MORE WORDS FROM THE TARMAC

ALL AIRLINES COMING TO TERMS WITH FUEL COSTS
REGIONAL CARRIERS FACING EXTINCTION?


Fuel is now the number one expense for airlines…even topping employee wages and aircraft purchases. Airlines will spend $60 billion for fuel this year, four times more than they spent back in the year 2000. The pressures are enormous to cut costs and create new revenue streams to mitigate the huge increases in expense. Delta is telling the airline world that “Delta holds the best hand in the industry.” Could it be that this confidence in our future is tied to the reality of virtually having no union contracts to honor allowing our management team to take anything they need from us?

Speaking of taking something from employees; in SLC just over 50 ramp employees selected the early-out programs and are in the process of leaving. Roughly half of these shifts are premium full time lines with weekends off. However, full-time employees are not being allowed to advance bid these quality shifts; only ready reserve (casual) part-time employees will be allowed to bid on them in a reduced hour capacity, decreasing our full time lines even further. In SLC, we will now have only 40% of our shifts that are full-time.

To our Northwest employees that are soon to be onboard with us; this is your future without a contract. Expect to have a drastic reduction in full-time status if you make the mistake of voting down the union when given the chance to have a voice in your new Delta future.

Have you heard and do you realize that the value and equity of all American airlines has plummeted since the fuel crisis and economic downturn began? The combined worth of all American airlines is now only $17 billion, according to BusinessWeek; this is roughly what ExxonMobil books in revenues every two weeks.

It has been said that a few weeks ago Delta attempted to terminate Mesa Air’s contract with Delta on the grounds that they hadn’t fulfilled some of the terms of the contract by not sufficiently completing a certain percentage of flights as they were obligated to do. Mesa countered and appealed the decision and temporarily won an injunction to keep Delta from terminating the relationship. Mesa said that the $20 million a month loss in revenue guaranteed to them by Delta would put them out of business. Here’s our question; regional carriers can’t survive without legacy carriers’ contracts and we can’t seem to make money being partnered with them so why are we in business with them? We agree with Delta; let’s begin again to handle our own passengers and get out of business with these uncomfortable, fuel guzzling, mistake prone regional carriers. They are killing us and our reputation. There is a lesson here though – there was an enforceable contract to be relied upon. Why is that good enough for an outside third-party vendor, and not good enough for us?

In the month of May, Delta topped a record by having an 82.9% load factor system wide. But Delta still lost tons of money. Here’s a better idea. Why not return to the old days and charge what it costs to sell our product. We remember the mid-eighties when airlines typically had 50% load factors and still made a profit. There was a reason back then for having Greyhound busy and full; not every city had jet service. It’s definitely a privilege to have your city serviced by an airline. If it was always profitable, then the regional carriers would take up the slack on their own and still make a profit. Let’s quit subsidizing these airlines and price our product for what it is worth!

The airline business is going to have a shakeout sometime this year or next. Jobs are going to be lost and some airlines are probably going to disappear forever. While unions seem the only entity trying to improve the economy and stop layoffs, they also can provide a roadmap on how employees are treated during hard times; call back rights, movement rights etc. Now is the time to help protect and mitigate the coming turbulence and difficulties by voting for the IAM and voting to keep union representation. The time is fast approaching. Let’s all join together and protect our futures.