monkey wrote:I would argue ALPA is being successful in their approach, Sunwing has hired more pilots this year and will probably have to bring in less. ALPA is more than a one party cause, i know it suits Transat fine to come on here and use them against their competition but there are many more issues than just foreign pilots that ALPA deals with. I paid a lot in ALPA dues last year as well and I would not like to see them taken over by a special interest group.
I don't see a big doom and gloom for the Canadian airline industry, its less than 200 pilots that are taking part in a reciprocal program. The same thing that Sky service did for years, only difference now is Transat is losing money because they are dealing with legacy costs and are not competitive. Personally as an anglophone I would be a lot more sympathetic to Transat's causes if they hired more than a handful of anglophones. I know I would have a slim chance of getting hired because I only speak English.
Takeoff okay - if you want to learn about what your dues are going towards then read a fast pass or two. Don't forget the million we at ALPA lent you to get your contract for your strike fund.
Monkey, you have it all wrong. First of all there is no reciprocity. It's all a big lie.
Sunwing intends to have more aircraft next winter than this past winter, and the hiring they did, was not to increase the proportion of Canadian pilots they will have next year, but to at least maintain the status quo. They will probably not be able to quadruple in size from summer to winter, so they will stick to tripling. They went from 10 to 29 last winter, and if they intend to grow to 36 next winter, they need to add a few full time aircraft to their summer fleet. My guess is 3 aircraft. Why 3 ? Because last year they had 10 aircraft and sent 4 on wet-leases to Europe, leaving six in Canada (and the US). This year they are sending 7 to Europe which is why I predict a fleet increase of 3, so roughly 45 Canadian pilots. Another reason they need more Canadian pilots has nothing to do with ALPA. It's caused by the new Collective Agreement with their pilots which puts restrictions on the time each individual pilot may be deployed to Europe. It seems now that just about everyone will have to pitch in and spend at least some time overseas.
Transat's problem has nothing to do with legacy costs. Our problem is that we had an all wide body fleet. We used all of them very profitably on TransAtlantic routes in the summer, the work they were made for. When winter came around, we used them on southern destinations just to break even, which allowed us to keep our equipment and personnel year round with minimal lay offs. We did lay off some F/A in the winter, not because of less aircraft or less flying, but because the type of rotations we did in the winter, with many turns, required less F/A than the type of rotations we did in the summer, when we had crews scattered all over cities of Europe, on their crew rest.
How Sunwing's arrival affected us was not because of legacy costs, but because they deprived us of the market we had used in the winter to justify keeping our wide bodies and the pilots active and paying for themselves. Their business model brought the price of tickets down so much that instead of breaking even using our wide bodies in the winter, we lost tons of money (50 million), much more than we made with them in the summer. One might think this is a huge a amount, but if we carried 1 million passengers, it comes out to $50 per passenger. Not much considering they pay $1200 to $1500 for a one week package down south.
If it were possible to have accordion fleets with A-330s as it is with B-737s, Transat probably would do just like Sunwing: call its summer program a "seasonal" one, bring its year round 330/310 fleet to 7 aircraft in the winter, and back to 21 in the summer. To triple in size. We would do the same with 737s, go from 5 in the summer, to 15 in the winter, and shuttle our pilots from the A-330 in the summer to the B-737 in the winter, and back the other way every time the season changed.
When the A-320 Neo becomes available, we could use them instead of the 737 and save ourselves the training, both being of the same type rating.
The problem is, I do not think one can just dry-lease 14 A-330s for six months every summer and return them in winter. From whom ? TUI maybe ? But would they not to likely do as they do to Sunwing, and require that an equal proportion of TUI pilots be hired as a condition to letting us use their aircraft ? Probably.
How is Air Transat going to resolve this problem and return to profitability ? Tough times ahead. But legacy costs ? You are dead wrong.
Now as for what ALPA's priorities should be:
CIC has not been enforcing its own regulations, allowing hundred of foreign pilots into Canada under fake reciprocity.
HRSDC allows hundred of foreign pilots into this country under the pretext of them not being type rated. What will it be next: must be type rated and have at least 1000 hours experience with HUDs ? What will you say when Canadian 737 rated pilots are turned down in favor of foreigners because the TUI 737s will be fitted with HUDs and that Sunwing will require experience on those as an excuse to hire the TUI pilots instead ?. Will the HUD requirement be valid and accepted to exclude Canadians ?
Transport Canada is violating its own regulations in order to accommodate these foreign pilots.
CAR 407.01, 705.01, CAR 203.03 to name a few. There are others.
These are all issues ALPA should deal with and in a forceful manner. For ALPA is not lobbying to change existing regulations. If it were. I would agree that this can only be done in a friendly manner over beers and cappuccinos.
But what ALPA needs to do is to ask that EXISTING regulations be enforced which is another ball game. And that must be done forcefully and in courts if required.
