May 18, 2000 Hotline

  May 18, 2000

National Officer Visit

New Committee Chairmen

Flight Pay Loss Donations

Delinquents

Negotiations

Pilot Record Improvement Act
Mailings

LAHSO

Thanks to Jay

That’s it for this week. Wear your pin,
wear the green badge, and check back next Thursday night for the next hotline update.

  • National Officer Visit
  • New Committee Chairmen
  • Flight Pay Loss Donations
  • Delinquents
  • Negotiations
  • Pilot Record Improvement Act Mailings
  • LAHSO
  • Thanks to Jay
  MEC Hotline

Good evening, this is MEC Chairman Roger Cox
with tonight’s hotline message for Thursday, May 18th. Tonight topics are:


ALPA President Duane Woerth and Executive Vice President Cress Bernard addressed the MEC
last week during the scheduled MEC meeting. Duane briefed us on global and national issues
and responded to our questions. Both officers are keenly aware of the need to improve our
contract and are strongly supportive of our plans.

Three new chairmen were confirmed by the MEC last week. They are Terry Stadler, Central
Air Safety, Kyle Sims, Membership, and Eric Larsen, Training. Our special thanks go to Jay
Prochnow of Safety and Jeff Blake of Membership who are stepping down. Each of these
gentlemen deserves your appreciation for the many hours they have given us.

As of today we have received 997 one-hour donations from our pilots. This
number far outpaces the numbers we have received in the past. It is only May and already a
majority has pitched in. If you are one of the donators, I suggest you wear your white
“contract 2000” pin and offer encouragement to those who don’t wear the pin. We
appreciate this purely voluntary contribution because it shows how committed you are to an
improved contract. Our Flight Pay Donation Chairman is Mike Mullen. Give him a call: say
thanks, Mike, and sign me up.

There’s another type of contribution that’s not voluntary. Its called dues. Our legal
department will be sending “pending discharge” letters to three pilots who don’t
pay them. There are no free rides. Your MEC members will have the names and amounts owed.

This week the negotiators discussed deadhead, miscellaneous flying, leaves of absence,
reduction in force, furlough, recall, and physical examinations. Pete Neff will update his
KIT message tomorrow and provide more detail.

Last week, the company sent letters to pilots hired after 1996 requesting that they
complete “release of information” forms as provided for under this law. Our
counsel has reason to believe that many of these forms were sent out in error. We expect
America West to issue clarification soon. It appears as if not everyone in the company’s
chain of command was consulted before letters were mailed. We at ALPA certainly were not
notified. This reminds me of the Los Alamos fire. If the parties responsible for setting
the fire had checked their facts and consulted with those affected first maybe there
wouldn’t be a disaster to clean up. Hold off on filling out those forms. We’ll have more
on this next week.

There’s a new “Critical Juncture” safety publication in the mail to you which
discusses Land and Hold Short clearances. You can preview it by going to the
“alpa.org” web site. A new deadline for national suspension of all lahso has
been set. However, we have word today that FAA officials are conferring with ALPA to begin
modeling the lahso missed approach procedure for 14R at O’hare. This may be a prelude to
addressing our other concerns. Let’s hope so. In the mean time, comply with the FOM and
proceed with caution.

In closing, let me ask you to please go to the Safety Hotline on this KIT system to hear
Jay Prochnow’s remarks. Even though Jay will be devoting more time to personal pursuits
now, his commitment to you and to ALPA will remain as strong as ever. I hope each of you
will stop Jay when you see him and say thanks for a job well done.