SHOW UNITY. VOTE NO!

[Core]

Mark my words, the next contract will involve concessions.

[rookiepilot]

Mark my words, the next contract will involve concessions.

AI will not be your friend.

[thepoors]

The simple fact is that AC did not ‘get back’ to the buying power that was in place over two decades ago.

You're right. It's also a simple fact that this TA is the most successful one that Air Canada pilots have ever negotiated and represents the largest increase. Anybody who thought that getting back to 2003 rates adjusted for inflation was possible was/is delusional. Even the American pilots took 2 or 3 contracts to get back to their pre-bankruptcy levels.

Didn't you say you were a No vote a week ago? Why are you now pumping this contract so hard?

Aerkavo is a troll. Look how quickly he tried to backtrack when I called out his lies.

[Aerkavo]

Didn't you say you were a No vote a week ago? Why are you now pumping this contract so hard?

I'm not pumping the TA. I simply stated that it's the best that the AC pilots have ever negotiated.

I don't think I stated that I was a NO vote. I actually haven't voted yet. I'm not satisfied with the TA even though I try to see what good there is in it. I'm also not sure there is a path forward with a NO vote that leads to gains enough to offset the risk.

There are many pilots at my fairly senior level who are solid NO voters. I respect their opinion and am encouraged by them. I'll decide on the morning of the 10th.

[Aerkavo]

Aerkavo is a troll. Look how quickly he tried to backtrack when I called out his lies.

Lighten up Francis! (look it up)

Late at night with a drink in my hand and I dash off a few replies - you find an error and it's a big deal; He's lying!, He's a troll!, He's backtracking! OMG! Yeah, maybe just an error which I corrected when you pointed it out?

[Whatsagambit?]

Didn't you say you were a No vote a week ago? Why are you now pumping this contract so hard?

I'm not pumping the TA. I simply stated that it's the best that the AC pilots have ever negotiated.

I don't think I stated that I was a NO vote. I actually haven't voted yet. I'm not satisfied with the TA even though I try to see what good there is in it. I'm also not sure there is a path forward with a NO vote that leads to gains enough to offset the risk.

There are many pilots at my fairly senior level who are solid NO voters. I respect their opinion and am encouraged by them. I'll decide on the morning of the 10th.

I'm actually a "No" vote on the TA as I think it falls short. I came here for the discussion and got sucked in by thepoors and a few others who seem to think:

A) everything wrong with the world and their personal situation is because of the Boomers
B) everybody senior is a "greedy fu ck"
C) nobody senior has ever experienced any hardship or setback that approaches theirs
D) that the senior pilots are "throwing them under the bus"

I tried to give some background, some history to maybe show their view of the world was flawed or incomplete due to an imperfect understanding of some of this but every attempt was met with "STFU Boomer!" or other profanity-laced replies. One post (from someone else) even referenced killing someone with a pillow and not feeling any remorse which I assume was directed at me.

Out of all the "senior" pilots I have talked to I would guess about 50% are "no" voters. Mostly because they don't think there's enough in the TA to address QoL. The other 50% (that's my unofficial assessment) will vote "yes" but not for the reason put forward here - that it's for the money. The reason the "yes" voters give is that they are fearful the government will intervene and the resulting arbitration will result in less.

I expect the TA will pass however and it's won't be due to the senior guys trying to get a big payday. The senior guys will probably split 50/50. It will pass because of the 600 guys who will get their furlough years back and the pilots in years 3, 4, 5 who will see large increases.

My opinion is that the junior guys should get more and that flat pay should only last as long as probation and that true formula pay should start at year 2. These are the things I put in the survey when it came along.


This was your response to me a week ago. So yeah you did say you were a no vote. Just saying it's a complete 180 from what you were saying a week ago when you are now trying to imply this is the best contract AC pilots have ever negotiated. If the pay doesn't mean that much to senior pilots as you say. I don't see what's changed from the QOL improvements since a week ago. Just weird to see you are all for this contract all of a sudden vs where you stood firmly a week before.

[newlygrounded]

Just voted -Yes
Time to move on.
TS

You guys really just live to work. Crazy. What's the point of a decent salary if you're never off and you're miserably counting the days till retirement while rolling the dice that you're not gonna clamp up at 66. Nutty.

You do you, but I'd be voting no and getting those QOL improvements. Key word there is LIFE.

As an outsider looking in, that depends? What is AC willing to give in on more? QOL or Pay? Seeing how afaik there are basically no QOL improvements that might have a higher cost for them, the idea that people can enjoy their lives outside work probably gums up a lot of their planning.

[Aerkavo]

This was your response to me a week ago. So yeah you did say you were a no vote. Just saying it's a complete 180 from what you were saying a week ago when you are now trying to imply this is the best contract AC pilots have ever negotiated. If the pay doesn't mean that much to senior pilots as you say. I don't see what's changed from the QOL improvements since a week ago. Just weird to see you are all for this contract all of a sudden vs where you stood firmly a week before.

I guess I did. I started off as a big NO, then gradually shifted to the reluctant YES after hearing from the MEC and NC and now I'm back at undecided. I am also following and contributing on three different websites so depending on when and where I posted my sentiment was different. I know many have shifted from one side to the other.

BTW, just to clarify, saying this is the best TA AC pilots have ever negotiated is just a statement of fact. Doesn't mean it's enough or that anyone should vote in favour because of that.

Also, I didn't say the pay "doesn't mean much" for the senior guys. What I was trying to say was that pay alone isn't the driving force. The main thing driving the YES camp, IMO, is the fear of arbitration. Rightly or wrongly many believe that voting NO means we'll end up in arbitration and likely get less than the TA right now.

[mijbil]

I am at WG so while I do not have a direct dog in the AC result, I do because it is now up to AC to set the bar for all airlines.

Here at WG, post merger announcement, we were watching the WS negotiations closely. There was speculation about how we could help out the WS guys if they went on strike such as no one takes any GDO or above MMG flying. We knew we could not refuse to fly and that if WS struck, they would try to offload some of their flying onto us. Anyhow it never happened since they basically stumbled and hit a single instead of a homerun. This is also the opinion of guys I know at WS as well.
Then we all saw the lesson set by the WS engineers. Hmmmm, a strike gets results.
Onto AC. Where I live there is a group of us who get together for coffee and or mountain biking as the individual skeds coincide. We are all ex RCAF drivers. Most are now AC or WS drivers and I'm at WG (until the merge) and there has been some back and forth about this AC TA. One sentiment is that it is not as good as all the union emails led the AC pilots to believe it was going to be.
I have been banging the drum to go on strike since we saw how it worked with the WS engineers. At WG, except for 2020 (CBA#4), when we were all laid off, it has always gone right to the wire and then the company agrees to what we wanted or so I am told by some of those who were on our negotiations team.
Now the not so shiny part. One of the guys in the coffee/biking group is a retired full colonel. He has his full pension, does some contract work for the federal government and must really love school. He is doing his doctorate in business (MBA first and then a PhD). His thesis is basically "Resilience in the Canadian Aviation Industry". He looks at not only how does an airline recover after the sked blows up (Dec 2022 for example) but how is it financially resilient. His airlines of study are AC, WS, and SWA. He was watching the back and forth on our chat group and weighed in with this. Remember he is NOT at an airline so has no dog in the fight, except he wants our industry to succeed. I asked if I could quote his chat remarks on a forum like this and he said go ahead.

Hi fellas, this is an interesting thread and I wanted to offer a couple of thoughts as I am writing my Doctoral dissertation on this stuff.
1.⁠ ⁠A raise for Air Canada pilots is long overdue and you deserve a big one… So I support your cause 100%
2.⁠ ⁠⁠The Air Canada balance sheet is bad though from a business perspective. They have had good numbers recently but.. If you add up all the annual profits and losses over the last 20 years (after their last bankruptcy in 2003 and they cleared their debt) Air Canada makes an average profit of about $70million a year.
3.⁠ ⁠⁠With this proposal for the pilots, I understand it is worth $1.9B over 4 years or an additional $475M in expenses a year. I don’t know where they are going to get the money for that. Passenger revenue is probably the plan.
4.⁠ ⁠⁠Air Canada at Q2 of 2024 reported assets of $30.3B of which $4.4 billion is goodwill and intangible meaning they have $25.9B in actual assets. This is overshadowed by $29.2B in liabilities meaning the company is actually worth negative $3.3B.
5.⁠ ⁠⁠I think the Air Canada executives wish they were in a better financial position than they are to give you more. I also think they might want to go to arbitration because the government would see the state of their finances and tell them they can’t afford to give you what is in the current offer - and the government would tell them to offer a smaller package - risk related to giving AC further leverage to explore another bankruptcy or bailout from the government. Not taking the deal could mean getting less in arbitration because the government says they can’t afford it without a bailout."

He also told me the AC share price is way higher than it should be given their debt. We did not get into why AC is so far in debt if they started post bankruptcy with zero debt. Nor did we discuss why it looks to be so much more expensive to operate an airline in Canada than in the US. I suspect government greed but have not studied it. I do know that the feds looks at big airports like YYZ YVR etc as a cash cow that they have the various airport boards run on their behalf. They - feds - still own the airports but do not manage them but are happy to collect rents is my understanding.

He also had this to say about Southwest, and yes they, SWA, are reducing hours and thus pay right now, but that is because of Boeing not SWA.

"Southwest Airlines was profitable for 47 straight years, did not lay anyone off in the pandemic, bought 100 new 737’s using cash, has little debt, keeps at least $10Billion in cash for disruptions and pays its CEO around $9 million US. Air Canada pays its CEO around $9 million US also but the results are not the same."

It is a mystery to me why the AC MEC chair suddenly reversed course and offered this TA. Maybe this sheds some light. That said, I still think you should go on strike. Certainly you should stop the circular firing squad sniping.
Cheers. Now time to go biking myself. Too much Czech beer in PRG this summer.

[Whatsagambit?]

I am at WG so while I do not have a direct dog in the AC result, I do because it is now up to AC to set the bar for all airlines.

Here at WG, post merger announcement, we were watching the WS negotiations closely. There was speculation about how we could help out the WS guys if they went on strike such as no one takes any GDO or above MMG flying. We knew we could not refuse to fly and that if WS struck, they would try to offload some of their flying onto us. Anyhow it never happened since they basically stumbled and hit a single instead of a homerun. This is also the opinion of guys I know at WS as well.
Then we all saw the lesson set by the WS engineers. Hmmmm, a strike gets results.
Onto AC. Where I live there is a group of us who get together for coffee and or mountain biking as the individual skeds coincide. We are all ex RCAF drivers. Most are now AC or WS drivers and I'm at WG (until the merge) and there has been some back and forth about this AC TA. One sentiment is that it is not as good as all the union emails led the AC pilots to believe it was going to be.
I have been banging the drum to go on strike since we saw how it worked with the WS engineers. At WG, except for 2020 (CBA#4), when we were all laid off, it has always gone right to the wire and then the company agrees to what we wanted or so I am told by some of those who were on our negotiations team.
Now the not so shiny part. One of the guys in the coffee/biking group is a retired full colonel. He has his full pension, does some contract work for the federal government and must really love school. He is doing his doctorate in business (MBA first and then a PhD). His thesis is basically "Resilience in the Canadian Aviation Industry". He looks at not only how does an airline recover after the sked blows up (Dec 2022 for example) but how is it financially resilient. His airlines of study are AC, WS, and SWA. He was watching the back and forth on our chat group and weighed in with this. Remember he is NOT at an airline so has no dog in the fight, except he wants our industry to succeed. I asked if I could quote his chat remarks on a forum like this and he said go ahead.

Hi fellas, this is an interesting thread and I wanted to offer a couple of thoughts as I am writing my Doctoral dissertation on this stuff.
1.⁠ ⁠A raise for Air Canada pilots is long overdue and you deserve a big one… So I support your cause 100%
2.⁠ ⁠⁠The Air Canada balance sheet is bad though from a business perspective. They have had good numbers recently but.. If you add up all the annual profits and losses over the last 20 years (after their last bankruptcy in 2003 and they cleared their debt) Air Canada makes an average profit of about $70million a year.
3.⁠ ⁠⁠With this proposal for the pilots, I understand it is worth $1.9B over 4 years or an additional $475M in expenses a year. I don’t know where they are going to get the money for that. Passenger revenue is probably the plan.
4.⁠ ⁠⁠Air Canada at Q2 of 2024 reported assets of $30.3B of which $4.4 billion is goodwill and intangible meaning they have $25.9B in actual assets. This is overshadowed by $29.2B in liabilities meaning the company is actually worth negative $3.3B.
5.⁠ ⁠⁠I think the Air Canada executives wish they were in a better financial position than they are to give you more. I also think they might want to go to arbitration because the government would see the state of their finances and tell them they can’t afford to give you what is in the current offer - and the government would tell them to offer a smaller package - risk related to giving AC further leverage to explore another bankruptcy or bailout from the government. Not taking the deal could mean getting less in arbitration because the government says they can’t afford it without a bailout."

He also told me the AC share price is way higher than it should be given their debt. We did not get into why AC is so far in debt if they started post bankruptcy with zero debt. Nor did we discuss why it looks to be so much more expensive to operate an airline in Canada than in the US. I suspect government greed but have not studied it. I do know that the feds looks at big airports like YYZ YVR etc as a cash cow that they have the various airport boards run on their behalf. They - feds - still own the airports but do not manage them but are happy to collect rents is my understanding.

He also had this to say about Southwest, and yes they, SWA, are reducing hours and thus pay right now, but that is because of Boeing not SWA.

"Southwest Airlines was profitable for 47 straight years, did not lay anyone off in the pandemic, bought 100 new 737’s using cash, has little debt, keeps at least $10Billion in cash for disruptions and pays its CEO around $9 million US. Air Canada pays its CEO around $9 million US also but the results are not the same."

It is a mystery to me why the AC MEC chair suddenly reversed course and offered this TA. Maybe this sheds some light. That said, I still think you should go on strike. Certainly you should stop the circular firing squad sniping.
Cheers. Now time to go biking myself. Too much Czech beer in PRG this summer.

Air Canada flew about 50 million passengers per year last year. To put this into context that half billion a year they need for these raises equates to about $10-15 per ticket.

[altiplano]

AIFs, NavCanada, CATSA, landing fees, gate fees, rents, fuel, carbon taxes, excise taxes, currency charges and more all continuously go up and sometimes at many multiples.

Meanwhile this company's poor planning, bloated nonoperational staff, continuously poor execution, bleeding market share, and self inflicted horrible company culture continue on at an even greater intangible cost that isn't readily seen in the financials

Somehow the company maintains it's liquidity and keeps paying its executives at industry leading levels.

Air Canada has more than enough free cash on hand to pay for this Pilot contract and more and still cover executive bonuses and eventual stock buybacks. Not to mention the cost to flip one fleet to a whole new product (mainline 737 to rouge) and another back (L319 to mainline) paint, interiors, etc. on what are essentially new aircraft.

Remember that we don't know the full picture, those financial releases are as bad as they can make them look right now to facilitate their labour negotiation narratives. When the ink is dry on a ratification we will start to see a different picture.

[thrust set]

On the night we received the TA with the summary the sheet I was not impressed, to say the least. I was upset as a lot of you were, but I have since softened my opinion.
I went to the union meetings, spoke with the Facts groups, questioned the lawyers remarks and then sent Dart after Dart why I thought this TA is underwhelming.
What happened? Did they just "cave" in and agree to a TA without pushing past the goal line?
Or after 15 months of negotiating did they see the "Peak point of Max Return ?"
As it stands I’m 47years old left seat A330 and with the raise it will put me over $400K (including training pay and overseas pay and expenses), my DB pension will get a boost from $145K/year to $171K/year and the ratification pay alone is $75K (13 months). So why was I such a reluctant YES? Because my expectations were raised to the point where the “World Class Contract” was really never achievable. My classmate from college is at Delta and mostly flys the A330-900 and a year ago he passed on his hourly pay of $417.54/hr.
That’s without any premiums or profit sharing and if you look hour wise our dollar figure is not too far off (without exchange rates of course and tax considerations ).
Our fixed rate pilots in years 1 and 2 did get a raise of 34.5% and 33.3% respectively. Years three and four is where what equipment you’re on will result in the bigger raises. 77.5% for a 777 F/O to 22.7% as a A330 RP. Is that good enough, not really but one has to remember what you want is the captain slope increased and then increase the percentages for the F/O’s going forward.
So I got to the point where are we if we vote no, and what does the road look like if we travel down it. My research with talking to the union, ALPA lawyers, my member of parliament and even pilots of my vintage that remember FOS and decided the risk/ reward is not worth it. This contract is worth 1.9B and we are back negotiating in 24 months. So I put myself in the reluctant Yes group with a big asterisk that I’m here for 3 possibly 4 more contracts.
Whatever the results tomorrow I’ll support the decision of the majority.

[Hangry]

Vote on the merits of the TA. Not the what if’s. You have absolutely no idea what will happen with a no vote. No one does. Especially the union folks pushing this hard.

Vote the TA.

[thrust set]

Ok,
Didn’t change the outcome.
Still a YES.
I arrived from Europe the other day and everyone going through customs anticipates a YES majority as well.
Even on the forums the discussion has dried up.
TS

[DanWEC]

All this high drama.....

Accepting the first offer for anything is just bizarre. Not too many pilots in business I suppose.

Ah well, will see soon if the face of aviation has changed in Canada.

[bcflyer]

All this high drama.....

Accepting the first offer for anything is just bizarre. Not too many pilots in business I suppose.

Ah well, will see soon if the face of aviation has changed in Canada.

Judging by the people I’ve talked to it won’t have. Looks like AC pilots will let the industry down again.

[newlygrounded]

All this high drama.....

Accepting the first offer for anything is just bizarre. Not too many pilots in business I suppose.

Ah well, will see soon if the face of aviation has changed in Canada.

Judging by the people I’ve talked to it won’t have. Looks like AC pilots will let the industry down again.

well it's official

[bcflyer]

All this high drama.....

Accepting the first offer for anything is just bizarre. Not too many pilots in business I suppose.

Ah well, will see soon if the face of aviation has changed in Canada.

Judging by the people I’ve talked to it won’t have. Looks like AC pilots will let the industry down again.

well it's official

Never been so disappointed to be right.