United Airlines Pilots Invite Execs to Tour Their "LAX Ghetto"

From NYCAviation:

Here is the link to the full letter:

http://www.theunfriendlyskies.org/assets/052112-letter.pdf

And this is on the heels of SMI/J sending a letter to the Pilots with his own version of "reality":

http://www.theunfriendlyskies.org/assets/Jeff-letter-to-UAL-Pilots-2-May21.pdf

It is going to be a fun summer for travel on the new United.

So how much do the mainline pilots at UA earn these days?

It's a sad reality but what Jeff is doing at UA has been done before by many companies during mergers & those CEO's were amply rewarded too. I feel for UA flight crews & employees but from personal perspective, UA has made it clear that only that the FF Program they are backing now is for Full Fare pax. Hope it changes for the better for employees & customers alike but for now, this overly entitled 1K went to the dAArk side & is quite happy as an ExP.

How does the change in the FF program affect pilots?

It may not in the short term, but if management behavior towards long-time customers has taken a down turn, no surprise that employees might not fare so well either.

I may be one of the last to have seen or remarked about this, being primarily an AA flyer, but one of the first things that hit me about SMI/J's letter was the address on the letterhead at the bottom: "Wacker" Drive. Don't know why that hit me, but it did.

I'll try to answer.......It doesn't.

Is this based on the answer that your Continental Magic 8 Ball gave you?

I don't understand their plight. Can a pilot explain why voluntary use of Lot E is an issue for them.

-David

UA HQ address, as far as I know. Big street in downtown Chicago.

77 W Wacker Dr, Chicago - UA HQ.

http://goo.gl/maps/zm40

same street as the building formerly known as the Sears Tower is on.

-David

Have you ever been to the loop in Chicago?

Sounds to me like UA management is going to offer the pilots even bigger raises than previously proposed. That's the headline here.

Yes, and I have seen the "Wacker Drive" name for years. Even used it to write the Hyatt CEO (and got a reply, apparently really from him) when the company kept messing up my GP account and normal channels didn't work. All that said, I just think the UA passengers, and the pilots and other unions, probably think HQ is
w(h)acking them around pretty good.

Ahhh no. It's based on the fact that the original topic was where some pilots are sleeping in LA. As much as some might think Uinted's world (and the rest of the world for that matter) doesn't revolve around Frequent Flyers.

I'm not liking what I'm hearing from the pilots union at all.

They don't seem to be negotiating around the key issues, which should be the work rules and pay and some reasonable ratio of RJ vs. mainline flying. DL just got something like that and UA will be crazy not to maintain competitive parity with DL - and just as UA is willing to PO customers for the changes they feel they need as a business, they will not agree to a suicidal contract.

Until the pilots accept this it will continue to be stalemate. I talked to a commuting pilot the other day, and what he said was consistent with their letter. Outsourcing and offshoring and unsafe RJs. They are living in a complete dreamworld if they think UA is going to put mainline aircraft and pay mainline wages on what today are RJ routes. They will either continue to be RJ routes or they won't be flown or there will be a stalemate, and possibly strike.

I hate to watch this and it will suck.

While I have total empathy for the events on 9/11, to cite their contract as only based on 9/11 is revisionist history. I still have bitter memories of the summer of 2000 when the pmUA pilots, who owned 25% of the airline, totally f&*cked the airline and passengers all summer long with non-strike work actions- go slow, call in sick, not accept aircraft. Spent many many hours camping at O'Hare, including with young kids. It cost pmUA over $1 billion in losses that summer, and the pilots were 25% owners. If pmUA had had that $1 billion on 9/11 the airline would have survived better.

Because of the way airline seniority works, the pilots have a big stake in having an economically healthy airline. I wish they could realize this and put the ego and emotion aside and focus on what really matters. It certainly did not help matters that Jeff Smisek got his big pay package and I would have rather he had waited on that until after the employee contracts were done, but his pay package is a tiny number in comparison to pilot costs.

And the statement about furloughs - the longer the pmUA pilots drag their feet, the less flying they will be doing as UA is taking delivery of sCO planes (738's, 739's & 788's) but no new aircraft are coming into sCO and some are being retired

And the LAX parking lot - maybe the FAA should prohibit that and require that every pilot document a residence that they maintain in their domicile city so that they can arrive for work rested as they are required. Commuting and choice of residence are the pilots' responsibility, not the airlines.

+1

What exact RJ incidents are the pointing to? These have been some of the safest planes in the air! Should we bring back the DC-10s?

At LAX now. Flew over the mobile-home pilot ghetto, I am pretty sure, in a parking lot about a quarter mile farther inland from The Proud Bird Restaurant on approach to the southern (Imperial side) runways for landing. Because I read Milepoint, I was an informed traveler

Here's Lot E:

https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&...,-95.677068&sspn=37.819897,76.552734&t=h&z=19

You're right -- it's just East of The Proud Bird.

And hey, they have a prime address on La Cienega

I have a lot of sympathy for organized labor. However, I have to agree that their letter makes little sense. Why all this citing back to 9/11? The airline business has fundamentally changed since then. It's this "in the box" thinking that gives unions a bad name.