727driver wrote: It may not be evident at WJ now but I would be careful to pontificate that it would never happen. LOU's are not worth the paper their printed on these days.

It would be foolish to think otherwise.


on your whole post 727driver

BTW, I don't know if any of you had a chance to read the article about Sunwing "Pursuing Profit" in the Jan/Feb edition of Canadian Skies, but let me quote Mark Williams, president of Sunwing Airlines: " (SWG) fighting for a limited number of passengers" and this gem "The vacation charter business is extremely competitive in Canada, and there is surplus capacity in the market".... Did he really say that Well I wonder, Mark, who's been helping to saturate the market for the last five years, and is now complaining about it....sheeesh!!!

One thing to keep in mind is that these foreign pilots flying for SWG, CJ, WS, etc are definitely not cheap labour. If anything, on average for their experience levels, they are better compensated than their Canadian equivalents. The benefit of course is the flexibility of bringing them in for a few months for some work without the worry of training Canadian pilots or looking for work outside that short period. To me this is unacceptable, as as been mentioned above, it's only used to dump capacity in the winter.

Let's be realistic, all the players involved have been in the industry for a while. It is not too difficult for them to adopt fair practices and still make money. Jazz is doing the right thing. Skyservice was doing the right thing with a real reciprocal arrangement on a 1 to 1 basis. What is happening now is simply not acceptable, and I wish there were a way derail this practice.

ng78 wrote:What is happening now is simply not acceptable, and I wish there were a way derail this practice.

There is a way. Everyone should raise hell, knock on every door, write to every person they can think of. Right now most pilot Unions and Companies are united on this subject. It must stop and it must stop in 2012.

In the past month, the only Sunwing pilots I've heard on the radio are definitely not Canadian. Yesterday I heard one trying to read back a reroute in a heavily accented attempt at english. The other pilot ( I assume was the captain, and definitely British) did the read back on the second attempt.

I don't care how cheap a Sunwing vacation is, they won't be getting any of my dollars while they have foreigners working there. Same goes for Canjet.

Capt Paul Strachan, President of ACPA raised the subject in front of the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications on Oct 26, 2011.

http://www.parl.gc.ca/content/sen/commi ... 9122-E.HTM

Capt Dan Adamus, President of ALPA Canada, again raised the subject in front of the same Senate Committee on Nov 30, 2011

http://www.parl.gc.ca/content/sen/commi ... 9221-E.HTM

Realitychex wrote:The big picture is that if a business does not return the cost of capital, it is not a business and is not sustainable.

You sound like Kevin O'Leary, I will only believe in an airline that is willing to provide the absolute lowest cost of labour etc. Therefore you must be willing to take as much out of North America, and ship it off-shore so as to save $$$.

Realitychex wrote:The bottom line is WJX be hiring the better part of 450 Canadian pilots for the WJX product over the next 4-5 years, over and above regular hiring at the mainline.

Do you believe that WJX will be creating 450 new jobs, or taking them away from current operators (ie putting them out of business)?

The bottom line is...

People from Westjet only care about Westjet and their stock price.
People from Canjet only care about Canjet.
People from Sunwing only care about Sunwing.
Etc etc etc

The Temporary foreign worker program won't be stopped anytime soon, companies will continue to shift as much maintenance work as they can to cheaper out-of-country locations, and people will continue to cross the border for cheaper airfares from a country that doesn't tax airports and airlines to death.

SWG hiring 8 pilots next month (April). Many more to come. 30 captain upgrades amongst the ranks for this upcoming winter season.

Things have not been perfect...but getting better. I am happy here. I am sure others will be too.
Very good to see positive movement again.

ea306 wrote:SWG hiring 8 pilots next month (April). Many more to come. 30 captain upgrades amongst the ranks for this upcoming winter season.

Things have not been perfect...but getting better. I am happy here. I am sure others will be too.
Very good to see positive movement again.

That is good news. Hopefully, they will mend their ways.....

Hope it's not just a smoke screen, 30 out of 150 is still a long ways to go, but it's a start.

it's funny how people still go on about "drinking the kool-aid" at westjet. is not making 39,500 at air canada truly drinking the kool-aid? if any company has it all wrong it's ac, not westjet. and they're currently negotiating a 4-year wage freeze for new hires instead of the current 2 year.

and debating the whole foreign pilot hiring? for westjet to grow from 3 airplanes in 1996 to whatever they have now in roughly 15 years and still be successful, well i think that speaks for itself.

and no i don't work for westjet. but anyone who doesn't think they know what they're doing, maybe you're drinking the kool-aid where you work.