We Fly The Flag Podcast - Mandatory Listening

[PositiveRate27]

This episode is mandatory listening for anyone in the industry or anyone reporting on the industry over the next 30 days.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3uxGJM ... xSbaf7vKuA

PR

[acountant]

Wow...now I understand why a 100% raise isn't that unreasonable

Hopefully you guys get what you deserve & your union is ready for the fight of their lives!

[a2btrail]

Great pod with lots of insights.

[cjp]

Having it summarized so succinctly really makes my heart heavy. Single handedly reminded of all the trespasses over the decades and why the Canadian industry has been in shambles since 2003.

Good luck come late September, this will be bloody but worth it.

[FNGYYZ]

Are there any stories out there from pilots who have had to strike? Did you get stranded? How did the union get you home? Was it stressful?

Everyone I talk to is ready to go the distance but just curious about stories of how it was from pilots who have experienced it

[Fanblade]

Are there any stories out there from pilots who have had to strike? Did you get stranded? How did the union get you home? Was it stressful?

Everyone I talk to is ready to go the distance but just curious about stories of how it was from pilots who have experienced it

It’s a shit show. But no one dies

In 1998 the AC pilots went on strike. AC left their pilots all over the world. Threw them out of hotels even.

Everyone eventually, within a few days, made it home.

The union works to get everyone home. Costs are reimbursed. Well reasonable costs. If you go to Disney Land on the way home? It will be denied

[DanWEC]

Anyone have a link to a transcript?

Endless "temporary" concessions to the company made new normal and permanent, and never anything in return on the upswing.... infuriating.

[FNGYYZ]

Are there any stories out there from pilots who have had to strike? Did you get stranded? How did the union get you home? Was it stressful?

Everyone I talk to is ready to go the distance but just curious about stories of how it was from pilots who have experienced it

It’s a shit show. But no one dies

In 1998 the AC pilots went on strike. AC left their pilots all over the world. Threw them out of hotels even.

Everyone eventually, within a few days, made it home.

The union works to get everyone home. Costs are reimbursed. Well reasonable costs. If you go to Disney Land on the way home? It will be denied

Good to know!

How large was the pilot group then?

[khedrei]

According to the podcast, about 2000.

[FNGYYZ]

According to the podcast, about 2000.

Wow!

I couldn't imagine the planning and the size of a team needed for a pilot group triple the size now.

[PositiveRate27]

A Coles notes of the podcast:

- Prior to bankruptcy protection of all legacy carriers in North America post 9/11, AC was comparable in wages and working conditions to all legacy carriers
- In bankruptcy, Air Canada pilots lost a week of vacation, took a company wide 15% pay cut and a further 5% cut to the A320
- Post bankruptcy protection most US legacy carriers earned less than AC
- According to a Raymond James study, the US legacy carriers returned to their pre-bankruptcy wages in 2019, Air Canada did not.
- Due to a poor “small jet strategy” pursued by AC vs up-gauging at the US carriers combined with the financial crisis of 07/08, AC was again teetering on bankruptcy by 2009
- a contract was forced on the pilots through an arbitrated Forced Offer Selection contract in 2011

Pilots losses:
- DB pension for new hires, Flat pay increase from 2 years to 4 years, FO and RP pay permanently reduced via a reduction in % of captain pay, Rouge was started which brought further hourly pay degradation.
- By 2013 the chaos of the previous 10 years became a problem for AC management making it difficult to secure loans to up-gauge the fleet and undue their “small jet strategy” unless they could prove to the lenders they had labour stability
- In 2014 the pilots agreed to a 10 year, cost neutral deal to provide the stability AC management needed to fix the airline.
- This meant locking in the bankruptcy and post financial crisis losses for 10 more years.

20 years post bankruptcy the Air Canada pilots are still looking for their first post bankruptcy recovery contract. The US carriers have had 2 full bargaining cycles since bankruptcy, whereas AC pilots have not.

Items lost over 20 years and not returned:

- DH now paid half wage down from full wage.
- Qualifying for disability takes 30 days up from 7 days
- Large permanent FO/RP pay cuts in the form of reduction in % of captain pay
- Loss of DB pension for new hires
- 1.5% contribution to a fully funded DB pension while the company no longer contributes
- Loss of DB pension indexing
- Loss of a week of vacation
- Loss of scope between 50-76 seat jets
- An extra 5% paycut for the A320
- Reduction of Embraer pay (paying far less than the DC-9 it replaced) which now impacts the A220 formula pay
- Disappearance of block holder rights
- Rouge further eroding compensation and working conditions
- 10% wage reduction for the 767 Freighter
- PBS optimizer C which now unstacks block holders schedules to cram in inefficient pairings instead of awarding pilots requested trips in order of seniority and covering inefficient pairings with rsvs
- Loss of 2 STAT days
- Loss of credit for 24/48 days attached to beginning or end of vacation periods
- Drop of Duty Period Guarantee from 4hr45 mins on all fleets to 4hr25. The DC-9 dropped from 5hrs to 4:25. (On average it resulted in 2 full extra days work per month for the same credit)
- Flat salary extended from 2 years to 4. In 2003 a year 3 NB FO earned $94/hr (equivalent of $160/hr in 2024 when adjusted for inflation). Today in 2024 a year 3 NB FO earns $81/hr.
- A year 3 NB FO will need a 95% pay increase just to get back to AC’s 2000 pay rates adjusted for inflation.

Soft gains that are required to improve quality of life
- A Duty Period Guarantee vs a desired DAILY pay guarantee means any time we have 3-4 day trips with layovers over 24hrs, we are away from home but are only getting paid for 3 of the 4 days because only 3 duty periods occur.
- Commuter policy - currently only airline in North American to not have a policy
- We train on days off over and above the 16 day cap for block holders

Our contract is not 10 years old, it’s really 20 years old. It is a post bankruptcy contract and is not meant to be sustainable for quality of life long term.

The guest’s desired take away from the podcast:

“The biggest takeaway I hope happens is this; The vast disparity between Air Canada Pilot’s wages and working conditions and those of our peers south of the boarder is not the historical norm. Historically our wages and working conditions have been very similar. The current difference between Air Canada Pilots and our US peers is that their wages and working conditions have recovered from bankruptcy where our wages and working conditions have not.

Our employer wants everybody to believe a different narrative. They want everybody to believe that the substandard wages are the new norm, or a “Canadian normal” as they like to put it. That is simply not the case.”


I’ll finish this post with a quote from former Air Canada CEO, Calin Rovinescu after the huge cuts arbitrated 2011 FOS deal:

“This agreement preserves our pilot’s compensation and benefits in the top quartile of the North American industry and will help ensure sustainability”




North American legacy carriers have always been the comparator. Don’t let the company now convince you otherwise. Vote YES to a WCC means a YES to strike.

[Bede]

Good podcast.

Good for the MEC to start focusing on that all you're asking for is your pre-bankrupcy contract adjusted for inflation. This is a more compelling argument that the US comparison. Also, I'd be focusing on the value that pilots bring to AC. AC earns about $2B/yr in income. That's a lot of value that's created.

Soft gains that are required to improve quality of life
- A Duty Period Guarantee vs a desired DAILY pay guarantee means any time we have 3-4 day trips with layovers over 24hrs, we are away from home but are only getting paid for 3 of the 4 days because only 3 duty periods occur.

I know I'll get roasted, but this doesn't help much. The more constraints you put in the optimizer, the poorer the quality of the solution. (You can read up on linear programming, optimization, etc. for more details.) At WJ, we have good schedules but crap pairings. The poor pairing construction seemed to start around the time the new duty regs and the RIGs came in force.

- Commuter policy - currently only airline in North American to not have a policy

All you want is a commuter policy that says that you'll make your best effort and show up rested. Anything else, the company will weaponize against you. We (at WJ) used to have a policy saying that we'd have a backup flight. The idea was that if you missed work, as long as you followed the policy you wouldn't get disciplined. Our jr. managers weaponized it and started disciplining pilots who showed up to work on time, but didn't follow have a backup flight. (Happened to me.)

[Fanblade]

Bede,

Daily Guarantees won’t mess with PBS. A 5:15 Daily guarantee would eliminate swapping. It is the sigle thing that would make most of our PBS issues disappear

As for you commuter comment? Bang on. The AC management loves sticks. The last thing we want is to hand them one.

[Red1]

Except that most carriers don't have a min daily credit, they have an average daily credit... But go for the daily credit, anything would help. And sorry Bede, but trip rigs do and will help a lot, WJA simply need better RIGS. Great pod cast.

[Bede]

Daily Guarantees won’t mess with PBS. A 5:15 Daily guarantee would eliminate swapping. It is the sigle thing that would make most of our PBS issues disappear

That's a common belief, but from my understanding, it's incorrect. The PBS is a different optimizer than the pairing generation optimizer. The pairing generation optimizer optimizes for cost. If you make something more expensive (min daily credit, RIG's), it will cheap out somewhere else. The optimizer will just screw with something else. Instead of having a handful of crap pairings, and the rest decent, it makes a bunch of mediocre pairings. If you're having issues with the PBS, one solution is to have the solver leave a greater number of pairings unassigned. These are the bottom of the barrel in crap and the company can assign them as reserve or OT.

**I'll put a caveat in my remarks. Scheduling optimization is slightly outside my area of expertise, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but I probably still know a bit more about optimization and linear programming that the average pilot.

[Fanblade]

That's a common belief, but from my understanding, it's incorrect. The PBS is a different optimizer than the pairing generation optimizer. The pairing generation optimizer optimizes for cost. If you make something more expensive (min daily credit, RIG's), it will cheap out somewhere else. The optimizer will just screw with something else. Instead of having a handful of crap pairings, and the rest decent, it makes a bunch of mediocre pairings. If you're having issues with the PBS, one solution is to have the solver leave a greater number of pairings unassigned. These are the bottom of the barrel in crap and the company can assign them as reserve or OT.

**I'll put a caveat in my remarks. Scheduling optimization is slightly outside my area of expertise, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but I probably still know a bit more about optimization and linear programming that the average pilot.

I think we might be talking the same thing and you might not really realize just how bad our pairing are on the narrow body.

According to our PBS people the amount of 4 day pairing worth less than 5 hours a day is the main culprit. We have an extraordinary amount of 4 day pairing worth 16-18 hours.

It’s these pairings that are triggering everyone at 16 days and unstacking of requested days off.

Those pairings instantly become worth 21 hours with a daily average guarantee of 5:15. Or possibly higher with a daily guarantee. Instantly unstacking stops.

Agreed though. Getting rid of optimum C would help too.

[daedalusx]

All you want is a commuter policy that says that you'll make your best effort and show up rested. Anything else, the company will weaponize against you. We (at WJ) used to have a policy saying that we'd have a backup flight. The idea was that if you missed work, as long as you followed the policy you wouldn't get disciplined. Our jr. managers weaponized it and started disciplining pilots who showed up to work on time, but didn't follow have a backup flight. (Happened to me.)

Is that still ongoing ?
If so, utterly unnecessary, antagonistic disgraceful behaviour.

[DBC]

Daily Guarantees won’t mess with PBS. A 5:15 Daily guarantee would eliminate swapping. It is the sigle thing that would make most of our PBS issues disappear

That's a common belief, but from my understanding, it's incorrect. The PBS is a different optimizer than the pairing generation optimizer. The pairing generation optimizer optimizes for cost. If you make something more expensive (min daily credit, RIG's), it will cheap out somewhere else. The optimizer will just screw with something else. Instead of having a handful of crap pairings, and the rest decent, it makes a bunch of mediocre pairings. If you're having issues with the PBS, one solution is to have the solver leave a greater number of pairings unassigned. These are the bottom of the barrel in crap and the company can assign them as reserve or OT.

**I'll put a caveat in my remarks. Scheduling optimization is slightly outside my area of expertise, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but I probably still know a bit more about optimization and linear programming that the average pilot.

We have pairings so unproductive that I believe a 24 day block could be legal if someone bid to be able to work 6 in a row in a 31 day month.

We have a 3 calendar day pairing on the WB fleet worth 10:40 with no cap on days worked.

The calendar day credit guarantee, or whatever you want to call, it is critical to the bottom of the WB fleets, and would remove all swapping on the NB fleets if the credit was high enough.

The bottom NB schedules will theoretically be worse than they currently are, but 16 days of pairings that everyone else bids to avoid would still be a legal block no matter what.

You are right in the sense that once a cost is added, the optimizer will take some of the best flying and mix it with some trash, when legal and able.

[Rooster69]

All you want is a commuter policy that says that you'll make your best effort and show up rested. Anything else, the company will weaponize against you. We (at WJ) used to have a policy saying that we'd have a backup flight. The idea was that if you missed work, as long as you followed the policy you wouldn't get disciplined. Our jr. managers weaponized it and started disciplining pilots who showed up to work on time, but didn't follow have a backup flight. (Happened to me.)

Is that still ongoing ?
If so, utterly unnecessary, antagonistic disgraceful behaviour.

That would absolutely happen at AC. No doubt whatsoever!

[digits_]

All you want is a commuter policy that says that you'll make your best effort and show up rested. Anything else, the company will weaponize against you. We (at WJ) used to have a policy saying that we'd have a backup flight. The idea was that if you missed work, as long as you followed the policy you wouldn't get disciplined. Our jr. managers weaponized it and started disciplining pilots who showed up to work on time, but didn't follow have a backup flight. (Happened to me.)

Is that still ongoing ?
If so, utterly unnecessary, antagonistic disgraceful behaviour.

Is it though? I am sure that the devil is in the details, which I admit I don't know, but if the contract stipulates that you need a backup flight, is it then not normal that the company would be pissed off if you increase the chance of missing your pairing because you did not provide said backup?

To an outsider, it's the commuting that sucks, not necessarily the company's attitude in this case.

[RoAF-Mig21]

Great podcast.

It's shocking to hear that, adjusted for inflation, some wages are almost half of what they used to be 20 years ago.

[Bede]

Is it though? I am sure that the devil is in the details, which I admit I don't know, but if the contract stipulates that you need a backup flight, is it then not normal that the company would be pissed off if you increase the chance of missing your pairing because you did not provide said backup?

That happened years ago. The intent was that if you miss the flight, if you have a backup you won't be disciplined. It turned into managers looking up random commuters travel history and making sure they had a back up flight.

[digits_]

Is it though? I am sure that the devil is in the details, which I admit I don't know, but if the contract stipulates that you need a backup flight, is it then not normal that the company would be pissed off if you increase the chance of missing your pairing because you did not provide said backup?

That happened years ago. The intent was that if you miss the flight, if you have a backup you won't be disciplined. It turned into managers looking up random commuters travel history and making sure they had a back up flight.

Not trying to be dense, but would that not be normal? If you need a backup flight, and you don't have one, isn't that on the pilot?

Am I missing something?

[cdnavater]

Is it though? I am sure that the devil is in the details, which I admit I don't know, but if the contract stipulates that you need a backup flight, is it then not normal that the company would be pissed off if you increase the chance of missing your pairing because you did not provide said backup?

That happened years ago. The intent was that if you miss the flight, if you have a backup you won't be disciplined. It turned into managers looking up random commuters travel history and making sure they had a back up flight.

Not trying to be dense, but would that not be normal? If you need a backup flight, and you don't have one, isn't that on the pilot?

Am I missing something?

Yes, the part you’re missing is, the commute policy covers you if you DON’T make it to work, if you miss your check in and followed the policy you are covered and protected from discipline.
If a pilot chooses to only have one flight but still makes it to work on time that is their choice to roll the dice and if it backfires, they would be subject to discipline, only if it backfires.
I personally have commuted for all of my nearly twenty years and have never not had at least two but quite often three flights and most of the time I prefer early morning reports so I go the day before but that is my choice for a stress free commute. Some have the stomach for a one flight commute, I couldn’t do it.
Let me put it this way, if you have a two hour drive to work under normal traffic but rush hour is a three or more drive, should the company be able to check and see if you left your house with enough time during a rush hour check in? If you don’t give yourself enough time to get to work, that’s on you and you face the consequences, no different as far as I’m concerned.

[digits_]

That happened years ago. The intent was that if you miss the flight, if you have a backup you won't be disciplined. It turned into managers looking up random commuters travel history and making sure they had a back up flight.

Not trying to be dense, but would that not be normal? If you need a backup flight, and you don't have one, isn't that on the pilot?

Am I missing something?

Yes, the part you’re missing is, the commute policy covers you if you DON’T make it to work, if you miss your check in and followed the policy you are covered and protected from discipline.
If a pilot chooses to only have one flight but still makes it to work on time that is their choice to roll the dice and if it backfires, they would be subject to discipline, only if it backfires.

Ahhhhh ok. I see, that makes sense. It's an extra way to protect you but it's not supposed to be an obligation.

Thank you!