity. In terms of hiring, it will gradually resemble more the Air Canada/Jazz model, whereby a pilot is either hired by WestJet/Swoop (AC & Rouge), or Encore(Jazz) with the opportunity to flow to the former later, under separate bargaining units and separate seniority lists. As the pilot market heats up, the experience level of the two group will likely diverge more, requiring focus on different needs and challenges.
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Diadem
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Re: SWOOP - A New Hires Future

Post by Diadem »

cloak wrote: Fri Mar 08, 2019 6:57 am A business not responding to market forces is doomed to failure. While there may be emotional retorts from those whose personal plans have been disrupted due to no fault of their own, the reality of the market is different and has demanded a condign response from WestJet to ensure its continued success and longevity. In terms of hiring, it will gradually resemble more the Air Canada/Jazz model, whereby a pilot is either hired by WestJet/Swoop (AC & Rouge), or Encore(Jazz) with the opportunity to flow to the former later, under separate bargaining units and separate seniority lists. As the pilot market heats up, the experience level of the two group will likely diverge more, requiring focus on different needs and challenges.
Those aren't comparable; Jazz isn't owned by AC. If WestJet decides that they want a different set-up, and that they're okay with a common seniority list, I guess you're up the creek behind a few hundred Encore pilots.
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goingnowherefast
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Re: SWOOP - A New Hires Future

Post by goingnowherefast »

Got that in the wrong order. Start at swoop, flow to Encore, then WJ. :smt040
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.80@410
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Re: SWOOP - A New Hires Future

Post by .80@410 »

cloak wrote: Fri Mar 08, 2019 6:57 am A business not responding to market forces is doomed to failure. While there may be emotional retorts from those whose personal plans have been disrupted due to no fault of their own, the reality of the market is different and has demanded a condign response from WestJet
oh please. Your ignorance of managements intentions is laughable . This was a full - on attempt to reset the wage structure at WJ, and find an alternate to the unionized workforce . Anyone could run 10
Swoop planes at WJ wages and compete with Flair et al.

Wj just dreamed of starting WJ 2.0 and slowly sending all planes including WB to swoop. Luckily Kaplan cut them
Off aat the knees ( although 30 planes is still not ideal)
They have created quite a mess for themselves. Will be interesting so see how they climb out of it. This will be a university study for generations to come.
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Re: SWOOP - A New Hires Future

Post by JBI »

.80@410 wrote: Fri Mar 08, 2019 8:06 pm oh please. Your ignorance of managements intentions is laughable . This was a full - on attempt to reset the wage structure at WJ, and find an alternate to the unionized workforce . Anyone could run 10
Swoop planes at WJ wages and compete with Flair et al.

Wj just dreamed of starting WJ 2.0 and slowly sending all planes including WB to swoop. Luckily Kaplan cut them
Off aat the knees ( although 30 planes is still not ideal)
They have created quite a mess for themselves. Will be interesting so see how they climb out of it. This will be a university study for generations to come.
Hi .80@410,

I don't disagree with you - I've actually said that how Swoop was rolled out will be an MBA case study on how to take employee morale and trust and destroy it! But, I do think that it's important to distinguish when GGG, CK and BC were in executive roles and the decisions they made compared to the management currently in place. While many will suggest management is management and wish that the name on the first 787 would retire, I've been very impressed by the honesty and frankness of the newer executive leadership team.

The plan for now is 10 planes. As much as I think the working conditions at Swoop are poor and have said that directly to the Swoop President, I do think that they'll probably be able to crew 10 aircraft with the current conditions. Make no mistake, I am not excusing the conditions and they are not sufficient enough for me to want to work there, but I can see it making sense for some folks. However, I think the realities of the labour market are such that they'll have an extremely difficult time filling more than 10 planes with those conditions. I think some of the executives would also agree with that! It's at that point where you'll see more discussions with ALPA on conditions similar to AC recently renegotiating Rouge Scope with ACPA.

While I'm not going to shrug my shoulders and say, "ah well, not much we can do" I am willing to give this new executive team some time to get us out of this mess. Under the previous management, I felt like we were heading full speed ahead direct into an ice berg, now I feel we're slowly turning in the right direction.
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Ex DC10 Driver
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Re: SWOOP - A New Hires Future

Post by Ex DC10 Driver »

I just flew with a mgmt pilot last week ferrying a 737 from Kelowna with the new seat layout back to Calgary...he said they are going to 20 planes pretty quick. He was also of the opinion that the Swoop LOU would need to be re-evaluated in order to fill all the positions. We will have to wait and see I guess...
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flyinhigh
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Re: SWOOP - A New Hires Future

Post by flyinhigh »

I can see that happening, however this management will want crappy conditions and I think they are to stupid to realize nothing will pass in an LOU unless it is the current WAWCON within WestJet.
Ex DC10 Driver wrote: Sat Mar 09, 2019 7:37 pm I just flew with a mgmt pilot last week ferrying a 737 from Kelowna with the new seat layout back to Calgary...he said they are going to 20 planes pretty quick. He was also of the opinion that the Swoop LOU would need to be re-evaluated in order to fill all the positions. We will have to wait and see I guess...
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goingnowherefast
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Re: SWOOP - A New Hires Future

Post by goingnowherefast »

I think swoop will probably disappear in 5 years. Management will find too few pilots willing to work for swoop conditions, and too few passengers willing to travel under the nickel and dime ULCC scheme.

If I had the option of swoop for $150, plus a $50 bag, $20 carry on, $5 to pee, horrid connection time versus the normal WJ adventure for $250 I know what I'd do. Definitely worth the extra $25.
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x-wind
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Re: SWOOP - A New Hires Future

Post by x-wind »

"I just flew with a mgmt pilot last week ferrying a 737 from Kelowna with the new seat layout back to Calgary...he said they are going to 20 planes pretty quick. He was also of the opinion that the Swoop LOU would need to be re-evaluated in order to fill all the positions. We will have to wait and see I guess.."

Excellent rumor to start before a bid.
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Re: SWOOP - A New Hires Future

Post by SwoopStar »

cloak wrote: Thu Feb 21, 2019 8:28 am
.80@410 wrote: Wed Feb 20, 2019 8:30 am
eyebrow737 wrote: Wed Feb 20, 2019 7:59 am

Watch everybody come back and attack this statement, truth as it is.
Truth to you, luckily you are the minority :goodman:
.....As for the comment about grey days and such, my sources on the ground say otherwise. It is clear that most of the guys that went to Swoop, did so under the false promises by ALPA that encouraged them to bid these positions saying that there was going to wage parity or very close to it. Clearly they were in no position to make such promises, no one really could make any promises.
Cloak,

You're wise enough to know ALPA made no promises, formal or informal.

The only thing that we are guilty of, was being an optimist. No one imagined that we would make less than a tenured WS FO while being held as a hostage during a implementation dispute.

As you know, optimism was a desirable trait of a WestJetter.
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SwoopStar
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Re: SWOOP - A New Hires Future

Post by SwoopStar »

SWOOP'S GEOGRAPHY PROBLEM

Please allow me to comment on the myth that the business model of SWOOP will provide a good quality of life schedule.

Most ULCC's operate on a roster consisting of sets of "mornings" or "evenings" and no overnights. This is a favorable point of a ULCC pilot. For example, a Ryan Air or JetStar pilot is home every night. They either drop off their children at school in the morning or pick them up in afternoon all while sleeping in their bed every night. It's hard to put a price on that.

However this is NOT the case for SWOOP. Ryan Air has shorter stage lengths and JetStar flies up and down the East Coast of OZ. SWOOP flies East-West over 4 time zones and a sparsely populated prairie. Further, SWOOP is limited to a small subset of secondary airports to prevent overlap with mainline. This results in longer stage lengths which should mean less days worked, however the opposite is occurring. Why? RED-EYES. LOTS of them.

In order to maximize utilization, SWOOP's network is shoe horned into as many red-eyes as possible. Presently, there are fatiguing red-eye returns to LAS and YEG out of YHM while the YXX-YHM red-eye was converted to the opposite, a 9.5hr credit 3-day with 2 full days in YXX. This particular pairing occurs 6 out of 7 nights of the week. There is no right way to schedule a red-eye and they are inevitable and frequent. So while a large stage length should promise less than 15 days worked, the reality of red-eyes is that one should expect to be block 18 DAYS in a 30 day month and 19 DAYS in a 31 day month.

This is SWOOP's geography problem. Couple it with the LOU and the result is a poor quality of life. Any Swoop pilot will tell you this. And it's not likely to improve.
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Last edited by SwoopStar on Mon Apr 22, 2019 10:15 am, edited 1 time in total.
goingnowherefast
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Re: SWOOP - A New Hires Future

Post by goingnowherefast »

I'm sure Jazz, Porter and every 704 operator would be happy to hire a swoop pilot. Likely better WAWCON too.
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cloak
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Re: SWOOP - A New Hires Future

Post by cloak »

.80@410 wrote: Fri Mar 08, 2019 8:06 pm oh please. Your ignorance of managements intentions is laughable ....
Do you seriously expect to influence the audience by starting your arguments with such emotional and abusive retort?!
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cloak
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Re: SWOOP - A New Hires Future

Post by cloak »

SwoopStar, you do bring up some valid points about optimism and also challenges of geography. Optimism is great, so is patience. Optimism also needs to be balanced against realism. And the past belongs in the past; moving forward bears most fruits. Swoop's schedule too will likely transform over time. The challenge in Canada as you say is its geography and now the added pressure of duty limitations in some cases work against an ideal schedule.
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Re: SWOOP - A New Hires Future

Post by Airbrake »

Image

Me Greenway has stated on LinkedIn that external applicants are now welcomed. I can only guess that the internal applicants were lower than the requirement.
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Re: SWOOP - A New Hires Future

Post by '97 Tercel »

"We have attractive terms and conditions..."


:lol:
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goingnowherefast
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Re: SWOOP - A New Hires Future

Post by goingnowherefast »

That's great to hear! When was the LOU signed? I must have missed it. :rolleyes:
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lostaviator
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Re: SWOOP - A New Hires Future

Post by lostaviator »

I agree with the sentiment above about the ship slowing changing course with a few new faces around here. HOWEVER, there is just one face I think we need to change out to fix this situation and his name has already been mentioned above. Anyone arrogant enough to sit in a classroom and tell the class "we don't need WestJet" when we are paying your salary, needs to be shown the door if moral is ever to improve after this whole Swoop business. He was GGG's find, and I don't think his morals and direction align with that of our new top brass.
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