Important Trip Trade System Update

APA Pilots,

As many of you are already aware, management’s trip trade system allowed many July trips to turn “green” last night, resulting in more than 2,000 sequences and 37,000 flying hours to be dropped into open time. Once again, AA’s operational mismanagement is at the heart of an issue that will soon go public.

We have been here before. There is an immediate benefit to agreeing on a win-win solution to finally fixing our trip trade system, a problem essential to improving our quality of life.

We have had realistic proposals at the negotiating table for more than three and a half years, which include minimum pre-plotted holiday (premium) pay incentives and a sliding premium scale that allows management to use variable incentives to fill open time. This is how most of corporate America fills their schedules for the holidays – through incentives, not force.

Management has simply rebuffed our efforts, effectively charging us to fix their problems by reducing other contractual “asks” against their perceived cost of this one, as if we would be the only ones to benefit. Let’s hope that given the crisis they have once again created, they can now see the wisdom in collaboratively working on immediate solutions.

I encourage Mr. Isom to re-engage us, and hope that you, the front-line leaders of this airline, continue to fly safely and keep distractions like these “in the map case” as we negotiate solutions that will enhance your quality of life. Fly safe!

In Unity,

CA Ed Sicher
President, Allied Pilots Association