The NTSB published its report on the Continental Connection / Colgan Air 3407 crash.  This event, and the NTSB report that followed, has served as the pretext for the overhaul of the flight time and duty time limitations by the FAA.

The question that we are asking is, “Did the FAA/NTSB address the correct problem, or are they deflecting blame away from the real issue?”

We have developed a 50 question quiz that explores this issue.  All the facts come directly from the NTSB report.  The “conventional wisdom” does not match the facts.

Please read the report and take the quiz.  Each question is answered with a discussion full discussion of the issue.

You may find the NTSB report HERE.

You may find the quiz and discussion HERE.

Fly safe.

…and we are not talking about American Airlines.

(For a PDF version of this post, click HERE)

Gary Kelly, CEO of Southwest Airlines, recently penned a letter to his “warriors” at the “maverick” Southwest Airlines. It started out as a review of the dysfunction and resultant bankruptcy at his cross-town rival, American Airlines. The letter degenerated into a sales pitch on how Southwest employees, particularly pilots, need to trim costs and bump up productivity, lest they meet the same fate as employees at American Airlines.

This is clearly a shot across the bow of the pilots of Southwest Airlines, however due to the tradition of trustworthy management, many employees may not see this for what it is. A Southwest Airlines pilot has never had to watch his back, but that appears to be changing.

We have reposted many of the paragraphs in Kelly’s letter and have commented on what he wrote. We believe Kelly’s letter is a very ominous sign for pilots everywhere, especially at Southwest. It shores up our belief that the American Airlines bankruptcy isn’t the last chapter in the ATA’s war on employees, but the first skirmish in the next campaign of the same war. This 30 year war is by no means over, nor is its outcome certain.

We start a few paragraphs into Kelly’s letter.

Just as I wrote in an article in LUVLines after 9/11: While an airline needs to be good at many things to be successful; low costs and profitability, ultimately, mean the difference between survival or not. To be clear, American Airlines, as you knew it, will not survive. Bankruptcy, by definition, means that it will be radically reorganized, or it will be completely shut down and liquidated.

There are more things about the airline business than “low costs.” Revenue is just as important, if not more so, than “low costs.” At some point, you must have an airline people desire to use for their travel needs. Incremental costs are acceptable if the incremental revenue justifies it. Wouldn’t anyone increase their costs $20 if they could gain an $35 in revenue? Of course. A Fairmont Hotel certainly has higher costs than a Motel 6, but it also is more profitable, because it commands higher revenue.

Why no mention of revenue, but lots of ink on costs? Easy. Operational employees are only capable of partially controlling costs, by volunteering part of their paycheck or quality of life to the cause. They can’t influence revenue.

That’s management’s job.

Why did AMR file for bankruptcy protection? Costs were certainly part of the issue, but revenue was a much larger portion of the problem. They were losing their higher premium passengers to more comprehensive networks.

American isn’t the only airline not to survive without bankruptcy. Let’s look back to 1989 the year Southwest became the newest member of the old major airline club, based on annual revenues. All the majors from 1989 have gone bankrupt. Pan Am. Eastern. Braniff. Continental. America West. TWA. US Air. United. Delta. Northwest. And now, American. Every single one failed. Why? Not because of Customer Service, but because of high costs. Great Customer Service cannot overcome high costs. That is the imperative I wrote about a decade ago: low costs.

-Pan Am had no domestic feed for its foreign operations (revenue problem).
-Eastern went out of business because Lorenzo was destroying the airline as a means to grind the employees down “to reduce costs.” The employees decided to take him down with them.
-Continental was caught in the vortex of Lorenzo’s malfeasance.
-TWA – managerial malfeasance
-Northwest – regional jets and labor relations
-United – regional jets and stock swindle
-Delta – regional jets
-American – regional jets, labor relations, and managerial incompetence

Southwest does not have managers trying to fund airline operations through employee give-backs nor are they trying to outsource labor to the lowest bidder while attempting to cut costs with capital equipment carrying the highest CASM in the history of the industry. They treat their employees as assets, rather than inert burdens they carry; give good value to the passenger; and have steadfastly avoided miscapitalizing their fleet with a manifestly idiotic gimmick to whipsaw labor while irritating premium passengers.

Notice that Kelly said “Great Customer Service cannot overcome high costs.” Why would he say that? It is because Southwest routinely leads the industry in customer satisfaction, so there is little room for employees to enhance customer service to protect their W-2s. Kelly is clearly saying that the only option is cutting costs.

Southwest Airlines is the only major airline from 1989 that has survived this tumultuous industry without bankruptcy. Why? Because our low costs have preserved our profits. Period.

Wrong! Southwest has avoided the revolving door of bankruptcy and employee relations disasters because it has treated its “warriors” with respect and dignity. In return, Southwest’s “warriors” have never had any reason to not trust management. They can take risks, offer flexibility, and know they won’t end up in arbitration proceedings with management/government stacking the deck against them and walking away with tortured interpretations of the clear text of their contract or the law.

Kelly has no idea how good he has it, and he is on the verge of blowing it.

Southwest became the industry leader because it was fighting against its competition at the same time its competition was fighting its own employees.

If American Airlines emerges from the ashes of bankruptcy, and I believe they will, you can be certain their costs will be substantially lower, especially their labor and aircraft costs. If they can’t achieve that, they will cease to exist (like Pan Am, Eastern, Braniff, and TWA). If they do emerge from bankruptcy, as I believe they will, they will join the New United, New Delta, and New US Airways as giant, lower-cost airlines. They are, collectively, much more formidable competition than their predecessors. The term, “Legacy Carrier,” no longer will apply.

In the good old days, when the Legacy Carriers costs were higher, we brought our low costs and low fares to their markets, stimulated demand, and expanded dramatically. Now, while our costs are still lower, our advantage has been cut in half. We currently do not have a sufficient cost advantage to stimulate the market because our fares are much closer to our New Airline competitors. These New Airlines, reconstituted from their Legacy ashes, join younger, lower-cost airlines like JetBlue and Frontier, as well as an even newer group of ultra low-cost airlines like Allegiant and Spirit. As predicted, the industry has transformed to lower costs.

Thus begins the “managing of expectations.” This is always the first step in moving for the employee give-backs. The “New Airline” competitors have eaten into Southwest’s cost advantage and now Southwest says its business model must change (“We currently do not have a sufficient cost advantage to stimulate the market”).

Of course, one major point of low costs is to drive profits. The old airline industry was famous for not achieving profits, which rendered them very weak competitors. The New Airline industry is profitable. In fact, the New Delta and New United had better profit margins than Southwest in the third quarter, despite the magnificent gains we’ve made over the last four years with our Customer Experience enhancements and our revenues. On that front, we have outperformed all competitors. We have a cost challenge, and it is one that looms large.

This cost challenge “looms large.” That is why Kelly is talking to employees, because labor is their number two expense. Absent another prescient fuel hedge, labor is going to be asked to take the brunt of the cuts or the brunt of the blame.

History says they will take both.

American Airlines lost its way. It made promises it could not keep. It tried very hard to avoid bankruptcy. As every other major airline used that tortured strategy, American became higher and higher cost relative to the New Airline industry. Just when we thought 2011 would be safe from the perils of the 2009 recession, American is posting another massive loss. The New Delta and the New United are producing strong profits. Why? You know lower costs. It puts New Delta and New United in a position to grow from here. American has shrunk dramatically this past decade. They will shrink more. That may provide Southwest some opportunities to capture more Customers and grow; however, we will have to compete with a stronger marketplace for Americans customers. You know how much harder that is because of our diminished cost advantage.

More talk about their diminished cost advantage. Kelly is setting up his employees, particularly pilots, to fix this problem. Southwest pilots were able to drive cost cutting in pilot labor due to increased productivity. SWAPA would be well advised to understand that “productivity” isn’t just how many hours/trips you work in a month, or how fast you can turn a plane, but how much each of those hours/trips cost in terms of dollars.

If pilot “A” works 95 hours per month for 75% of the hourly pay that pilot “B” works, and pilot “B” also works 95 hours per month, pilot “B” is 33% less productive than pilot “A.”

Southwest pilots are already very close to knocking on the ceiling of lawful productivity. When the new Flight Time/Duty Time limits come out, with the 9 hour “hard time” daily limits, the public relations departments will start squawking about how “Southwest pilots work nine or ten days per month and make in excess of $200,000 annually at a time most Americans are suffering from economic uncertainty.”

If SWA pilots think they can strike, they need to think again. If a Democrat administration wouldn’t release American Airlines pilots after five years of impasse, what makes anyone think a Republican administration would release SWAPA against the backdrop of those kinds of P-R blasts? They are now too big to strike. That’s another “club” they have joined.

We can play this game until all of us are working to the FARs (we are pretty close) and we undercut one another until we are at minimum wage. The only way management could squeeze more productivity would be to get the minimum wage lowered or the FARs raised.

The juiciest target in the entire passenger transportation industry was the American Airlines pension. That’s all but gone. The next juiciest target is the W-2 of Southwest pilots. We are not the only one who realize this – the ATA is well aware of it.

American’s employees will make many sacrifices. It is convenient to lay the blame at the feet of Americans management. Certainly, they deserve their share of the blame. But, just as employees deserve credit when a company does well, so do they deserve some of the blame when it does not. American has outdated and inflexible work rules that render it less productive than the New Airline industry. That’s just one example of how the company lost its way, and just one example of what is imperative to change, lest they be shut down.

To set the record straight, American’s employees (as well as those at United, US Airways, Continental, Delta, and Northwest) HAVE made many sacrifices, and they will get a Section 1113 term sheet for their efforts. It is convenient to lay the blame at management’s feet, because it is where it belongs.

Kelly now lays the foundation to go after Southwest’s labor protections and quality of life. This is a pretty thinly veiled threat that if Southwest employees, particularly pilots, don’t play ball, Southwest will enter the conga line into bankruptcy. Labor friendly work rules = liquidation. It is fanciful to contemplate liquidation for Southwest, as it is the strongest airline over the past 15 years. Things change fast; just ask any long-term employee of American, United, Delta, or Eastern.

For us, the bottom line is simple. There may be some near-term opportunities for Southwest as American shrinks and is distracted with the human struggle of bankruptcy. American will be governed through a bankruptcy court and a creditor committee, and it will be sheer hell for them. Once they get through it though, several years from now, they will join the New Airline industry as a much more formidable competitor. We need to prepare ourselves better right now for this New Airline industry.

Is Kelly asking for Southwest “warriors” to give now, while American is on the mat? We don’t know and it would be foolish for him to attempt it. The Southwest culture drives its profits. It is that goodwill the employees need to protect. Look at what happened to Delta, after its employees bought the company a 767 and new-era management took over in the 90s. Once the culture goes, the bankruptcy and labor relations merry-go-round certainly follows.

Name one airline that the employees saved from bankruptcy via concessions. Up through November 28, 2011, you could name “American Airlines,” and no others.

So, what if we don’t? As stated earlier, Southwest is the only 1989 major airline that has survived without bankruptcy. Why? Because our low costs have preserved our profits.

American used to say that.

Our labor rates are now, far and away, the highest in the industry. Through bankruptcy, very large New Airlines have emerged with lower rates than us and better productivity. Next to fuel, labor is our highest expenditure. We can’t have lower overall operating costs if our labor costs aren’t lower. We cant have lower labor costs if we aren’t more productive. The good news is that we have a lot of opportunities to improve our productivity, eliminate waste, and preserve our pay rates and benefits for the foreseeable future. Its crucial that we take advantage of those opportunities.

That’s a pretty clear ultimatum, as far as Southwest corporate communications go. Kelly is very, very clearly saying that labor is going to have to come down to stay out of bankruptcy, since he has, “far and away,” the highest labor rates in the industry. His heavy maintenance is done offshore and his flight attendants are not at the top of the industry, by any stretch.

That leaves one large labor group that has, without a doubt, the highest W-2s in the industry. They had better get very smart in a very big hurry, or they will be outflanked by the same tactics the rest of the managerial teams used – the government and the courts.

SWAPA, are you paying attention to this? You are not immune. At one time, Eastern pilots were on top. American pilots had their day. We all know about how United and Delta pilots once led the industry.

You now lead. All those other pilot groups were eventually outflanked by the courts, RLA, and soulless management. To think you are smarter than they were will certainly result in your fall. All you have had is the quirk of good timing and a management team that has yet to betray your trust. Trust only goes so far and timing always runs out.

The imperative I spoke about nearly a decade ago has been fulfilled by our remaining, formerly “Legacy,” competitors. The imperative is now squarely upon Southwest. I know you all understand the evidence hundreds of airlines perished since deregulation. No 1989 major airline has survived without bankruptcy except Southwest. We are the maverick. We are different. That’s how we have prevailed with a Warrior Spirit, a “Never Give In” resolve, and a burning desire to be the very best. The sloth-like industry you remember competing against is now officially dead and buried. We fought them, and we won.

Won? Perhaps. It is more accurate to say that Southwest management seized upon a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to defeat an army whose officers were preoccupied with decimating the troops and looting the war chest, in an effort to increase morale. That doesn’t take much talent.

What is important to take from this is that the old “enemy” is no longer. If Southwest is to continue its trajectory, where is this new enemy? Kelly tells us.

Now, the enemy is our own cost creep, our own legacy-like productivity, and our own inefficiencies. Fighting this cost enemy is an imperative to remain the Maverick. We will fight, and we will remain the Maverick.

Remember this when he asks for more productivity enhancements. Southwest paychecks and family time are the new “enemy.” SWAPA, are you paying attention, or are you asleep at the switch, as ALPA and APA were when outsourcing began, or during the introduction of the “B Scale,“ or when Lorenzo brought the sword?

It is important to say that low costs, alone, will not win the day. Our People are most important. It is our People who produce this great low-cost airline. It is our People who serve our Customers in an outstanding way. And, it is our People who will continue to transform Southwest with four big initiatives: AirTran, All-New Rapid Rewards, B737-800, and a new reservation system.

How touching. He knows that Southwest values its people. He just finished a lengthy letter to these same “people/warriors/mavericks” telling them they will have to dig deep and cut costs, lest they end up spending a Thanksgiving hearing American, United, and Delta employees being “thankful” they don’t work at Southwest.

Finally, please remember, all the great things our People do will be for naught without low costs. Just ask the old “Legacy” airlines. I am very grateful and very thankful for all of you.

Nice close. All their history and effort will be “for naught” if they don’t cut costs. This is a direct appeal to the pilots, because Southwest pilots are the very same as the rest of us, and they can’t stand to be the cause of failure. They won’t sleep well if their fellow employees blame them for the mess. Give, or everything will be “for naught.” If you want to twist the knife in a pilot, just tell him someone he has never met is disappointed in the failure he caused.

Yes, this is the season of giving. American Airlines employees will “give” at the direction of a bankruptcy court. Southwest pilots are being led down that same path.

There are those who have, and those who will.

SWAPA had better get smart in a big hurry. Rather than adopting a “beggar thy neighbor” approach to their work, perhaps they can join in an effort to stop the race to the bottom, while they are on top. End this decades long war against airline pilots on terms favorable to pilots – all pilots. They have the luxury of either learning from our mistakes or repeating our mistakes.

We at OPERATION ORANGE never thought Southwest management would be so foolish as to take this course. We didn’t believe Southwest pilots could be motivated to join our efforts, but perhaps we were mistaken.

Section 4 of our proposed legislative draft puts the minimum compensation very close to what Southwest pilots presently make. It builds in work rules and anti-pilot pushing into the law.

There is something there for all pilot groups. We would like to welcome our brethren at Southwest into the effort.

For more information, please visit OPERATIONORANGE.org

Injunction Junction, What‘s Your Function?

A review of the US Airways Injunction

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

     -various attributions.

The latest casualty of airline pilot unions running into traps set by the management-government axis is USAPA.  We can’t fault pilots for trying to remedy their seemingly hopeless situation by whatever means appear to be available to them; we only question their tactics.  Their hearts are in the right place, but their minds have not caught up to 21st Century labor relations.

OPERATION ORANGE is trying to fix that.

As we all know by now, a federal judge has agreed with just about every complaint lodged by US Airways management against the union representing the “East” pilots in its operations.  This should come as a shock to absolutely nobody who has been paying attention since Judge Kendall delivered his ruling in 1998 against the APA – the union representing American Airlines pilots.

Face it.  Management has us pinned down with a lopsided enforcement of the RLA and a very hostile federal bench.  We can only negotiate on their terms and on their timetable.  No rational look at the last 20 years can yield any other conclusion.

Since 1998, pilots at American, Delta, United, and now US Airways have run into a granite wall called the federal judiciary.  It matters not if pilots were exercising self-help due to unilateral changes in their CBA, such as the operation of an alter-ego airline in clear violation of a scope clause, using contractual sick leave, or just the admonishment to not rush an operation in the interest of safety, management have snapped their fingers and federal judges have responded.

Rather than reprise the entirety of the past 13 years, we will delve into the latest judicial smack-down, since the arguments are essentially the same from airline to airline, and injunction to injunction.  This is the playbook of modern airline-pilot labor relations, and it will remain so until the pertinent law is changed.

We will go through the general underpinnings of the 45 page “opinion and order” from Judge Robert Conrad and comment on areas pertinent to the overall strategy of OPERATION ORANGE and the current state of the airline industry, as it relates to pilots seeking to better themselves in the face of an overtly hostile government.  Unless otherwise noted, all quotations and page references are to the “Memorandum Opinion and Order” of Judge Robert Conrad, jr., dated September 28, 2011.  Any emphasis, unless otherwise noted, is that of The Committee.

RLA 101 – Introduction to Airline Labor Relations

First off, the basics of the RLA:

Plaintiff alleges that the defendants have engaged in a campaign “to cause nationwide flight delays and cancellations in order to put pressure on US Airways in its current collective bargaining negotiations” with USAPA in violation of the “status quo” provisions of the Railway Labor Act (RLA).  (p. 1) [1]

US Airways claims that beginning on May 1, 2011, USAPA has instigated a work slowdown under the guise of a “safety campaign” in order to put pressure on US Airways in the ongoing contract negotiations.
(p. 2)

This is why the RLA governs this action.  The RLA was specifically installed to prevent transportation (airline) employees from being able to disrupt public commerce, unless an exhaustive and increasingly unreasonable procedure has been completed.  Even so, the airline union is prohibited from engaging in any “self help” or “violations of the status quo” unless it has permission from the government.  Keep in mind this is the same government that extracts exorbitant taxes from air travel and which is staffed by Congressmen who receive lavish campaign donations from the air transportation industry.

Note that this did not say that pilots were not allowed to engage in political activities, or peaceful activities to get the governing law changed.  This injunction, as all other injunctions that preceded it, only deals with a union trying to extract concessions under an existing contract or one which is under amendment proceedings.  In other words, pilots can not engage in coercive activities for the purposes of gaining leverage in contract negotiations with the relevant carrier.

As long as a carrier can convince a friendly judge that its pilots are engaging in activities to gain advantage in contract negotiations, the judge will reliably enjoin such activity, and take whatever hostages needed, innocent or not, to satisfy management’s bloodlust.  This is the very basis of the RLA.  In theory, and only in theory, management is likewise prohibited from engaging in activities to bolster its negotiating leverage.

This is why our union leaders have been emasculated, and is why the last 13 years has seen a precipitous decline in pilot career value.  This is no accident.

Work Slowdown – A Bolt Out Of The Blue?

What would be the motivation for pilots to wish to bring pressure to hasten the conclusion of a new labor agreement?  Are they just petulant children, or is there something else at work?

Soon after USAPA’s certification, US Airways and USAPA began meeting regarding a single CBA in June 2008. Since January 2010, these negotiations have been mediated by the National Mediation Board (NMB). The NMB has authority to determine the pace of negotiations, including where and how often negotiations occur. The NMB has the unfettered authority to release the parties from negotiations if and when it determines that agreement cannot be reached, and, only following such a release (and a 30-day “cooling off” period), would USAPA be permitted to engage in a work stoppage. In short, it has been almost six years since US Airways and America West merged, and it seems the parties have never been further from reaching an agreement. (pp 5-6)

What does it take to meet the threshold of “impasse” or when the NMB determines if an agreement can not be reached?  One would think that anywhere from two to six years, depending on the metric used, where both parties stand at irreconcilable positions would meet that threshold.  It isn’t as if the USAPA pilots engaged in illegal self-help or violations of the status quo at the outset of the negotiations.  By any measure, these actions have come no less than three years after negotiations commenced, against the backdrop of an airline and pilot group that have not created any substantial common ground.  What is a pilot group to do?  How long must it wait?  What is the NMB looking for?  What does it take to actually get released from mediation?

If you wish to look for a reason these pilots engaged in this activity, look no further than management abusing the “perpetual contract” provisions of the RLA, so as to only negotiate in good faith when the macro-economic picture favors their position.

Fix that, and you fix almost all of these illegal slow-downs.  A union uses these as a last resort because its true “last resort” (strike) has been denied by a government funded by the union’s counterparty.  Pilots only engage in such tactics out of frustration because all other avenues of getting a new contract are denied.  This is the natural result of an uneven application of law and a general miscarriage of common decency.

This is part of the OPERATION ORANGE “Fair Treatment Of Experienced Pilots Act – Part 2” we are attempting to push through Congress, via a nationwide “SOS.”[2]

We would expect no other entity to have to endure such delays.  Certainly no federal judge would tolerate a lazy implementation of a TRO.  $45,000,000 seems to be a hauntingly familiar number to thousands of union pilots who didn’t clear from their sick status in a manner favorable to a federal judge.  Pilots have been legally stripped of any leverage to attain new working agreements on terms favorable to them – a frustration a federal judge knows nothing about.

To Be Safe, or Not To Be Safe:  That Is The Question

The [safety] campaign became USAPA’s primary focus in the fall of 2010, but USAPA laid the groundwork for a slowdown much earlier, through various communications. (p. 6)

The following is footnoted as amplification of the above statement.

USAPA unconvincingly argues that communications before May 1, 2011 should not be considered because US Airways offers no empirical data demonstrating an operational slowdown prior to this date. This evidence is relevant in linking safety to the labor action; the mere fact that these communications did not immediately result in a slowdown does not mean that they did not contribute to it. (p. 6)

Safety has been a longstanding priority of organized pilot labor since the inception of passenger air service.  Are we to conclude that all safety statements by USAPA, or its ALPA predecessor, can be construed as a clandestine job action against their employer?  At what point do safety admonitions no longer become evidence of a sinister plot to hamper airline operations?  US Airways offered no data to suggest that pre May 2011 slowdown was in the works, yet the union is on the hook for it?  If statements from late 2010 are used, why not any statement during the entirety of the open contract?  What about prior to 2005?  Where do we draw the line?  When is safety not really safety, but an illegal job action in disguise, and when is it safety?  The Court offers no guidance in such matters.  The union is left in a substantive grey area (a recurring theme of such injunctions, as we will see).  Given the itchy trigger finger nature of the federal bench, it is prudent not to issue admonitions regarding safety.

The potential managerial abuse of such an arrangement is incalculable.  Safety costs money and pilot unions have steadfastly organized around keeping the operation safe, even if it costs the company money to do so.  To say that increasing safety is tantamount to an illegal job action, and by having a blank check from a black robe, management can push pilots to become more and more efficient and to take more risks, all the while absolving themselves of the responsibility for such pressures.

Anyone who had a reckless squadron commander knows how this game is played.  You are pushed to “get the job done,” which makes your commander look good.  If something goes awry, every rule in every book is brought out to hang the pilot, should it be found he cut a corner to “get the job done.”  If a pilot is devoted to the safety regulations, he is replaced by another who will cut the corner.

If we revisit the footnoted passage #4 on page 6 we begin to see the mindset of the judge.  A conclusion has been reached and the evidence is interpreted in that context.  A safety admonition coincidental to a drop in performance is considered a stealth job action, but if the admonition precedes the statistical drop, it is also evidence of an illegal job action.  No matter what, safety admonitions are evidence of illegal job actions, regardless of the ambient performance of the airline.  Conclusion precedes evidence.

Many statements from USAPA are submitted to show that the union is using the safety issue to gum up the operations at US Airways.  Some are more convincing than others, but we wonder if the judge lacks the proper understanding of what it takes to run an inherently dangerous operation in a manner safe enough to transport a billion people all over the globe, in any weather condition, at 83% the speed of sound, without losing a single life.  This isn’t a matter of giving a convincing brief, or filing regulatory paperwork with the proper court.  It is a matter of developing proper habits, and exercising the proper judgment to err on the side of caution, lest 200 people lose their lives due to seemingly trivial carelessness.

This is called “Safety Culture,” and is at the center of how to operate in an environment where the forces of nature are acting in concert to kill you.

We are told the “most damaging” of all the USAPA statements regarding their work actions masquerading as a safety campaign reads thusly:

Friends, it is time for us to make a concise and powerful statement that we will no longer tolerate unfair working conditions at our airline. What should you do? There are many things that we must focus on as we move forward. First and foremost is the safety culture. With our pilots experiencing extreme levels of stress, we must make every effort to keep ourselves out of the red. . . . We must MEET OR EXCEED the safety standards of the [Flight Operations Manual] and [Federal Aviation Regulations] in every single decision that we make. . . . A storm approaches, my friends. (pp. 7-8)

This comes from the USAPA’s Strike Preparedness Committee, and the judge concludes that there is “no conceivable reason” for the Strike Prep Committee to discuss the safety culture in this context unless it were related to stormy contract negotiations.

We applaud the judge for wishing to be well informed and issue opinions and edicts which descend from such a broad scope of the understanding of human endeavor, but the idea that a SPC can’t admonish fellow pilots to follow and indulge the safety culture is very much off the mark.  This mistake comes from believing that safety is not a culture that is shared by all pilots, regardless of committee, or even airline to airline.  Safety has been an area where data has been shared across corporate lines for the purposes of increasing the broader scope of safety culture throughout the industry.

SPC’s role in contract acquisition is largely misunderstood by the general public, and we believe The Court is no exception.  It is the Negotiating Committee that secures the contract, not the SPC.  The SPC is often working to prepare the membership for an eventual job action, and part of that effort is to shepherd the pilot group through the difficult time of negotiations, lest they fail and the SPC is called to carry out their tasking.  Pilots are universally disturbed by protracted contract negotiations and must start to balance the pressures of family and career against the rumors and fear grenades thrown at the pilot group.  Many pilots will be out of work if outsourcing is expanded, or forced to change domiciles.  Pay can be cut, which causes pilots to have to roll back their standard of living, or take on moonlighting jobs.  All this serves as distractions in the cockpit, and distractions are anathema to safety culture.

The SPC, as are most committees, is part of the safety culture.  There is nothing incongruent between preparing pilots for a cantankerous end game (strike or other job action) and telling them to keep their heads and keep the operation safe, regardless of the status of the negotiations.

Even OPERATION ORANGE published a “Pilot To Do” list almost one year ago, and among the list is an admonition for interested pilots to do their jobs to perfection and “not screw up.”  That is us telling everyone to be safe and not let this distraction kill anyone.

Passengers will often thank pilots when they leave the aircraft.  They never thank us for getting them to their destination cheaply, or quickly.  They only thank us for getting them to their destination safely.

Perhaps management could take this object lesson and realize protracted contract negotiations, fear grenades, and pilot pushing are inherently distracting and pose a threat to the safety of their operation.  Perhaps it is in the public interest to conclude pilot contract negotiations in a timely manner,[3] but such concerns seem not to rise to the attention of lawmakers or judges.  The onus is on the pilot to put up with half-decade long negotiations, keep things genuinely safe, operate at the pace dictated by management, and not complain about it.

The Search For A Smoking Gun

USAPA is being held hostage by this injunction because some of its members (presumably) have been engaging in communications contrary to the wishes of the airline.  The “anonymous” emails and texts are assigned to USAPA, regardless of a lack of direct linkage.  While it may be reasonable to assume that some “East” pilots are behind the messaging, it is unreasonable to hold the union accountable for such action.  The union lacks sufficient police powers to investigate such actions, should they be criminal in nature, and they certainly are not staffed nor funded for extensive undercover operations that ultimately benefit management.  It is certainly convenient to assign culpability to the union, but has there been any direct link, or smoking gun to the USAPA?  One would think that if The Court had sufficient evidence of such linkage it would have proudly displayed it in its memorandum.  All it has is a handful of nameless, “pissed off pilots,” which comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with the unreasonably protracted pilot negotiations.  Bottom line:  management needs a hostage and USAPA is going to be it, no matter the facts.  Somewhere out there exists an 8 digit fine that management would love to sink its teeth into.

If You Write It Up, We Will Write You Up.

The US Airways operation had seen a sharp rise in MEL write ups subsequent to the May 1, 2011 “safety campaign.”  They allege this passage from a USAPA video caused the spike in write ups.

Use your experience and judgment when confronted with an MEL. Do not accept one that puts you and your crew into the yellow and compromises safety. Take all factors into consideration and never be intimidated by anyone whether from dispatch, maintenance, or the Chief Pilots’ office. Our safety culture is flawed, and we must put a stop to it. We make the final call on the MEL items we accept. (p, 14)

The Court opines on this phenomena:

This Court finds that USAPA’s statements about MEL maintenance went beyond merely reminding pilots to use good judgment and instead encouraged them to collectively reject aircraft with MELs in order to disturb operations. (p.15)

What if management is “taking hostages” (spike in disciplinary actions during pilot negotiations) or the FAA gets a burr under its saddle and starts ramp-checking “East” pilots at a higher than normal rate, and the pilot wishes to protect his certificate and career by exercising overzealous regulatory compliance?  If it is rumored that the FAA is on the rampage on maintenance and pilot compliance (regardless if it is true or false), is the pilot required to hire an investigator and statistician, such as Dr. Darrin Lee, to show that it is not the case?

What is to prevent management from using The Court’s order to push out maintenance, knowing that the pilots will be reluctant to write up the aircraft?  This would save them money in the short term.

What is a pilot to do?  If he can point to a policy or regulation showing that the aircraft certainly can be written up, is it The Court’s opinion that such    regulations should be ignored in the interest of operational efficiency?  If so, how often and by what standards?  Should “East” pilots call their supervisor to ask if a write up is keeping with company policy and operational efficiencies?  Should they call Judge Conrad and ask him?

If pilots are to defer such decisions to others, in the interest of operational efficiency, has not The Court just removed part of the captain’s authority to be the final and binding authority as to the safety and airworthiness of the aircraft?  Such an arrangement is a managerial wet dream, as the goal of transforming pilots into malleable functionaries has been a longstanding managerial imperative for the entire history of scheduled passenger air service.

One wonders what Dr. Darrin Lee was told when he was tasked by US Airways to analyze the operation.  Was he told to objectively look at the data, or was he told to find pilot mischief in the statistical record?  Perhaps the Court, if so concerned with the public interest, could direct Dr. Lee to do a likewise statistical analysis of exactly how “random” the time to negotiate new contracts happens to be when compared with the macro economy.  What are the odds that management is willing to move only when economic forces favor their position, versus when they are profitable and pilots are coming off a decade long retrenchment of their standard of living?  We wonder how likely the pattern of stalling for better economic leverage happens to align with random patterns?

Some questions will never be answered.

Fatiguing of Fatigue

On March 30, 2011, USAPA’s Safety Committee released a video addressing pilot fatigue in which Captain Kubik states:

If you are fatigued, you are done flying . . . The operational safety guidance is simply this: Don’t fly fatigued! If you are a reserve pilot, don’t accept a trip if you are fatigued.  If you are called for a ridiculous pairing that you know will put you in a fatigued state, don’t accept it . . . Your union will be with you each step of the way. (p. 16)

This is the standard position of all airline pilot unions across the industry, without regard to where they are in the contract negotiating cycle, or the relative honor of their management teams.  Just because US Airways is in negotiations with its pilots does not preclude the union from telling pilots to lay aside their “can do/mission hacker” proclivities and do what is safe for the operation.  The pressure to fly fatigued is enormous and relentless at all airlines.  They do have “no fault” fatigue policies, but these policies are all about legal cover rather than for actual health and safety concerns.

Anyone who doubts this reality need only check the recent FAA Flightcrew Member Duty and Rest Requirements, which we link on our website.

Rather than go into an exhaustive rebuttal of that Orwellian tripe in this review, we published our response over a year ago.  We have also published Section 2 of the “FTOEPA2,” which deals with genuine fatigue abatement, rather than the codified pilot pushing and legal eyewash the FAA is putting out under the guise of making flying safer.

The various airlines and their trade groups have spent millions trying to water down an already weak and counterproductive flight duty and rest requirements.[4]  To say that airlines have any interest at all in fatigue abatement, when all that interests them is legal cover, is pathologically naive or knowingly false.  On these matters, the record is absolutely conclusive.  Follow their money and see what they are attempting to buy in the Halls of Congress – more flying by fewer pilots with categorical legal immunity from the consequences of such.

We now move to concerns over hotel selection:

The [USAPA safety] video also expressly discusses a subject of the collective bargaining between USAPA and US Airways: hotel selection. In discussing the requirement that pilots not fly fatigued, Kubik states, “When enough of our pilots fully understand this requirement, and more importantly, act upon this requirement, then our substandard hotel situation will disappear with a speed you likely thought was not possible.” He also tells pilots, “If you make the decision to fly fatigued . . . you can absolutely expect the continued poor scheduling practices and hotel selections to continue.” Though Defendants argue that low quality hotels lead to fatigue, the Court is unconvinced that USAPA’s sole concern was safety rather than gaining leverage in negotiations over hotel selection. (pp 16-17)

This falls under the category of “no good deed goes unpunished.”

The union is very clearly stating that they have issues with substandard hotels, which they categorize as such because of fatigue issues.  They are very clearly stating that pilots flying fatigued are masking the need for a new hotel, and as long as pilots continue to violate the FARs in this issue, the company will continue to use a substandard hotel.

In other words, unless the company sees the need to change hotels, the hotel selection won’t change and fatigue will continue.  Flying fatigued begets more fatiguing conditions.  If the company has to absorb the true cost of that fatiguing hotel, they will change it.  If the pilots absorb the cost (flying fatigued), it will never change.

Once again, we are left to wonder what The Court would have us do when fatigued?  Are we the sole determinate, or are we to consult a statistical model prior to fatiguing-out?  We are not given guidance by The Court in such matters, only that “East” pilots are statistically beyond their bag limit on fatigue.

The Court cites what every pilot in the industry already knows:

Under US Airways’s policies as well as FAA standards, a fatigued pilot should not fly an airplane. It is ultimately the individual pilot’s responsibility to determine his or her level of fatigue, and pilots who report that they are fatigued are released from their trip. (p. 16)

Actually, the regulations state that a fatigued pilot “shall” not fly an airplane.  What is a fatigued pilot to do?  His union is telling him not to fly fatigued.  His company says not to fly fatigued.  His government says not to fly fatigued.  His passengers don’t want him flying fatigued.

But an industry expert witness says too many pilots are calling out fatigued and a judge agrees.

What are the metrics to determine fatigue?  From the citation above, The Court says that it is “ultimately the individual pilot’s responsibility to determine his or her level of fatigue.”  No mention of squaring it with Dr. Lee’s statistical models…no mention of what factors are used in determining fatigue…We only have that the individual pilot is responsible for that determination.

That’s all the guidance we are given, yet we have run afoul of the court.  The confusion is palpable and, quite frankly, unworkable.  It is just a convenient pretext to hold USAPA hostage for the individual determinations of its member pilots, solely because the fatigue patterns don’t fit a convenient statistical model of an industry chosen expert.

Hurry Up!  What Could Go Wrong?

Pilots exercise considerable discretion in the speed at which they taxi the aircraft before take-off and after landing. However, because prolonged taxi times leads to flight delays that diminish overall operational performance, US Airways closely monitors the taxi times of each of its flights. (p. 17)

Pilots are regulated as to the proper taxi speed in certain areas of the airport.  There is no speedometer, as are found in automobiles, so pilots must use judgment, born of experience, to taxi at a safe speed commensurate with the governing FAA regulations.  The FAA mandates that taxis speeds be no faster than a man can walk, in congested ramp areas, and no faster than a man can jog on taxiways.  Most pilots taxi considerably faster than mandated, and do so at risk to other aircraft and their pilot license.

There are many things pilots must do to comply with FAA regulations regarding taxiing, such as avoidance of non-task oriented chatter, having an airport diagram readily available, completing checklist items, communicating with cabin crews, communicating with the FAA, communicating with the airline, and constantly evaluating the takeoff conditions.  Sometimes, these tasks take longer than the statistical norm, but that’s not what we are discussing in this case.

The Court is concerned with the statistical aberration of longer taxi times by “East” pilots and sees it as yet another nefarious plot by the USAPA to disrupt the airline operations.  It is also interested in how pilots may sequester themselves in the cockpit to finalize pre-departure preparations.  Of note is the video from the USAPA Safety Committee that gives guidance to pilots to combat scheduling pressures to ensure the safe operation of the aircraft.

When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail, and The Court didn’t find an exception in the preflight preparations.  Of course, it found that this was a feature of the USAPA’s slowdown campaign.

Why?  Because the USAPA Safety Committee (note that it didn’t cite the “Efficiency Committee“) released a video advising pilots to close the cockpit door to finish the preflight preparations.  This was to make the process safer by reducing distractions and insulating pilots from the ever-present scheduling pressures.  These scheduling pressures are often at odds with the safe operation of the aircraft, because doing things rapidly often invites omission in procedures.

It does not occur to The Court that perhaps pilots do not wish to taxi rapidly while they complete complex preflight checks, lest they end up in a smoking crater at the end of the runway because bug speeds and flap configurations didn’t get set properly.

When a judge commits a careless error, an appellate judge is called.  When a pilot commits a careless error, the undertaker is called.  The airline will spend millions deflecting all the blame onto the pilot and how he had the authority to slow down and get things done correctly.  After all, nobody asked him to jeopardize safety to shave two minutes off the taxi time.

Airlines like slow downs too, but only when their lawyers tell them to do so.

This brings us to another of the recurring themes of this opinion and order:  statistical assignment of culpability and conclusion preceding evidence.  More importantly, it illustrates again, along with fatigue, and MEL write ups, that there are realities that are simply beyond the reasonable application of judicial fiat.

Once again, what is the guidance?  Are pilots now forbidden to close the cockpit door to conduct pre-flight checks?  What is the minimum taxi speed in the ramp and on the taxiways?  What happens if an aircraft is taxiing rapidly (to comply with a federal judge’s edict), cockpit preparations were not done at the gate, and now have to be done “heads down” while taxiing?  If a mishap occurs, who is to blame?

Can a pilot use this Memorandum of Opinion and Order as legal immunity in an enforcement action hearing because they were taxiing to fast, or off the taxiway because they were “heads down” completing pre-flight checks they would rather have done at the gate?  Will Judge Conrad testify on the pilot’s behalf at the FAA hearing?

What happens if a pilot gets to the gate 16 minutes behind schedule?  If he doesn’t think he can get to his destination by A+14, should he just refuse the flight, or divert?

What of lanyards or luggage tags that suggest safety is a priority for the piloting group?  Are they also contraband?  Is the mere presence of such material now evidence of a dark union plot?  Can the union be fined if a member says “safety first” to another member?  Can saying “I’m on board,” be construed as a criminal offense or an actionable tort?

The Injunctions Will Continue Until Morale Improves

To what degree must the union go to clean up after its membership?  What policing powers does the union have to enforce this order?

Guidance is lacking.

Any rational pilot should take the admonition of a federal judge, as to how to operate an aircraft, especially beyond his own judgment or that allowed by the FARs, with a healthy dose of profane defiance.  This is where these kinds of injunctions eventually lead.

This “damned if you do; damned if you don’t” scenarios imposed by management through the various courts will eventually cause the entire system to break down.  It won’t take long before someone cites one of these orders as the reason their aircraft was imperiled.

Then what?  The judiciary and management will wash their hands of the situation and throw the pilot into the gaping maw of the FAA enforcement mechanism.

Doubtful?  Read for yourself:

To the extent that USAPA is concerned that an injunction would hamper its legitimate safety efforts, this Court declares that it in no way intends to interfere with the duty of pilots in command to ensure the safety of their passengers and equipment. The court’s injunction therefore should not dissuade good faith efforts to ensure the safe operation of the airline. (p. 42)

Here is the problem.  The court spends pages upon pages finding fault with USAPA for engaging in a pattern of slowing down the operation of the airline.  Its findings are not without merit, taken on the whole.  The problem descends from the court insinuating that a pilot is at fault for operating his aircraft in a manner inconsistent with the wishes of US Airways, but consistent with the command authority granted by the FAA.  As specified on page 42 of the order, the court in no way intends to interfere with the command authority.

We now have it both ways.

This is an area where judicial relief is difficult.  If another slowdown is evidenced in Dr. Lee’s statistical model (and you can bet US Airways will be looking for it so as to cash in on an eight figure payout), but the union puts much effort into quashing such practices, what then?  Who is the new hostage?  Who writes the check for $45,000,000?

If USAPA admonishes pilots to “be safe” and that correlates strongly with deteriorating performance at US Airways, that is ruled in violation of the RLA.  What is the difference if a bunch of angry “East” pilots still refuse to taxi fast, or complete checklists on the fly?  What if the union calls for everyone to not call in fatigued, yet the numbers still go up?  What if, out of defiance of the current regulatory paradigm, grass-roots pilots conduct their own operational slowdown?  What if US Airways argues that the union, in actively admonishing pilots NOT to slow down, fatigue out, or write up MELs, is really just engaging in another clever program to communicate the opposite?[5]

What happens if there is no concerted, organized effort, grass-roots or otherwise, but enough pilots are acting on their own accord and irritating US Airways management?  Does US Airways then fire them for taxiing too slow, or calling in fatigued more than Dr. Lee’s model suggests they should?  Is this also a violation of the “status quo” on the part of US Airways, or does that only go one way?

Imagine the irony if Dr. Lee determined an operational slowdown of the US Airways operation correlated with USAPA conspicuously displaying the following on its website:

To the extent that USAPA is concerned that an injunction would hamper its legitimate safety efforts, this Court declares that it in no way intends to interfere with the duty of pilots in command to ensure the safety of their passengers and equipment. The court’s injunction therefore should not dissuade good faith efforts to ensure the safe operation of the airline.

-Judge Joseph Conrad, jr., September 28, 2011

That would be a Shakespearean comedy for modern times.

We sympathize with The Court in it efforts to ferret our mischief in the implementation of established law – in this case, the RLA.  What is troubling is that The Court finds practical difficulty in ordering one legal entity (the USAPA) to cease actions which can also be reasonably construed to be in keeping with its legitimate founding objectives, such as the maintenance of the “Safety Culture.”

The remainder of the examples of The Court’s Memorandum and Order follow the same pattern.  Statistics are linked with cryptic communicaitons, or actions which do not trace back to USAPA are assigned to USAPA by inference.  Command authority is upheld, as long as it isn’t upheld to the distaste of management.  Above all, no guidance is given – just threats.

If it isn’t Judge Conrad, US Airways, and USAPA, it will be another judge, another airline, and another hostage.  The arguments will be the same, since management is coordinated across corporate lines in this regard.  Judges all read the precedents and essentially dust off the previous incarnations, and issue them under their own signature.

We believe that USAPA was fairly oafish, given the past 15 years of judicial bullying in this regard.  Giving the appearance of linking safety culture to operational slowdown was red meat for a management group that has the sympathy of the judiciary.

We also believe that the limits of judicial fiat have been reached, as we have outlined above.  The Court washes its hands of any micromanaging of command authority while at the same time holds the union to statistical models supplied by the airline.

The union is now in the very surreal position of not advocating for safety culture and for enforcing management edicts – both right out of the wish list for airline management.  If a grass-roots campaign of “pissed off pilots” were to emerge, the union would be taken as hostage for the balance of the negotiations.

Management could very easily defer maintenance to incur a higher than normal amount of MEL’s, schedule several onerous crew pairings to induce fatigue, or hire provocateurs to feign an intimidation campaign against the most productive pilots to get the union on the wrong side of Dr. Lee’s statistical models.  The Court would certainly take this as a direct affront to its authority and start slicing away tens of millions of dollars from the union and remanding union officers to the criminal justice system.  All this would certainly be well rewarded in concessionary contracts that favor management.  The only defense for the union would be for it to gain internal memos of the airline – a far fetched proposition, or bring its own models to The Court in the perishing hope that The Court will reverse itself from its previous opinion and order – an even more preposterous proposition.  Even so, senior management would undoubtedly have plausible deniability and enjoy the benefit of the doubt that unions no longer have.

This is the basic playbook of 21st Century labor relations.  Have the government hold down uppity employees while management works them over.  If the employees, either individually or en masse, violate any of the laws, regulations, or policies in the volumes of directives governing their operation, they get thrown to the gaping maw of the governing enforcement mechanism.  If they adhere too closely, they are destroyed by the federal bench.

Who decides?  Management.

Convenient, isn’t it?

You Reap What You Sow

It won’t take much to turn “pissed off pilots” at “East,” along with kindred spirits at the other dysfunctional airlines, into an uncontrollable grass-roots effort.  Once the pilots step out from the auspices of their unions, the courts won’t have any legitimate hostages to take.  The unions will have lost control because the courts stripped them of their relevance.  They are viewed by the courts as extensions of the managerial effort to control pilots during protracted pilot negotiations, and the pilots are noticing.  If a pan-industry grass-roots effort is ever successful at changing the RLA, you can bet the first casualty will be the current union leadership.  The new era unions will be much, much more strident, militant, and savvy than the current crop.

Be careful for what you wish for.

We once used operational pressures to balance out the uneven nature of the RLA “perpetual contract” mechanism.  When enough pilots got “pissed off,” they would gum up the works and management would get serious about a new contract.[6]  It was a flawed system that functioned for both parties.  The public would get used to “pissed off” employees, but wouldn’t care because tickets were cheap.

Now that management has used the judiciary to grab the remaining bit of leverage, they have no need to negotiate in good faith.  20 years ago, pilot contracts would last 2-3 years.  Now, negotiations last 4-6.  As an example, American Airlines pilots have been in negotiations 7 of the last 10 years, with the only three years being in a concessionary contract that was forced at the threat of bankruptcy.  United management is in no hurry to conclude negotiations, while they cherry-pick the most regressive parts of both bankruptcy contracts.  Alaska Airlines only concluded their pilot contract when the NMB threatened to release the pilot group.  Other airlines follow the same pattern.

This isn’t going to change until someone changes it.  Management is going to lobby against it.  Passengers don’t care, as long as they can fly cheap.  Judges are not going to reinterpret the RLA, nor use statistical models to declare management in violation of the “status quo” when managers take hostages or only negotiate when employees fear financial ruin.

Who is left to fix the RLA and the phenomena of judges parroting the managerial dreams of employee relations?

You…and several thousand others just like you.

When the pilots of this nation stand together and demand Congress fix the laws and narrow the scope of judicial power and opinion, things will get fixed…and fixed in a hurry.

Judges can’t issue injunctions against peaceful protest of existing laws.  They can’t deny peaceful assembly.  There is no law requiring you to fly an airplane against your will.

The FIRST AMENDMENT prohibits these injunctions.

It is time to act.  Support OPERATION ORANGE.  Our “Fair Treatment of Experienced Pilots Act – Part 2” deals with these judicial power grabs.[7]  By withdrawing our services en masse, as a protest of the existing regulatory paradigm, we will bring pressure to Congress to pass our legislative agenda and correct the injustices and irresponsibility in the system.

Please visit operationorange.org for more information.

The future of your profession is in your hands.  Nobody else will fix it for you.

THIS IS OUR TIME.

Footnotes:

[1]  For the purposes of this review, we will assume the findings of fact that USAPA did engage in an illegal work action under the RLA.  In actuality, we assume no wrongdoing on the part of USAPA, or any pilot assumed to be engaged in such activity.  Our position for this review is strictly for the analysis of the judge’s opinion and the state of the industry.  Do not construe any of our remarks as agreeing with the underlying premise posited by US Airways or Judge Conrad.

[2]  See “Fair Treatment of Experienced Pilots Act – Part 2” (FTOEPA2), Section 1.A.1.b, available at the operationorange.org website.

[3] See FTOEPA2 Section 1.A.1

[4] As of this writing, the airlines and trade groups are lobbying for the government to hold back the new flight time and crew rest requirements.  This FAA regulation is now in its third month of delay.

[5]  If The Court finds that safety admonitions that didn’t correspond to airline performance degradation were just as much “code” for a slowdown as admonitions that were correlated, what is to stop The Court from finding that the opposing admonitions were just as coded as the originals?  US Airways has approximately 45,000,000 reasons to attempt to make that case.

[6]  Has anyone in the legal community ever asked why we don’t see this kind of “slowdown” at Southwest Airlines?  Why is it at American, United, Delta, and US Airways, but not Southwest?  Could it be that SWA management sees no reason to drag out negotiations, take hostages, and harass pilots?  Could it be that they understand that their longer term interest is in keeping its employees loyal and productive by faithfully amending the pilot contract to reflect the economics of SWA?  SWAPA has no motivation to engage in such foolishness because it routinely deals with a management team that is honorable and practices good faith labor relations.

[7] See FTOEPA2 Sections 1.B and 6.A

Do You Have Your Twenty?

We have completed the first phase of getting the word out.  The next thing we need to do is for each person who reads this to recruit twenty pilots into the cause.

Twenty, each.

That is all we need.  It is not that hard.

If we each get twenty pilots to agree to the concepts of OPERATION ORANGE, we will have more than enough to create a catastrophic shutdown during the nationwide Suspension of Service/Protest.  Our FACEBOOK “likes,” alone, multiplied by twenty is enough to carryout the scenario outlined in the “BASIC STRATEGY” document we posted several months ago.  We know that our following is much larger than what FACEBOOK shows, as the demographic of FACEBOOK does not share significant overlap with the 38-55 year old male demographic.

How long would it take to “get your twenty?”  If you recruited ONE pilot per workday, starting today, you would hit your twenty by mid-November.  If we all did it, we would have anywhere between 1/6th and 1/4th of the pilots involved, which is more than enough to make good on shutting down the air transportation system during our protest/petition.

That is 1/6th to 1/4th of us with some form of recognizable orange on their luggage or book bags.  Orange duct tape, Denver Broncos, Philadelphia Flyers, Syracuse, U of Tennessee, Oregon State, Miami Dolphins, San Francisco Giants, OPERATION ORANGE SOS stickers, orange lanyards, etc… If there is a time of year to buy orange decals and adornments, it is October.

With that kind of participation, the FAIR TREATMENT OF EXPERIENCED PILOTS ACT – PART 2 will hit Congress with authority.  They get to decide if they want to fix the industry, or let it continue to deteriorate.  They get to decide if they are going to listen to our labor or the ATA’s money.  They will finally hear us in a manner they cannot ignore.

It has come to this.

How much money did the ATA members spend on getting the new flight time and fatigue abatement regulations changed in their favor?  Congress listened.  How much money was spent to water down the 1500 hour requirement, which was supposed to reduce the likelihood of another Colgan Air crash?

They do not listen to us because we do not stuff their pockets with money.  They will listen to us if we cause the air transportation system to seize up.

A union cannot call for an unauthorized job action against a particular carrier for the purposes of changing an existing contract.  There is no law against protesting against an existing law.  There is no law against voicing an opinion for a desired political outcome.  There is no law that requires private sector employees to be at work against their will.

The only way we fail is if we are divided.  We need 1/6th to 1/4th of the pilots at the major airlines to participate.  The more compliant pilots will join the effort when they see the initial skirmish break in our favor.  Concentrate on pilots at Delta, United, Continental, American, and US Airways.  First Officers and junior Captains will likely be the most receptive.  Be certain to recruit pilots at other airlines.  We need the “Big 5″ airlines to make this work.

We have published hundreds of pages of talking points.  We have two videos for you to send via YOUTUBE.  We have published graphics for business cards and decals.  What will it cost you? Decals are less than 40 cents each, and business cards are just pennies.  Many online printers will send you 1000 cards for less than $30.

Talking points:

• OPERATION ORANGE is not an illegal job action under the RLA.  It is a peaceful protest and petition for redress of the current government regulations, under the protection of the FIRST AMENDMENT.
• We seek to change the “perpetual contract” mechanism of the RLA.
• We seek to change the bankruptcy laws to limit the areas of pilot contracts judges can unilaterally change during bankruptcy proceedings.
• We seek to institute realistic and sane fatigue abatement measures, not the codified pilot pushing and legal eyewash being pushed by the ATA and FAA.
• We seek to give authorized collective bargaining agents the authority to properly deal with scab labor subsequent to a lawful labor dispute.
• We seek minimum duty rig and pay paradigms to prevent the wholesale outsourcing of safety and experience to shadow flight schools.  These duty rig and pay paradigms would provide strong disincentive for management and government to engage in pilot pushing.
• We seek meaningful labor protective provisions that were not delivered, as promised, during the airline deregulation of the 1970s.  Pilots who lose their job from reputable carriers, due to liquidation, furlough, or strike replacements would be given priority hiring by other reputable carriers.
• We seek to outlaw pilot pushing and retribution for contractual and regulatory compliance by requiring pilots so harmed to be paid triple actual damages, plus customary legal recovery costs.
• We seek to protect everyone involved in OPERATION ORANGE through legislated legal immunity and the outright prevention of harassment by management.
• We do not need everyone to participate.  We only need enough pilots to ground the system.  Management has an enormous tactical weakness by staffing the airlines for perfection.  They have no ability to absorb any significant disruption.
• Our proposed legislation will make the air transportation system more economically viable and safer.  All business need some form of barrier to entry, and pilot labor will be a major barrier in the new paradigm.  Gone will be the days of the $18,000 per year pilot with 300 hours of experience, who is willing to work up to, and exceed the FARs.
• Now is the time.  A very strong anti-labor government will be installed in January 2013.  If not now, when?
• Traditional tactics yield traditional results.  Judging by the past 30 years, we believe it is time for something unconventional.  OPERATION ORANGE is exactly that.  If this isn’t the way, what is?
• We need pilot unity across the industry, not just at a single airline.  If a Delta pilot is trying to undercut a United pilot, and the United pilot is doing likewise, all that we know is both of them will destroy each other’s jobs and the industry as a whole.  We have to take care of each other.  We were brothers in the military and that has not changed, just because we fly airplanes with different paint schemes.
• This will force airlines to compete on customer service, rather than to the degree pilots must subsidize the operation.

Now is the time.  Get your twenty.  Orange stickers are not trivial.  We need to see unity with orange.  Do it and we will all build a better industry.  We will fix the mistakes of the past three decades.

This is our time.

Secure Communications During the End Game

How can one small committee communicate securely, across an unsecured medium, monitored by a hostile adversary with almost unlimited resources,  with as many pilots who care to engage?  How can the thousands of pilots know that the message communicated on an unsecured network has not been forged?

It would be easy enough for the airlines, or their enforcers in various government agencies, to simply trespass (hack) the internet domain playing host to the communications of OPERATION ORANGE, and disrupt the entire effort.  They could entice sympathetic media to broadcast contrary messages, claiming they were authentic, and send OPERATION ORANGE into chaos.  It certainly would take little effort to hire people, claiming to be members of The Committee, in order to confuse everyone and disrupt the operation.

To keep everything moving in our favor, we need to overcome a few obstacles, and the bulk of these obstacles can be overcome by using public key cryptography and a few related functions.

Here is a walk-through of how the communications will likely transpire.

The SELF-DECRYPTING ARCHIVE (SDA)

When we have all the necessary components to carry out the SOS/protest, we will come out with a video on YOUTUBE and a companion entry on the OPERATION ORANGE websites.  The website entry will have a link to a .zip file containing a few “SELF-DECRYPTING ARCHIVES.”   The SDAs will contain various messages we can reference after the SOS has been announced.  This gets all the messages we need into your hands before the operation even starts.

A SDA is a very useful tool in this application because it carries a very strong encryption medium, but does not require the recipient be a user of the host software (“Pretty Good Privacy” aka “PGP”).  The SDA comes with everything you need to decrypt the archive, except the operating pass phrase.  Anyone with the SDA file, off-the-shelf computer, and the pass phrase can read the contents.  This is key because most pilots participating in the SOS/protest will not go through the effort to download the PGP trial ware from Symantec.  It doesn’t matter with SDAs.

We will have several SDAs – one of which will contain the “return to work” message.  A few others will contain messages covering other contingencies, and some will be decoys.

This puts us in a position where we only have to communicate a “pass phrase” to direct the operation.  We will still be able to operate without our own website.  We could disseminate the pass phrase via any network – our website, media outlet, YOUTUBE, government, airlines, pilot associations, Twitter, etc.

PUBLIC KEY CRPTOGRAPHY

We still have the problem of imposter SDAs distributed in our name.  After all, one SDA looks like another.  This is solved by using the “authentication/verification” functions of public key cryptography.  As we explain in our “AUTHENTICATION” document, located in the masthead menu on our OPERATION ORANGE websites, we can use the signature function of our unique public/private key pairs we have generated, to digitally sign the SDAs we create.  This prevents a third party from substituting a faulty key pair and trying to pass off a counterfeit SDA to the pilots.

Each PGP user creates a “key pair” when they initially install the PGP program.  This gives each user a “private” key that they keep to themselves and a mathematically corresponding “public” key that is supposed to be widely distributed over unsecured media.  Wide dissemination of public keys does not compromise the integrity of the encryption or authentication.  In fact, the more widely distributed the public key, the more difficult it is to impersonate.

Private keys are used to sign documents and the corresponding public key is used to authenticate that signature.  The public key is not capable of signing a document; it can only verify a signature from its corresponding private key.  If the public key shows “BAD SIGNATURE,” either the document has been altered, the document has been signed by an imposter private key, or the public key is an imposter.  As long as you have the proper public key (and are running PGP), you can verify any document signed with the corresponding private key.

What prevents someone from impersonating a public key?

Each public key comes with a “digital fingerprint,” which is a series of numbers, letters, and phonetically distinct words unique to the particular mathematical arrangement of the public key.  We have listed all four of our keys in the AUTHENTICATION document in the masthead menu on our OPERATION ORANGE websites, along with their digital fingerprints.  You can simply download the keys, click on “KEY PROPERTIES” and verify the signature with the ones we have been providing since OPERATION ORANGE was in its infancy.

As an additional layer of security, public keys can be digitally signed by other private keys, and verified by the corresponding public keys in the same manner as digitally signed documents.  All four of our keys have been digitally signed by the other members of The Committee.  If anyone is to impersonate our keys, they would lack the other three signatures.  This is why we published our keys well in advance of OPERATION ORANGE gaining any significant exposure.

We also have published an “OPERATION ORANGE REVOKER” key.  In the unlikely event one of our keys or committee members is compromised, we can publicly “revoke” the corresponding key by using the revoking function of the OPERATION ORANGE REVOKER.  We simply republish the key on the global key server or our own website with a revoked status.  We can then reissue a new key with all the authentication precautions of the original key.  Please refer to the PGP user’s guide for further information.

We have published our keys on our websites and they are also available on the PGP Global Keyserver, kept by PGP/Symantec.  Please feel free to go to these sites and verify that the keys you have are authentic.

We would use the “private” key to uniquely sign the SDAs and .ZIP files, as we have done in the DOCUMENTS AND SIGNATURES files we have on the masthead menu on our OPERATION ORANGE websites.  Those pilots who are operating PGP on their own computers can then take our freely disseminated “public” keys and verify the signatures that accompany the various SDAs and .ZIP files.

If one byte of the file has been altered, no matter how trivial, the hash on the signature will not match the document and PGP will flag the file as “BAD SIGNATURE.”

Not everyone needs to run PGP.  We only need enough people to run PGP to be able to create enough noise to let everyone know the files are not genuine.  The more pilots running PGP, the more secure the operation.

Symantec has PGP Trial Software and we detailed how to go about gettng it.  It is free, but you need to register with Symantec to download it.  The Trial software contains all the functionality needed to fully authenticate documents in OPERATION ORANGE, even after the full functionality trial ends.  It is good software and worth every penny, should you elect to purchase a license.  PGP has long been considered the gold standard of encryption software available for commercial use.  It is so powerful, the US government declared it a munition and attempted to prosecute the creator of the software for distributing it outside the United States.  He beat the charge by publishing the code under the PROTECTION OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT.

It has been said that there are two kinds of cryptography in this world: cryptography that will stop your kid sister from reading your files, and cryptography that will stop major governments from reading your files. PGP is the latter sort of cryptography.

At this point in the scenario, a SOS date has been chosen, a .ZIP file containing several SDAs and digital signatures has been distributed, and many have installed PGP and have verified the documents with the public keys.  The ATA/government can’t forge a SDA or key, and all the necessary communications are already in the hands of the pilots planning to SOS 6-8 weeks subsequent.  What next?

In the event The Committee is compromised, we still need to be free to turn off the SOS.  By sending out the SDAs, the SOS becomes “FAIL ACTIVE,” meaning that unless you hear otherwise, the SOS goes as scheduled.  The only way to turn off the SOS is for The Committee to release the pass phrase to unlock the “return to work” SDA.

When the actual SOS date and time approach, we will not need to give an additional instruction for everyone to “ORANGE-OUT.”  It is presumed the original communication that sets the date-time for the protest contains everything everyone needs to know about how and when to “ORANGE-OUT.”  The operational security benefits of this arrangement are obvious.

AN EXAMPLE COMMUNICATION

Here are an assortment of SDAs and keys for us to use to demonstrate all that we have been discussing.  These SDAs and keys are not to be used for the actual SOS.  They are purposefully frivolous so as to reduce any of the confusion that is going to surround the events of the SOS.  Please discard all these keys, SDAs, and decrypted messages after you are comfortable with the lesson objectives.

This tutorial is designed to give you a basic outline of how to use PGP’s authentication functions.  At the conclusion of the tutorial, you should be able to have a working understanding of:

-What a “public” key is and its function in the authentication process
-What a “key pair” or “private” key is and its function in the authentication process
-How to activate a Self Decrypting Archive
-How to import public keys to your keyring
-How to locate the ID of a public key
-How to locate the digital fingerprint of a public key
-How to locate the biometric fingerprint of a public key
-How to sign/verify a public key
-The difference between an unverified key and a verified key
-How to check the verification of a signature file
-What information is displayed on a valid signature
-The components of a valid SDA from OPERATION ORANGE
-The difference between a signed SDA and an unsigned SDA
-What a “Bad Signature” is, and how it is displayed in PGP
-What is displayed when an unknown key is used to sign a file.

Download the following .zip file. 

Go to the Symantec website and download PGP Whole Disk Encryption.  You will need to register with Symantec.  It is free.  Install the software per the instructions.

The downloaded .zip file should contain:

- 6 Self Decrypting Archives
- 5 Signature files corresponding to 5 of the SDAs
- 2 “authentic” public keys
- 1 folder containing 2 “imposter” public keys

Save these files to your desktop.

Select both of the two “authentic” public keys

Right click on the keys

Select “PGP Desktop” à Import Keys

Import both keys to your PGP keyring via the dialogue (Acorn and Pinecone).  Double-click on Pinecone to bring up the Key Properties display.

The digital fingerprint of Pinecone (ID:  0x7E135B1F) is:

(Hexadecimal) A46E F56B 1ADC B4F0 78E1  2394 5551 2A38 7E13 5B1F

(Biometric) regain headwaters vapor Hamilton beehive sympathy scenic upcoming island tolerance blowtorch molecule edict enchanting brickyard consulting locale barbecue erase businessman

Double-click on Acorn to bring up the Key Properties display.

The digital fingerprint of Acorn (ID: 0x3C09C9BB) is:

(Hexadecimal) EFF6 7E56 2CCF E738 FD4D  2E2D 3A84 C31D 3C09 C9BB

(Biometric) uncut vocalist locale escapade Burbank Saturday transit consulting willow disruptive buzzard clergyman cleanup Jupiter snowcap breakaway cobra applicant spearhead publisher

Verify Pinecone’s fingerprint and key ID number.  Once you have verified Pinecone’s ID, sign the key with the private key you created when you installed PGP.

To sign a key,

-Right click on the key you wish to sign
-Select SIGN from the menu
-Verify the elements of the key you wish to sign, including the digital fingerprint
-Click OK
-Select your private key from the dropdown menu
-Enter your pass phrase for your private key
-Click OK

Verify Acorn’s fingerprint and key ID number.  Once you have verified Acorn’s ID, sign the key with the private key you created when you installed PGP.

This will change the “VERIFY” status to VERIFIED and remove the question marked box superimposed over the photo in the Acorn public KEY PROPERTIES display.

You will note that Pinecone is signed by Acorn, as Acorn has also verified Pinecone’s digital fingerprint.  Thus, in order to impersonate Pinecone’s key, one would have to also impersonate Acorn’s key, or have the owner of Acorn sign a key they knew to be false.  Click on the expansion box for a public key on your keyring and the various emails, photos, and keys are shown with all the signatures known to your keyring.  If they are signed by an “unknown key,” do not be alarmed.  A key may be signed by a public key you do not posses.  You just can not rely on such a signature, but it doesn’t invalidate the key.

At this point your KEYRING display should look something like this:

You have the two “authentic” keys called Pinecone and Acorn.  Pinecone is the primary key used for authentication and Acorn is a key used to sign Pinecone.  An authentic Pinecone key would have both Pinecone’s fingerprint as well as being signed by Acorn.  You verified both keys as genuine and then signed with your personal key.

Note:  Your keyring will have your personal key in the place of Joe Pilot.  Acorn and Pinecone will not be signed by Joe Pilot, but YOUR key.  You may have other keys on your keyring as “public” keys if you downloaded our keys from the PGP Global Keyserver or the OPERATION ORANGE websites.  In this tutorial ONLY, every place you see “Joe Pilot,” you should expect to see your key.

We are all set up and ready to go through the various scenarios for genuine and imposter SDAs.

First Scenario – Genuine SDA

Double click on the signature file called “Iwo Jima.”  This should bring up your PGP program and the VERIFICATION HISTORY screen.  The IWO JIMA SDA has been signed by Pinecone; it gives Pinecone’s key ID, shows that the signature is verified against a valid public key you hold on your keyring, and gives the date/time it was signed.

This shows that the file associated with the signature is the exact file signed with the private key and that it has not been substituted nor altered in any way.

Now that we know “IWO JIMA” SDA is a valid SDA, let’s see what’s inside.

Double-click on the Iwo Jima SDA.  A pass phrase entry box appears.  The pass phrase for this SDA is:

tangerine

 Enter the destination you wish for the contents of the SDA in the output directory window.  Enter the pass phrase.  Click OK.

Two files appeared in the directory you selected.  You should have:

- “DMO“ PDF file
- DMO.pdf signature file

Verify the DMO signature file in the same way you verified the Iwo Jima signature file.  Double-click on the signature file and see how PGP displays it in your VERIFICATION HISTORY window.

PGP should show it as a valid signature with all the same information it previously displayed when you verified IWO JIMA.  You now know the DMO file is uncorrupted.  This is an extra security measure we will incorporate into any valid SDA we produce.  We will presume the documents from the SDAs will be widely distributed when the SOS concludes and we want to be certain the documents are uncorrupted and verifiable.

Open the DMO file and read the contents.  It is a silly phrase to prevent this from being confused with documents we will circulate during more serious times.  These files are only tutorials and should be deleted after you are comfortable with the object lessons.

That is how a valid SDA will present itself:

- Valid signature from one or more OPERATION ORANGE keys.
- Passphrase that unlocks the SDA
- Valid signature of the internal document from one or more of the OPERATION ORANGE keys.  The signature may not necessarily be the same signature that verified the SDA.  It is important you download all 4 of the OPERATION ORANGE keys.

SECOND SCENARIO – Unsigned SDA.

The most common way to attack the method of communicating we have chosen would be to introduce SDAs that we did not originate.  It will likely be unsigned because most pilots will not be running PGP on their computers.  This is how such an imposter SDA would look:

Double-click on the Tinian SDA.  A pass phrase entry box appears.  The pass phrase for this SDA is:

pumpkin

Enter the destination you wish for the contents of the SDA in the output directory window.  Enter the pass phrase.  Click OK.

One file appeared in the directory you selected.  You should have:

- “111“ PDF file

Note that there was no verification signature for either the SDA or the internal file.  This is one method the opponents of OPERATION ORANGE could use to thwart the operation.  They could do something like this to send out contrary messages.

The 111 file is a bogus file that came from an unverified SDA.

SCENARIO THREE – SDA With Bad Signature File

Rather than just sending out a SDA without an accompanying signature, the opponents could take the existing signature file and attach another SDA.  This won’t pass the signature verification, even though they are using the signature that was originally issued with the original SDA.  The signature file that we created won’t match the bogus SDA and will show as “BAD SIGNATURE.”  Remember, if one byte of the file associated with the signature file has been changed, the signature no longer matches and will show as a bad signature.

Simulate that you received the Guadalcanal SDA and signature files along with the pass phrase:

carrot

If you do not verify the signature file and immediately open the SDA, you will get a message that was not part of the original SDA, because the SDA you have (Guadalcanal) was substituted.

Open the SDA by double-clicking on it.  Enter the destination directory and pass phrase.  You should have one file:

- “222” PDF

This is what you would get if you didn’t verify the signatures.  Note that the internal components of the SDA did not include a signature file for the document.  Our documents will contain a signature file.

Go back and double click on the Guadalcanal signature file.  PGP will flag this as a “Bad Signature.”

Guadalcanal.exe is shown to be not the same file as the signature, even though the signature comes from a valid public key on your keyring.  It lacks the VERIFIED check and shows “Bad Signature” in place of the date/time it was signed.

Always verify signatures.

FOURTH SCENARIO – Signed by Unknown Key 

You should not have downloaded the “imposter” keys at this point.  You should only have the “authentic” keys (Pinecone and Acorn) on your keyring.  If you have the imposter keys on your keyring, you will not be able to complete this scenario.

Double-click on the Midway SDA.  The pass phrase for Midway is:

The General Lee

Note that all PGP pass phrases are case sensitive.  Enter the destination directory and pass phrase.  You should have two files:

- “333” PDF
- 333.PDF signature file

If you attempt to verify the signature for the 333.PDF or the Midway SDA, PGP will show that the signer is unknown and the key is invalid.

This is what happens if someone signs a document with a key that doesn’t correspond with a public key on your keyring.

SCENARIO FIVE – SDA Signed by Imposter Key

There is one more method someone can use to attempt to pass off an imposter document as genuine.  If they can get you to import their public key and verify it, you won’t have any idea that you are getting documents from a source you don’t trust.

This can only happen if you are careless with the importation and verification of keys, which is why doing a fingerprint verification is so important.  Each key is unique, and each key carries a unique digital fingerprint.  These features can’t be forged with our current understanding of mathematics.

Let us say someone interested in forging our communications put keys on the PGP Global Keyserver, or the OPERATION ORANGE downloads, which appeared to be identical to our keys.  This is done with the intention of deceiving you into importing their keys in lieu of our keys.  How this could happen is a matter of conjecture, but for the purposes of this tutorial, let’s simulate that it happened.

Browse to the “imposter keys” in the .zip file you downloaded.

Highlight both keys (pinecone and acorn)

Right click on the keys

Select PGP Desktop à Import Keys

Select “Import” for each key.  This saves unverified public keys to your keyring.  Note that the “VERIFIED” column on the PGP Keyring display shows dashes surrounded by grey circles.  This denotes a public key which has not been verified, and is perfectly normal when importing keys.  You need to sign the new keys with your private key in order to change the key to “VERIFIED,” which is denoted by a checkmark surrounded by a green circle.

This is normally where you would verify the digital ID and fingerprint of the public key against a known ID or fingerprint.  For purposes of this exercise, we gave you the ID and fingerprint when we asked you to download the “authentic” keys (Pinecone and Acorn), just as in the real OPERATION ORANGE keys, we have given these ID/fingerprints in the AUTHENTICATION document on the masthead menu on the OPERATION ORANGE websites.

Note:  to minimize confusion in this tutorial, the “authentic” keys are named “Pinecone” and “Acorn,” whereas the “imposter” keys are named “pinecone” and “acorn.”  The first character of the key name is capitalized  in the authentic key, and lower cased in the imposter keys.  In a real-world scenario, you will likely encounter the key name being identical in every way.  For purposes of this tutorial, we will overlook the capitalization distinction and simulate the key names are identical.

For this tutorial, simulate that you did not verify the digital fingerprints of the imposter keys, as this would be a necessary oversight to import imposter keys.  You can see that the key ID/fingerprints are different, even though the picture and name are the same on pinecone, and it appears to be signed by the same key (acorn).

Do not sign the new keys at this time.  We will discover what an unverified/invalid key looks like.

Double-click on the Midway signature file.  PGP will find the corresponding public key on your keyring (pinecone), display the keyname, ID, and verification status.  In this case, the verification status is “invalid,” because it was not signed by your private key.  This is to warn that, while you do have the public key, you have not verified it as genuine.  The signature status shows the date/time it was signed, but flags it as an  “INVALID KEY.”

Sign (verify) the two imposter keys with your private key.

This changes the verification status to “VERIFIED.”

Double-click on the Midway signature file (last time).

PGP will find the corresponding public key on your keyring (pinecone), display the keyname, ID, and verification status.  In this case, the verification status is now “valid,” because it has been signed by your private key.

Double-click on the Midway SDA.  Enter the destination you wish for the contents of the SDA in the output directory window.  Enter the pass phrase (The General Lee).  Click OK.  (You may have to authorize the two files to overwrite two existing files from the previous exercise.)

Double-click on the 333.PDF signature file.

PGP will find the corresponding public key on your keyring (pinecone), display the keyname, ID, and verification status.

Notice that the signature is considered “VALID,” but only because it is referencing an imposter key.  The imposter key was only possible due to not verifying the digital fingerprint and key ID.

Notice that we did not decrypt all the SDAs.  Tarawa and Okinawa were valid SDAs, but are either decoys or contingency instructions.  You can verify them via the signature files, but you can’t decrypt them unless you have the pass phrase.  The pass phrases we will use in the real-world operation will be substantially more complex than the ones we used for this tutorial.

You should have a working understanding of the necessary skills for verification of our SDAs, or any PGP signed file.  We certainly hope the all these precautions are an over preparation and that all goes well.  Preparation is the prelude to success, so please work through these exercises until you are comfortable with all the enabling objectives.

These tools allow us to send uncorrupted messages to the participating pilots.  Neither the ATA nor government can stop this or impersonate our signatures.  This technology was not available to the pilots that went before us, so let’s use it to our advantage.

Please consider downloading the trial version of PGP.  The more pilots we have using the software, the easier the end game will be.

Until that time, please spread the word.  Pressure your flying partners, your union leadership, and your buddies at other airlines.  This is the way we take back our profession.

The rules of the game have changed.  They changed a long time ago but we have not adjusted our tactics.  It is time to update our tactics and write our own rules for a change.

It is our turn to lead.

THIS IS OUR TIME.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.“

-United States Constitution, First Amendment, 1791.

This is the supreme law of the land and it is well into its third century of governing political discourse, rallies, and lobbying throughout the United States.  Contrary to the understanding of most in the air transportation industry, there is no exception for airline pilots.  If you take the time to read the First Amendment closely, you will not find any reference to how airline pilots must have their political activities muzzled at the behest of a law passed 85 years ago.

In fact, there is no provision to muzzle the political speech, press, assembly, or petitioning of the government of anyone involved in high profile occupations.  The Railway Labor Act is not our UCMJ.  It never has been, nor will it ever be; we believe it is time we quit acting as if it were.  We are citizens with full enjoyment of the First Amendment, just as any civil rights demonstrator, war protestor, Tea Party activist, newspaper columnist, TV reporter, artist, photographer, author, or teacher.  Our profession does not limit our political activities any more than if we were auto mechanics, acoustical engineers, physicians, landscapers, used car salesmen, or coffee baristas.

The First Amendment allows for individuals to influence others to form groups.  That is what freedom of the press and freedom of speech are all about.  Those groups are free to peacefully assemble, without permit or harassment.  Those groups are free to petition the government to fix the problems government has created

This is basic high school civics.  It is a shame we have seem to have forgotten this lesson.

The courts have steadfastly held that corporate entities also enjoy this First Amendment protection.  This could apply to a corporation, such as an airline or Boeing, or a foundation, non-profit, partnership, a labor union, or many other types of organizations.

Corporations routinely collect money and lobby Congress for their interests.  This is the bulk of the billions of dollars spent every year trying to influence the legislative agenda.  It matters not if the intended outcome is the awarding of a military contract, the location of a bridge, the nutritional content of processed food, trade agreements, labor law, zoning changes, or the construction of a sports arena.  Corporations also directly endorse and fund many political candidates who may sympathize, or could be made to sympathize, with the interests of the corporation.  South of the Rio Grande, it’s called a bribe; north of the Rio Grande it’s called a campaign contribution.  Regardless of its name, it accomplishes the same thing.   Non-profits, foundations, and unions also do the very same thing, which is why many of these organizations are headquartered inside The Beltway.

Passenger airlines have routinely rallied their employees, in addition to hiring professional lobbyists, to canvass Capitol Hill for the purposes of securing route authority.  Recently, the freight airlines have lobbied Congress for relief from the RLA for certain classes and craft of labor under their corporate umbrella.

The various pilot associations spend some of our dues money to attempt to influence legislation in the favor of pilots.  They fund campaigns, shake hands, have lunches, and try to influence members of Congress to see things our way.

So does the ATA.  Guess who has more money and more influence?

So, if it is a contest of money, and we are at a tremendous funding disadvantage, why do our pilot associations keep trying the same, failed tactics?  They do because it has “always been done that way.”

It’s time for a new playbook.  It’s time to think strategic.  It’s time for the “nuclear option.”

Captains Moak and Bates have garnered much favorable press for attempting to become more conciliatory in their approach to leading their respective pilot associations.  It is thought this method produces the necessary environment for achieving the goals of labor and those of management.  If not, management would simply stall until pilots became much less strident.

We note that this conciliatory approach wasn’t used by management during the past decade when management handed out term sheets from bankruptcy court, or had gone to court to quash the use of parts of their agreements they didn’t happen to like.  Lorenzo, Ferris, and Crandall were never conciliatory toward labor.  In fact, it was when pilot associations have been concerned about being management’s partner in helping the airline, by granting wage, and productivity concessions, that management was at its most strident.  When management’s rhetoric was warm, it only blanketed an icy torrent of self-serving opportunism.  Ask American Airlines pilots how “pull together, win together” worked out after their 2003 restructuring.

Nevertheless, the current pilot associations are trying to smile and reinvent history in an attempt to move our profession forward.  We wish them luck; history says they will need it.

Détente was also a “win-win” of sorts.  The Soviet Union was able to attain an ongoing tactical and strategic dominance in the mid-Cold War, while Western politicians got fawning press at home.  Both sides got what they wanted.  It wasn’t until a different group of Western leaders, who were interested in game changers, rather empty accolades, that the Cold War turned in our favor.

It is no different with our relationship with management and government.  As long as we are content to lose, management and government will still play this game.  Why wouldn’t they?

By now, you are probably asking what the First Amendment, RLA, and détente have to do with anything that could promote the piloting profession.  They are all related because the First Amendment gives us protection to fix the abuses of the existing regulatory paradigm, outside of the restrictions of the RLA, provided our leadership cares to change the game or enough of the rank-and-file take matters into their own hands to save their careers.

OPERATION ORANGE seeks to use the First Amendment protections, afforded to everyone in the United States, to petition the government to fix the regulatory paradigm around the piloting profession.  It seeks to do so via peaceful protest.  By a critical mass of pilots withdrawing their services, tremendous pressure will be brought to bear on the airlines and government to implement our proposed legislative agenda, called “The Fair Treatment of Experienced Pilots Act – Part 2.”

That is the game changer.  That is the weapon system management and government have no answer and it is the only one they fear.

All we have to do is implement it.

It can happen in two ways:

-GRASS ROOTS EFFORT (currently under way):  This would have thousands of pilots come out from the control of the pilot associations, and exercise their First Amendment rights, as we have explained throughout the various documents published by OPERATION ORANGE.  If this option gets traction, it will be very difficult for the pilot associations (or at least the current leadership) to retain credibility.  If pilots are capable of banding together, across corporate lines, without the auspices of their respective pilot associations, it is difficult to imagine a scenario where the current union leadership isn’t replaced from A-Z with extraordinarily strident and militant leadership.

-UNION LED EFFORT:  The same would be accomplished, but the pilot associations retain control over the pilots and thus the implementation and goals of the operation.  The mere threat of such an action should suffice to achieve any legislative goal.  Management and government would be foolish to allow the pilots to have an operational display of an SOS.  The advantage to a union led effort is that it can be quickly brought to bear to address malfeasance in government/management.

Union leaders get briefed by staff attorneys about the power of federal judges to issue injunctions against willful violation of various laws and contracts.  They subsequently assume they are muzzled from speaking out and leading without the prior approval of government or management.  These attorneys are not necessarily giving bad advice, as judges have reliably enjoined unions from taking unilateral action against their employer under the RLA.  No union is allowed to change the status quo, just as airlines are not allowed to change the terms and working conditions of agreements they sign under the RLA.

The key is the scope of the Railway Labor Act.

The RLA addresses how both parties to an agreement in the airline industry have to approach implementation and the eventual amending of the agreement.  The RLA does not cover political speech, nor any speech.  The RLA can prevent a union from calling a unilateral work action contrary to the RLA, such as a sick-out geared to bring pressure regarding the contractual interpretation of the integration of an acquired airline (provided it is not a “major dispute”), but it can’t quash anyone from speaking out about the law.  The First Amendment prevents this:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” [emphasis added]

Congress is prohibited from enacting a law which would prevent anyone from speaking out and trying to amend an existing law.  Even the First Amendment can be criticized, and changed via the amendment process.  The RLA isn’t sacrosanct, above criticism from those subject to its governance, nor immune from having pressure brought to bear for its amendment.  This is not the UCMJ for airline pilots.

Federal judges cannot enjoin actions covered by the First Amendment, no matter how inconvenient to the airline industry.  They can enjoin actions covered by existing laws, such as the RLA, if the actions so enjoined are clearly under the purview of those laws.  A non-sanctioned work action for the purposes of bringing pressure to influence an active agreement under the RLA is not permissible, because it clearly falls under the RLA.  A union-led protest for the purposes of bringing pressure to influence the implementation of a law enacted by Congress is not subject to the whims of federal judges, because it clearly falls under the First Amendment.

A federal judge can prevent a party to an existing contract from unilaterally changing the terms of that contract.  A contractor can have an agreement with a class of labor which pays at a rate which happens to be 75 cents over the prevailing minimum wage.  There is nothing preventing the laborers in that contract from joining an effort to get the minimum wage changed upward by $1.50.  No federal judge can tell those laborers, nor the foreman of the worksite, they can’t petition Congress to get the law changed.

If those laborers peacefully assembled to petition the government to change the law, they would be free to do so under the auspices of the First Amendment.  If it happened during working hours, their employer could replace them, but no judge could prohibit their activities, nor fine their foreman for calling the meeting.  A judge could do so if their purposes were to change the existing contractual language, absent a Congressional edict.

The Thirteenth Amendment prohibits your absenteeism from work from being construed as a crime.  If 10,000 pilots refuse to show for work, for whatever reason, the government isn’t going to send the SWAT team to fill the cockpits.  That would be false imprisonment, kidnapping, and a host of other felonies.  Federal judges didn’t play the part of truant officer for Tea Party rallies to ensure everyone was on an authorized absence from their employer and they are not allowed to act as truant officers for the airlines.

We need enough pilots to ground the system, not just create make-work for the human resources departments.  By grounding the system, we can’t be replaced and by grounding the system, we can bring enough pressure to Congress to get the laws changed.

Walking around in circles on our days off, holding signs, and circulating pieces of paper with signatures will have no effect on Congress.  Those activities are done to make the protestors feel important, not pressure elected officials.  They don’t care if we are upset, because they are not addicted to our money.  They only care if the planes don’t move, because they are addicted to our labor.  As long as you are at the controls when scheduled, they don’t care how upset you are on your days off.  We could picket Capitol Hill every day for the next decade and they won’t care.  If we ground the system for a day, they will care and they will act to get the system moving.

That brings us to a decision point.

Are we going to act to reverse the purposeful damage inflicted on our profession and the flying public, or are we going to opt for “peace in our time,” and business as usual, while accepting the permanent decline of the industry?

That question is inescapable.  Each and every one of us must answer it individually, and we must also answer it corporately.

Many pilots will see the minor improvements in some of the collective bargaining agreements as a sign the tide has turned and that pattern bargaining is on its way up.  Keep in mind that all of these comparisons are with agreements made under the heavy hand of bankruptcy with federal judges shoving these agreements down our throats; of course they look good in comparison.

We have not had a sustained upward pattern-bargaining cycle since Deregulation.  We have been trapped in a very broad downward pattern bargaining cycle over that time for all the reasons highlighted in the various OPERATION ORANGE documents.

Couple this myopic view of current negotiations with the aging population of pilots, and it won’t take much to put the pilot unions in a position to cut another deal to avoid bankruptcy, so as to save the 55-65 year old pilots, but sell out those 53 and under.  This will happen if the economy recesses again.

Mollifying the pilot corps is the best strategy for management to pursue, until they can get a federal government openly hostile to organized labor – like they had eight years ago.  This could happen as early as January of 2013.  It is highly likely that private-sector labor will get swept up into the public outrage over public-sector unions and an entire corpus of law will be passed to eliminate most of the labor protections that built the American middle class.  Pilots, most certainly, will not be spared.

For now, management can grant scheduling and pay improvements with little concern for the future.  This will keep pilots complacent during their rapidly closing window to act in their own self-interest.  We could wake up one morning to the air carriers racing toward bankruptcy, with an aging pilot population, and pilot unity in disarray.  Their investments in the next year will pay handsomely as they rewrite all provisions pilot labor leaders secured during this time of consolidation.  Foreign labor will likely be brought in to bridge any gap that might appear, just as it has in every other industry gutted by the global wage arbitrage paradigm.

This should not be taken as our opposition to some prospective improvements in the UA-CAL and AA pilot contracts.  We are highly skeptical that these improvements will be long lasting.  The UA-CAL scope violations should be enough to convince all but the most egregious lickspittles among us that management hasn’t changed one bit.  If they can keep scope moving against us, they stand to easily recoup any concessions they grant in a bankruptcy filing.  Pay and scheduling are fairly easy to for a bankruptcy judge to rewrite, whereas scope is considerably more tricky.

Likewise, AMR management’s sudden willingness to negotiate in good faith, after a half-decade of stonewalling behind the RLA, is highly suspect. 

Occam’s Razor suggests they are just trying to rent the goodwill of their pilots to get them through staffing issues of their own creation.  Their incessant press releases about how they have the most expensive pilots in the industry doesn’t fit with their sudden willingness to improve pay and scheduling provisions.  We believe this is a gamble they hope to undo if the elections break in their favor.

The recent order of several hundred shiny jets (most of which is vendor financed) will undoubtedly entice many pilots to throw caution to the wind and gut their scope clause.  AMR management will likely threaten to rescind much of their order if the AA pilots refuse to expand the exceptions to their scope clause, and along with that rescission, much of the agreements-in-principle that address scheduling and quality-of-life advancements.

The bottom line:  management wants us to allow ourselves to be replaced by underpaid, inexperienced pilots.  They will give anything to get it, because once they do, they will never have to give anything again.

This is why we remain highly skeptical regarding these glimpses of sunshine in recent pilot negotiations and corporate restructuring.  We believe the various pilot associations need to unify around OPERATION ORANGE to make potential abuses of the bankruptcy laws, RLA, under-experienced pilots, and foreign subsidizing of industry capital unworkable.  If they do not, these will all hit at once, creating another “perfect storm” of pilot career retrenchment.

We remain dedicated to growing a grass-roots effort to effect these changes.  We also welcome pilot association leaders to embrace these proposals, whether openly or discretely, under the protection of the First Amendment.  Our opposition (ATA) is unified against our goals and their unified actions have produced fruit.  We need to meet that challenge with unity and tactics capable of carrying the fight on our terms.  We encourage everyone to pressure their union leaders to adopt a highly unconventional contingency plan, such as OPERATION ORANGE, in the event current management actions align with their 30 years of history.

Moak and Bates are staking the future of the pilot profession on the fanciful idea that management will reciprocate their congeniality, despite all living memory to the contrary.  Management’s actions prevent us from being able to determine the wisdom or folly of such a strategy until it is too late.  Prudence dictates that all trust be verified, especially when dealing with entities that see fit to reserve unto themselves the right to cheat, lie, break agreements, or commit any act that serves their goals, regardless of how much it violates employee goodwill or endangers the flying public.

We agree that if an olive branch is to be extended, arrows need to be at the ready in the event that olive branch is not genuinely reciprocated.  Having a unified pilot corps across the industry gives our pilot associations the ability to use a “nuclear option” when dealing with management/government.  OPERATION ORANGE is a game changer that fits that need.

Once again, by the time we discover management’s true intentions, we will be at a crisis point.  If we are not ready to walk out en-masse, we will all be replaced one-by-one.  Management has been doing this very thing for 30 straight years and nothing has changed in the industry to warrant their new tone.  The management teams are the same, as are the boards of directors.  Something is afoot that the broader piloting corps do not understand.  Pilot associations have a rich history of believing management “smooth talking” with predictable, consistent, and disastrous results.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results.  OPERATION ORANGE is something different expecting to bring about different results.

It’s time to try something different.  It’s time for OPERATION ORANGE.  Call your pilot associations.  Call your fellow pilots.  Nothing is going to change without a fight.

In 2007, when the career seemed to be at its darkest hour, the government and ALPA stepped in and rubbed salt in the wound. Age 65 was forced upon us. Not only did the lower half of the seniority list have to digest a massive and unprecedented retrenchment in career expectations and working conditions, our union and government ensured we would do so for another five years.

Cockpits across the industry are bitterly divided over the issue. Elderly captains believe this is their way of getting back part of what was stolen from them during the looting of the industry. First Officers believe that restitution is coming entirely at their expense.

How can that be reconciled? Is it possible?

We believe it can.

We believe it is possible to turn Age 65 into something positive for everyone, but it will take character, strength, maturity, and forgiveness to do it. Here is how:

CAPTAINS:

Face it. Your timing was miserable. You had a decent career; it wasn’t as nice as your predecessors, but by the career expectations of the person sitting 5 feet to your right, your career is the stuff of legend. Just as you got to your late 50s, the management abused the bankruptcy laws to steal your pension – a fate they sidestepped in their own compensation. We understand your decision. We really do.

That doesn’t mean we agree with it. You never expected to work beyond 60, so this is a windfall taken at the expense of your First Officer. You smartly saluted every captain as he stepped off the top on his 60th birthday, and you advanced one number every time that happened. Your First Officer has a 5 year period where that isn’t happening. Some are furloughed – a 100% pay cut so you can still fly.

However, this doesn’t have to be a self-serving money grab. You have the opportunity of a lifetime in your right hand. You can take a simple action to make your extra five years be something your First Officer will be grateful you have – and you will get a pay raise.

You can ground the wide body fleet during OPERATION ORANGE. All airline management fear their wide body jets sitting idle. You can make that happen You can land the biggest punch, and walk away with a $300/hour pay rate. Sure, your jet will be empty if the narrow body jets don’t move, but showing that the wide body fleet will be grounded, no matter what, will bring enormous leverage.

What do you get in return? In addition to a healthy pay raise, your First Officer will be better off than he would have been if Age 65 never occurred. He will advance faster than he thought possible. He will have greater job security. He also gets a healthy pay raise.

You will bring honor to the profession. You will be the elder statesman of the piloting corps. You will be a positive example to the succeeding generations. All you need is the character to act in the interest of all your fellow pilots. You need the courage and strength not to be cowed by management. All you have to do is beach those whales.

You can make your five years count for something that will last for 35 years, and have the respect, loyalty, and admiration of your fellow pilots. You also get a pay raise.

Will you?

FIRST OFFICERS:

It’s a huge shit sandwich. We know you want something else on the menu, but the law is the law and Age 65 isn’t going away. Going through life pissed-off isn’t helping you. You need to forgive and move on.

You can make a better life for everyone. Get your Captain on board with OPERATION ORANGE. If he can help you ground the wide body fleet, you will reap benefits that no pilot has contemplated in 20 years. You will advance faster than if Age 65 never was passed. You will protect your flank from the outsourcing operations.

Get the word out. Badger your Captain on OPERATION ORANGE. If you can convince him to participate in OPERATION ORANGE, he will advanced your career faster than if he just retired. He will make up for the loss of pay several times over. He will earn your respect.

Upon the successful completion of OPERATION ORANGE, you can look over at your 60+ Captain, extend your hand and say, “It is an honor to fly with you. Thank you for putting this profession back on its feet.”

You must.

Bridging this gulf is essential to a unified pilot group across the industry. Just as in every aspect of life, common sacrifice and common achievement are the foundations of unity. OPERATION ORANGE has the ability to turn a highly divisive feature into one that will unify us all.

Character and strength on the left.
Maturity and forgiveness on the right.
Vision and unity for us all.

Send this video to every pilot you know. Post this on your FACEBOOK page.

More videos will follow in the next few weeks.

“What is in it for me?” Why should I support or oppose OPERATION ORANGE’s “Fair Treatment of Experienced Pilots Act – Part 2?”

Almost all legislation has “winners” and “losers,” and this is no exception. The general rule of thumb is that the “winners” are those who have contributed mightily to Congressional campaigns to see the legislation to completion, and the “losers” are those that kept their checkbooks closed. This legislation is different in the sense there is no money going to Washington as lubricant.

The lubricant is our labor.

Generally, the “winners” under the FTOEPA2 will be those who have been the “losers” over the past 30 years, and the “losers” will be those that used the last 30 years to loot the industry.

Here is how we see all the players and how they stand to benefit:

Furloughed Mainline Pilots

The upward mobility at the mainline carriers will continue as it becomes financially unviable to maintain a fleet of small jets with pilot labor costs equivalent to that found at the mainline carrier. Airlines will move flying from the outsourced operations to its traditional in-house flying because they will no longer be able to whipsaw you against kids asking for $20,000 per year to service over $100,000 in debt. They will shifting capital to where it is the most efficient, and in the air transportation business, economy of scale rules the day.

Welcome back. The career is now worth having.

Junior First Officers

12 years on reserve is coming to an end. With the shift toward mainline flying, and away from outsourcing, you are about to realize the career expectations you had prior to the past decade of government sanctioned hollowing out of the industry.

Management won’t be able to send your job to a $20,000/year pilot, with no experience, who is willing to work up to the FARs, or even beyond them.

Management won’t be able to use a PBS system to schedule you for 28 days a month, and only pay you for 17. Your days off won’t be limited to 30 hour layovers in Detroit or Toronto. You will get the opportunity to actually participate in the raising of your children, rather than just having them send you pictures of their milestone events, while you sit in a crash pad in Queens. Perhaps if you were able to sleep in the same bed as your spouse, more than 5 nights per month, you wouldn’t need the services of a family law practice.

Senior First Officers

You have been 5 feet away from your goal for the past 20 years, and when this passes, you will get the opportunity for that fourth stripe. You job won’t be outsourced to a 26 year old captain, with 1501 hours working for $45,000 per year, who is assisted by a 23 year old first officer with 250 hours.

Junior Captains

You finally get the authority you have had chipped away over the past 15 years. If you are fatigued, you can call-out with confidence you won‘t be harassed, threatened, or pressured to fly.

You can know that all your hard work can’t be capriciously transferred from your account to management’s account at the behest of a bankruptcy judge.

You won’t be assuming captain’s responsibilities at first officer rates. If they push you to fly extra, you will be paid handsomely for it, rather than at straight rates.

Most importantly, when the captain speaks, the issue will be settled.

Senior Captains

You get the opportunity to make up what management/government stole from you over the past decade. Your pay scale will reflect your responsibilities and how much you contribute to the revenue stream.

Your grueling longitudinal transits will have the assistance of enough augmentation pilots to ensure you are well rested in the terminal phases of flight. You won’t be flying into the WOCL without augmentation and adequate rest facilities.

Regional Jet Pilots

Section 5 of the “Fair Treatment of Experienced Pilots Act – Part 2″ was written for you. This gives you the ability to have protections as the industry changes.

These changes are coming and you should welcome them. The RJ is economically unviable. If it was not, the RJs would not be getting bigger and management wouldn’t be trying to get the mainline to exempt 2 class, 100 seat aircraft from the existing scope clauses with their mainline pilots. The RJ is going away, like it or not. The only questions concern “when” and “what happens?”

“When” is now. Without this legislation, your RJ is going to the desert sooner or later, and with it, your job. It is better to make this happen while you are still young enough to reap the benefits.

“What happens” is that there will be a tremendous updraft of hiring at the mainline as the airlines recapitalize from their short-sighted, labor busting ideas of the past 15 years, to the more viable and popular B737 and A319 jets flown by mainline pilots. Your alternative is to fall onto the continuum between being trapped as a victim of your own success, working for $45,000/year and 20 days per month, as you destroy the domestic segment of the mainline operation, or cast aside by management as they ground your economically unviable RJ.

Our legislation puts you in line, right behind the furloughed mainline pilots, for the mainline jobs. As you can see by the pay scales and working rules, the mainline jobs of the future will be categorically superior to anything the regional airlines will offer.

The airlines will have to hire from the preferential hiring pools and the most experienced and reliable pilots from the regional airlines will jump effortlessly into the mainline jobs.

In the meantime, you will enjoy the pay scales of the mainline narrow body fleet, which will enable you to put a big dent in those flight school debts.

If you take a longer view of the situation, you can see that you are probably the biggest benefactor of the various pilot groups regarding OPERATION ORANGE.

New Entrant – Non Union Pilots

You won’t be able to undercut the existing experience level on both price and working standards in order to establish yourself. You will have to go through the long road of building and honing your experience in order to transport the public, just like everyone else.

Join the rest of us and build a profession worth having. Sorry, no shortcuts.

Scab Labor

We have nothing for you. This legislation puts you at the back of the line for years and years to come. You will have to think of other methods to break into the industry rather than just back-stabbing those trying to keep safety and career standards high enough to be worthy of the world’s most premiere air transportation system.

This is a new era. Master SCAB Lists can be downloaded to any PDA/smart phone.

Don’t be a SCAB – it is for life and we don’t forgive.

Competent Airline Management/Shareholders

The race to the bottom is over.

You have the opportunity to work with labor as an asset, rather than a funding source for short-sighted, capital destroying schemes. You no longer need to worry about your peers substantially undercutting you on the pilot labor front. You can concentrate on building a reputable brand with top notch customer service, reliability, and safety.

If you succeed, your shareholders will likely reward you for your efforts. You will be at the top of world-class airlines, rather than the undertakers for dysfunctional, cash-burning machines. You can build and not just shuffle pieces around.

Incompetent Airline Management/Financial Alchemists

We have nothing for you except what you gave to the First Officers of your once-great airlines – pink slips.

Perhaps you can spend your soon-to-be-abundant free time apologizing to the American people for what you have done to their air transportation system. The outsourcing…being herded like cattle…the congestion…being stuffed onto sardine cans called “regional jets”…the abysmal customer service…the shoddy foreign maintenance…the dilapidated facilities…and the wholesale looting of the industry disguised as “executive incentives.”

Enjoy retirement and all that executive bonus money you have.

Large Jet Manufacturers

Large gauge jets will be in high demand as the incentive to park your jets in desert, in order to get training-wage pilots in training-wheels jets, comes to a long overdue and welcome close.

Government

The skies will become less congested as airlines use larger aircraft to transport their passengers. The FAA should welcome the changes as oversight will become much easier and the standards will be pushed higher.

Viable middle-class jobs will be built, not just in the pilot ranks, but throughout the airline industry. Your tax base will rise as airlines become more profitable. Complaints will drop as reliability is restored to what it was decades ago.

Not all politicians will welcome the change. The notion that skilled labor can stand up to Wall Street and their various Congressional lobbying efforts will likely send shudders through many entrenched politicians. There is a political fortune to be made in embracing a rising American middle-class, and one to be lost by outsourcing them to the lowest bidder.

This fortune has no allegiance to any political party.

Passengers

You are the biggest winners. Yes, you will pay a little bit more to fly, but it is a trivial amount compared to what you get. The sheer volume of passengers will rejuvenate the mainline carriers and they will eventually replace the current crop of managers with those seeking to treat you with the dignity you expect when you purchase your ticket.

When you buy a ticket on a carrier, you won’t have your safety farmed out to the lowest bidder, with fatigued, under experienced, and overburdened pilots. Airlines will compete on service, safety, and reputation to earn your business.

You will have an air transportation system that was better than anything your parents had.

Support us in this effort.

THIRTY years ago this fall, Congress passed the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978. Since then, America’s airline system has greatly deteriorated.

Our airlines, once world leaders, are now laggards in every category, including fleet age, service quality and international reputation. Fewer and fewer flights are on time. Airport congestion has become a staple of late-night comedy shows. An ever higher percentage of bags are lost or sent to the wrong airports. Last-minute seats are harder and harder to find. Passenger complaints have skyrocketed. Airline service, by any standard, has become unacceptable.

Consolidation will not resolve the woes of individual carriers, nor will it fix the nation’s aviation problems. Delta and Northwest agreed to a merger last week, and that deal is likely to be followed by other proposals. But the case for mergers is unpersuasive. Mergers will not lower fuel prices. They will not increase economies of scale for already sizable major airlines. They will create very large costs related to consolidation. And they will anger airline employees, who will perceive themselves to be hurt by the mergers.

Although the system could conceivably be operated by a single efficient carrier, consumers clearly benefit from the existence of multiple airlines. The absence of competition never fosters better customer service.

Market-based approaches alone have not and will not produce the aviation system our country needs. We do not need to return to the over-regulation of the past, but some government intervention is required. The objectives of a national aviation policy should be to enable people to move easily from one place to another, to assure safe, courteous and on-time service for consumers, and to improve the financial performance and international competitiveness of America’s airlines.

[EDIT: We could not have said it better.]

The first steps toward achieving these goals should be to improve our outdated air traffic control system, to build much-needed new runways and airport facilities, and to lower the heavy taxes and fees now imposed on airlines and their customers.

Today, aircraft movements are constrained by a radar-based air traffic control system that locks aircraft into predetermined, often crowded routes and that gives pilots little information about the locations of other planes. The system worsens congestion in the air and on the ground.

A new air traffic control system, based on the use of the global positioning system, is in the works. It will reduce costs and congestion by providing pilots with information about other planes, freeing them to choose optimal routes. Unfortunately, Congress has not provided the money to put the new system in place as quickly as possible.

Until the new system is in place, the number of flights at major airports needs to be reduced. Right now, airlines schedule more flights than the runways, terminals and air traffic control system can accommodate. Airlines cannot unilaterally reduce flights because doing so would grant other airlines a competitive advantage. In the short term, the only solution is a government mandate that limits flights to the number the system can handle. To create capacity for future demand, we need to build more aviation facilities, including high-speed rail systems that would encourage the use of airports that are farther away from the cities they serve.

[EDIT: Smaller gauge aircraft have greatly contributed to this problem.]

The financial standards for new airlines also need to be made more stringent. In the years since deregulation, nearly 200 airlines have come and gone. These inadequately financed carriers – whose principal goal has often seemed to be merely to exist long enough to reap the rewards of an initial public offering – have consistently cut prices to attract passengers. This downward pressure on prices has hurt airlines that seek long-term success.

We should also revisit the basis on which we negotiate international aviation agreements. Since the 1980s, our government has too often agreed to “consumer friendly” pacts whose sole apparent purpose has been to try to lower prices for travelers. Because the United States has long been the world’s largest aviation market, these agreements have provided more opportunities for expansion to foreign airlines than to our own, with predictable consequences.

[EDIT: The goal should be to provide the framework for a viable global transportation system worked by United States carriers and employees for the benefit of United States citizens. One reason for tilting the competitive landscape toward foreign carriers is for the eventual replacement of United States carriers and employees, as has been the case in most other modern trade accords.]

Given the recent concerns about aircraft safety, offshore maintenance of American aircraft should be prohibited. Maintenance performed in the United States is done under more demanding rules and a far higher level of Federal Aviation Administration oversight than work done abroad. Keeping the work here would enhance any safety improvements that result from the Transportation Department’s new plan to overhaul its oversight procedures. Moreover, bringing aircraft maintenance work back to the United States will re-create many thousands of skilled jobs.

[EDIT: See "Flying Cheaper," by PBS FRONTLINE]

Fees and taxes can be as much as 50 percent of the purchase price of an airline ticket and typically amount to about 15 percent, according to a study done by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Daniel Webster College in Nashua, N.H. Reducing these charges would make it easier for the carriers to recapture their costs without pricing travel beyond the reach of many customers.

Finally, we need to restore balance to the relationship between management and labor in the airline industry. Revising our bankruptcy laws to prevent failed airlines from continuing to operate would focus management and labor on the virtues of cooperation rather than confrontation. Similarly, binding arbitration of labor disputes would encourage both sides to avoid unreasonable positions and would free the nation’s transportation system from the threat of work stoppages.

[EDIT: This is the only paragraph, of this otherwise welcome editorial, where we disagree with Mr. Crandall. While we agree that balance must be restored, the current "balance" has been heavily tilted toward airline management over the course of deregulation. We agree that bankruptcy should have more negative consequences, rather than just being an opportunity to underprice healthy, solvent airlines, while managment loots employee pensions and contracts and makes off with millions of dollars in bonuses and stock ownership. Binding arbitration has been a goal of management for decades, since they know that they will be able to stack the deck in their favor, while labor will be even more helpless to defend themselves. Managment must be forced to negotiate in good faith as contracts expire. This is no different than the way they secure the other necessary components of the airline business. If the airlines are highly profitable, management should be rewarded proportionately. If not, they should be replaced. Fear of "work stoppages" should not be the primary motivation for fixing labor relations in the industry; fear of a catastrophic failure borne of three decades of abuse, neglect, and managerial/government collusion should be. If the ATA ever gets mandatory binding arbitration, your career is over. Management will then have the tools to fully outsource to underexperienced and foreign pilot labor.]

We need to be realistic: whether there are mergers or not, airline fares are going to increase. Every business must charge enough to cover its operating and capital costs. Regulatory and oversight changes intended to make our carriers more successful may well force prices up faster than would otherwise be the case. But we will be better off with higher fares and more competitors than with higher fares and fewer competitors.

The enormous economic importance of our once peerless aviation system is indisputable. Adding some sensible regulations and making the investments needed to give our airlines opportunities for success would be a far better way to safeguard that economic contribution than further airline consolidation.

Robert Crandall, the chief executive of American Airlines from 1985 to 1998, is the chief executive of an air taxi startup.

Despite sharing many of our goals, Robert Crandall is not a member of OPERATION ORANGE.

You can read the original editorial here.

THE WAY WE SEE IT

There are essentially four types of pilots as it relates to implementing a nation-wide “sitdown” protest of the current regulatory paradigm.

TYPE 1 – Pilots who want to do an SOS right now and are not squeamish in the slightest bit about doing it. These pilots are the most important part of this effort, because they are the sharp tip of the spear. They are the ones with the energy needed to get the word out to their peers and they are the ones who see the vision for the future of our profession. They know that nothing comes without standing up for yourself. They know that managing is the process of “what is,” and that leadership is the substance of “what can be.” They are the leaders.

The challenge is to convince them that there are a few bricks that have to be set prior tothe SOS and that their enthusiasm needs to be channeled into setting those bricks.

TYPE 2 – Pilots who want to do an SOS, but are somewhat risk averse and wish to see how the initial skirmish plays out prior to committing to the effort. They need a little nudging to get into the fight, but when they engage, they will bring the heaviest punch.

The challenge is to show them that with unity, they can achieve their purposes and to convince them that with that unity, “what can be” is much better than “what is “. In order to accomplish this the TYPE 1 pilots must convince them to do something they have never done in their lives – disobey.

TYPE 3 – These are the pilots who like the concept, but would rather spend their time pointing out all the reasons it won’t work. These are the people that see an obstacle and decide what can’t be, rather than viewing the obstacle as an opportunity to take us where we never thought possible. They have an excuse for every failure, and they see it everywhere they look.

These pilots will be the ones talking about how they can do everything better. They will jump into the fight as soon as it is won and crow the loudest about how they always knew this would work.

The challenge is to ignore their words and lead their actions.

TYPE 4 – Pilots who have no interest in changing anything. They are content to take what management gives them and are just “happy to have a job.”

HOW WILL THE “SIT DOWN” PROTEST WORK?

If Phase IV (the actual SOS) is needed to bring leverage, it will have to come after we have a critical mass of pilots willing to implement it. This is something we either do well or not at all. We will announce the SOS date approximately 6 to 8 weeks prior to the actual event, which will give everyone plenty of time to position for it. The basic strategy will be for those pilots who are most enthusiastic about changing the regulatory paradigm in our industry (TYPE 1 pilots) to bid/trade to ensure they will be scheduled to be on duty when the SOS date arrives. This is one way we can ensure the initial wave is effective.

The mathematics of this “sit down” protest favor us. We need to aggressively recruit pilots in the next few weeks and months to help the more risk averse pilots join our ranks through the concept of “safety in numbers.” There are other benefits to the aggressive recruitment in the early stages which we can not discuss at this time. We ask you to trust us on this.

As “safety in numbers” builds, it will be easier to recruit. This is what we mean by “critical mass.” It will be increasingly easy (for a time) to build our numbers, while at the same time it will become exponentially more difficult for management to keep the planes in the air during the SOS. They have put themselves at a tremendous tactical disadvantage by staffing the airlines for perfection and treating every pilot on the property like dirt for their entire career.

In a hypothetical scenario, we only have only 1/6th of the pilots scheduled to work prepared to implement the SOS. Our scenario has three first officers for every captain,  since first officers are less risk averse and have more to gain than captains, many of whom are just trying to run out the clock and don’t want the boat rocked.

For every 100 flights scheduled to depart the Eastern Time Zone on the first morning of the SOS, the airlines will have staffed approximately 205 pilots. Let’s say that 27 first officers and 9 captains (TYPE 1) call in sick (“ORANGE-OUT”) for whatever reason. Roughly 33 of the flights will have to be restaffed. The crew desks will immediately call every reserve pilot available and they will be lucky to get half to the airport by midmorning. They will likely be fresh out of reserves by noon Eastern.  67 flights departed the East Coast on schedule and most will end up at the midcontinental hubs within two to three hours, where the process will repeat.  We anticipate SOS participation at the hubs to be less than the participation rate on the coasts, but the damage is already done. For every 100 hub flights scheduled for midmorning, they need the same 205 pilots. 21 first officers and 7 captains “ORANGEOUT.”

That’s another 25 flights that need to be restaffed, but the airline already burned through all their reserves with the early morning wave that left the hubs as the East Coast originations were in the air. Add in another 66 pilots that didn’t make their hub connections because they either called out or were stranded with the East Coast wave, and now fully half of the mid-morning hub complexes are grounded…all through the Central Time Zone.

The crew desk is out of reserves. Half the planes are grounded. We have misconnected passengers, planes, cabin crews, and pilots all over the system. It is unbridled pandemonium in Minneapolis, Chicago, Dallas, and Houston, to say nothing of what is happening in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Charlotte, Atlanta, Orlando, and Miami.

Guess what is the top news story on all the airport CNN televisions? Guess what the pilots on the West Coast hear as they are waking up? Guess what happens when the TYPE 2 pilots get a shot of courage? Guess what happens when the TYPE 3 and TYPE 4 commuters get stranded?

All this, and the West Coast and the afternoon wave of East Coast pilots are not even scheduled to be at work. Denver, Salt Lake, and Phoenix just sent their initial wave.  They hear that the air transportation system has been crippled and suddenly SOS participation goes parabolic as the remainder of TYPE 2 pilots and most TYPE 3 pilots jump in.

It’s over. The various airlines order a system-wide stop to limit the damage. Apparently, the pilots weren’t bluffing. Apparently 30 years of abuse has consequences. The question becomes, “How do we get 50,000 pissed-off, jacked-up pilots back in the airplanes, now that they have the system grounded?”

Every news outlet in the world runs this at the top story and the Capitol Hill switchboard melts down.

The pilots who self-identify with being TYPE 1 pilots will be asked to bid/trade to be in the most critical positions as the SOS is implemented. Since most of us work 15 days a month, we can concentrate our firepower in the most critical part of the system because that same 1/6th of the pilots can be made to look much larger if they all attempt to schedule themselves to work on the SOS date. Let our weaker sisters work the noncritical dates.

That’s what 1/6th of us can do. Imagine if we had half… If we have half, Phase IV won’t be necessary. The more we have the quicker it shuts down.  We will release additional and more detailed tactics when we announce the SOS date.We ask you to trust us in the interim. We know pilots are control freaks and want to know everything. You will be told 6 to 8 weeks prior and will have plenty of time to prepare. Please be patient and spend your efforts recruiting pilots into the operation.

Some chatter has come about using ORANGE stickers and adornments and how that may be trivial. It most certainly is not. We don’t have a registry of pilots who will participate, nor would we want to. We need to have a “sea of orange” in the airplanes to show solidarity with each other. The more important feature is broadcasting our intentions to government and management. This is their nightmare scenario.  We have developed some designs for pilots to print out and pass around. We can’t do everything ourselves, as it would be counter-productive for us to set up a post office box for people to request stickers. Postal boxes require identification, and you can see the problem that creates.

There are printable designs for all levels of commitment. You can print out a few cards on your home printer, should you wish. You can also go to a printer and have them print stuff for you.

Think about what 50 pilots can do if they each took the file “SOS STICKER” (located in the “Graphics Download” .zip file in the “Pilot” portion of the masthead menu on the OPERATIONORANGE website) to OFFICE MAX and had them print out 500 stickers. The design number is ADL1177, and prints a 4” x 3.875” sticker. It costs $165, plus tax for 500. The turnaround time is one week. We have made it in both .JPEG and .PDF, which are the two formats OFFICE MAX uses for that order.

Your cost is two weeks of per diem money. If you go in with 10 pilots, it costs you less than post flight refreshment. You can sell them for 50 cents or 3 for a dollar, and recoup all your investment, plus a little left over.

If 50 pilots (that’s 1 in every 1000) do this, we would have 25,000 stickers plastered on book bags and rollaboard suitcases. There is your “half” of the pilots in the industry.  Imagine what would happen if the bag room at a pilot domicile had anywhere from one third to one half of the pilot book bags with OPERATION ORANGE stickers exposed to the room and the chief pilot walked through. Orange would get his attention and the SOS Morse code motif certainly would. He would write down the website address, look it up, realize what is happening, and call his boss. The other chiefs would also be doing the same thing. Pretty soon, the execs will all be on conference call about the development.

You can also buy orange dots at OFFICE MAX (Avery 5471) and pass those out.  OFFICE MAX will print on those for pennies a page. All you need to do is spend 10 minutes with MS PAINT to create the SOS Morse code dots and dashes, save it as a .JPEG for them to print, and you will have hundreds of tiny “SOS” stickers for your airport ID bundle. Total cost? Less than three cents each.

If you want more plausible deniability, that’s when you need to a large stripe of orange duct tape or become a Miami Dolphins, Philadelphia Flyers, Syracuse, or Univ of Tennessee fan and plaster those stickers all over your bag.

We can use this to help create that “critical mass” of pilots that we desperately need. Is it a little hokey? Perhaps, but so is the wheel hat we wear. We need to get past it.

Would you wear an orange sticker on your ID bundle, and two on your book bag for the pay and scheduling provisions of Section 4 of the proposed legislation? A new contract every 3 years per Section 1? Labor protective provisions of Section 5? Better fatigue mitigation of Section 2? No harassment provisions of Section 6?

The return on investment is off the charts. You will make back whatever you put into this on the first day Section 4 takes effect.

OPERATION ORANGE will gain the attention of management/government and it will float to the top of their inbox. It is reasonable to assume they will try something to dampen our enthusiasm. They will either attempt to threaten, scare, or buy us off cheap.  All we ask is that you realize this is an expected response and to use the opportunity to gauge how nervous they are. Please hold the line and keep building solidarity with your fellow pilots across the industry. If we all hold together, we can all make “what can be” our reality.

This is our time.

http://news.travel.aol.com/2011/02/10/do-sleepy-pilots-threaten-air-safety/

by Fran Golden

Two years after a fatal commuter jet crash in Buffalo that was blamed in part on sleepy pilots, pilot fatigue continues to be widespread, experts say.

Having a place to sleep may be part of the problem. An ABC News report shows undercover video of pilots trying to catch up on sleep in airport “crash pad” units and crew lounges.

Dr. Martin Moore-Ede, a fatigue expert, says it’s hard for pilots to sleep in the kind of crew spaces they are provided.

Mary Schiavo, former Inspector General of the Department of Transportation, says of the sleeping accommodations, “It’s actually a creative response to a ridiculous situation.”

Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, famous for his Hudson River landing of a stricken US Airways jet, tells ABC the landing probably wouldn’t have happened had he been sleep-deprived.

“We have to create a situation in which it’s possible for pilots to get a good, affordable night’s sleep,” Sully says. “We have to value this profession enough that people don’t have to live out of a crash pad or a crew room.”

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has proposed new rules that increase mandatory rest periods for pilots.

(EDIT:  the new rules propose more flying by fewer pilots.  No such fatigue abatement is achieved.  This is nothing but codified pilot pushing.  See our “Response to FAA Fatigue Mitigation Proposal” under the masthead)

In the Colgan Air crash in Buffalo in February 2009, all 50 people aboard were killed.

(EDIT:  The NTSB did not cite fatigue as a causal factor.  The problem was with outsourcing pilots to the cheapest bidder.)

A sleepy pilot was also blamed for a Boeing 737 crash in southern India that killed 158 people.

Just last week, there was a report of a pilot falling so soundly asleep on a Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) flight his co-pilot, temporarily locked out of the cockpit, had trouble waking him. No one was injured in that incident.

Meanwhile, half of Norwegian airline pilots admitted to falling asleep in the cockpit, in a new survey conducted for Norwegian public broadcaster NRK.

Of the 389 pilots who responded, 48% said they fell asleep “once” or “rarely” while 2% said they “often” fell asleep.

“We fear that this is an indication that the pilots are exhausted when they arrive at work,” says Aleksander Wasland, the vice president of the Norwegian Airline Pilots Association.

The regional airline industry says safety is its top priority, in part because accidents are bad for business. But pilot unions and the families of air crash victims say safety has been sacrificed to cost-cutting at some carriers.

The Federal Aviation Administration says it holds all airlines, large and small, to the same standards. But a coalition representing corporate travel managers says business travelers don’t believe regional carriers are as safe as larger airlines, and many travelers don’t want to fly them.

Those were some of the sometimes contradictory messages presented at a two-day National Transportation Safety Board forum that began Tuesday. The board is examining the safety implications of “code-sharing” agreements that allow major carriers to sell seats to passengers on smaller, regional carriers that operate one leg of a flight.

By working together, major and regional carriers benefit from money-saving efficiencies in flight connection times, integrated baggage handling, gate locations and marketing.

Major carriers, ticket agents, and online ticketing websites are supposed to tell passengers before they buy a ticket that a portion of the flight will be operated by another carrier. But in practice, passengers are often unaware that the airline they buy a ticket from isn’t the operator of the entire flight, witnesses told the board.

The issue is an important one for anyone who flies in different parts of the country. Regional airlines now account for half of domestic departures and a quarter of all passengers on domestic flights. For more than 400 communities, they provide the only scheduled service.

The last six fatal domestic airline crashes all involved regional airlines. Pilot performance has been cited as a factor in four of those.

“Regional airlines can no longer be considered the minor leagues. They are major players in the airline industry and they are here to stay,” NTSB chairman Deborah Hersman said.

Continental chief executive Jeffrey Smisek told a congressional hearing in June that his airline doesn’t have the resources to oversee safety at all of its code-sharing partners. That responsibility, he said, belongs to the Federal Aviation Administration.

John Kausner of Clarence, N.Y., told the safety board he was outraged by Smisek’s remarks. He said his daughter, Elly Kausner, a 24-year-old Florida law student, had no idea when she bought a ticket online from Continental Airlines to fly home to western New York that the last leg of the flight would be on an airline she had never heard of — Colgan Air. Her e-mail confirmation ended with a cheery “Thank you for flying Continental.”

Elly Kausner, along with 48 other passengers and crew members, and one person on the ground, was killed last year when Continental Connection flight 3407 crashed near Buffalo. NTSB cited errors by the flight’s two pilots.

Even if his daughter had known part of her flight was operated by Colgan, she couldn’t be expected to make an informed determination of whether a small airline she was unfamiliar with was safe, Kausner said. Continental should have ensured Colgan was employing pilots that were as competent as the pilots employed at the larger carrier, but that wasn’t the case, he said.

Instead, Continental, Colgan and FAA “passed the buck,” he said.

After the accident, FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt said he would look at whether the FAA has the authority to review code-sharing agreements with regard to safety oversight by major carriers.

However, FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said Monday the agency doesn’t plan to review the agreements. She said all carriers — large and small — are held to the same safety standards laid out in FAA regulations.

But Babbitt has leaned on major carriers to work voluntarily with their regional partners to adopt many of the crew training, aircraft maintenance and other safety programs at larger airlines that exceed FAA standards.

(EDIT:  Who is responsible?  Industry and government are pointing at one another and passing the buck.)

Airlines and FAA officials say the effort has been successful.

Roger Cohen, president of the Regional Airline Association, told the safety board that the voluntary safety programs have been adopted by 85 percent to 100 percent of regional carriers, depending upon the program.

“Every carrier does recognize that it’s bad for business not to be as safe as you can be,” Cohen said.

The proof of safety has been a steady decline in airline accidents, said John Meenan, the chief operating officer of the Air Transportation Association, which represents major carriers.

But Captain John Prater, head of the Air Line Pilots Association. said major carriers partner with regional carriers in part to cut costs, creating extraordinary pressure to keep staffing to a minimum and salaries low. Some carriers promote pilots to captain with only a few hours of leadership training before putting them in charge of a passenger airline, he said.

(EDIT:  What are you going to do about it, Prater?  You represent the bulk of the pilots and all we get is this?  How about actually doing something with all our dues money?)

U.S. carriers are required to conduct a safety audit of their foreign code-share partners, but not their domestic partners. Most international carriers also demand their foreign code-share partners — and sometimes their domestic partners — complete a safety audit by the International Air Transport Association, a trade association for the airline industry.

(EDIT:  This is no different than taking the used car salesman’s word that the car was only driven by a little old lady to and from church.  Where is the supervision? )

Those audits are voluntary and aren’t overseen by any government agency, but the airline association makes them available to government regulators.

Economic downturns are just that – downturns. This one will end and with it, we will be able to reap the benefits of our efforts. If favorable economic climates were conducive to ending the flood of labor concessions, we would have seen it in the past 30 years, but we have not. In fact, during “good” times, people are less likely to take chances with their current financial state. Would we have had the unity and sense of purpose after United pilots inked an industry leading contract in 2000? How about the next year when Delta pilots made their gains? During the late 90s, when American pilots were leading, everyone was just waiting for the next leg in the pattern bargaining paradigm. Management was plotting the next phase of governmental intrusion to reverse that pattern, and they got their opportunity in in late 2001.

Today is the day. Now is the time. History does not wait for those who hesitate.

With the exception of Southwest, all airlines plead poverty as contract negotiations draw near. They have been doing so for 30 years. Management has looked to one source to keep things moving and their bonuses flowing – our pocketbooks.

No carrier has an advantage over another if the pilot costs are uniform. This is very similar to fuel costs and the costs of aircraft acquisitions, where the hedges are reduced in time and scale so as not to give any one airline an advantage in labor arbitrage.

Airlines will have to rely on old-fashioned business practices, such as marketing, vision, thrift, investment, risk management, customer loyalty, service, and most of all, TEAMWORK. Granted, this will likely cause the current crop of managers to be released by the various boards, as outsourcing, fraud, self-aggrandizement, deceit, and adverse labor relations will be largely obsolete.

Ask yourself if your airline is only operating because you are willing to be abused, disrespected, and discarded. If you believe so, your fate is already sealed. All you are gaining by not participating is two to three years of living a failed dream. At the end, you will be just that much older, that much more in debt, and that much harder to retrain. Reality is bearing down on all of us; some of us are willing to confront it on our terms.

Isn’t this interfering with the free market? 

What “free” market?

You need go no further than the current FAA fatigue mitigation bulwark to see how management sees the “free market.” The FAA doesn’t attempt to hide how much it has become the enforcement arm of the ATA. Productivity concessions are now on the brink of being codified into law, coupled with the features of government involvement listed below, there is no genuine negotiation within the industry.

Airplanes are being subsidized by foreign governments and flooding our skies, causing the barriers to entry in the industry to dissolve at the expense of foreign taxpayers, US aircraft manufacturing, and airline labor.

Government policy regarding contract negotiations is overtly favoring one side over the other (that would be management).

Bankruptcy courts are essentially tools for management to get what they can’t at the bargaining table. Notice that management NEVER takes a hit in bankruptcy.

The PBGC is distributing pensions earned by pilots to people not in the airline industry.

The employees of United purchased their airline at the cost of massive concessions in the 1994 ESOP contract, only to have management declare bankruptcy and take it all away. United management now owns a large chunk of United.

Municipalities subsidize “low cost carriers” to compete with full-service airlines.

How many “free markets” have an army of unaccountable government employees and a myriad of hopelessly foolish procedures to intimidate and harass their customers as they enter the building? How would Wal Mart do if all its customers had to take off their coats and shoes, while having the entirety of their belongings rifled through by “The Retail Security Administration?” Would Starbucks survive if its customers had to get full body scans and pat downs every time they wanted a cup of coffee?

How much are airlines taxed in relation to other industries?

There has never been a “free market” in the air transport industry. International routes are assigned by the government. Foolishly thinking that we are operating a “free market” is the flaw management exploits every contract. Funny how labor always has to be competitive, but management receives their largess during times of profit or times of massive red ink. They know there is no free market.

The air transportation market is a construct of government policy. We have just as much right to influence that policy as do our executives.

It is the “can do” attitude that pilots bring to every endeavor of their lives that management exploits to keep things moving. Without this attitude, the entire industry would grind to a halt. It is also this overgrown Eagle Scout mentality that management relies upon to prevent pilot unification, as almost all pilots are extremely responsible and correspondingly conservative. Our popular media demonizes the entire concept of unionization and most pilots shrink from the association when interfacing with non-pilots.

We are sold on the false ideals of “rugged individualism” as the basis for greatness, rather than the time proven values of teamwork which is truly at the base of all greatness.

No man is an island and no man finds success outside the context of the greater team. While it is true that certain individuals are indispensable to the success of the team, and the accolades flow accordingly, that “individual” effort is only possible within the greater team. The human animal is only successful because we are capable of forming highly developed teams and the corresponding division of labor.

It is bewildering how teamwork suddenly became “socialism.” Unifying with like minded people for the purposes of finding improvement and success within the greater team is the basis of all human achievement. It is the “lone wolf” that starves.

Socialism is the intentional whipsawing of one group against another for the purposes of controlling both, and Socialists have done this for the past century as they have leapt from cause to cause, polluting perfectly good messages for the sole purposes of increasing their political power. Organized labor was one of the first causes co-opted by the Socialists for the purposes of grabbing political power. They went on to pollute and radicalize other equally valid causes such as environmentalism, women’s rights, child abuse, animal cruelty, ethnic bigotry, and personal liberty. In every incidence, the mainstream and valid proponents of the underlying cause were purged and the overall movement was radicalized.

Just as other causes co-opted by Socialism rejected the socialist means and goals, it was organized labor that was the focus of internal dissent behind the Iron Curtain. Organized Labor had no rights in the USSR, nor any Communist state.

Somehow, through a steady diet of anti-union tirades, the airline pilot seems uncomfortable with the goals of collective bargaining but is comfortable to be whipsawed against other pilots so management can control both him and other pilots.

The pundits that traffic in “rugged individualism” have themselves amassed very intricate teams to showcase their talent, and ironically, are only in positions of such influence due to a change in the laws regarding mass communication.

“United We Stand, Divided We Fall” isn’t just a catchy phrase. It is how all of life works. It is the conceit and arrogance of key members of teams that give rise to the false notion of “rugged individualism.”

Pilot wages and working conditions have been the means by which our airlines have “become competitive” over the past 30 years. Lorenzo used the destruction of labor to finance his empire, promising market share (growth) in exchange for concessions. When that didn’t materialize, he whip-sawed one group against another, and finally went through the bankruptcy courts to impose his will on an industry that had functioned well for half a century. For him, it was winner take all.

By establishing a minimum standard, financial alchemists can not look to labor as the means by which they will finance their schemes. Airlines will have to be run by people interested in running a business and serving the public, rather than those interested in breaking apart airlines for their own financial gain.

Gordon Gekko has to get a real job, rather than making a living from picking our pockets and destroying the airlines.

A minimum wage also addresses one problem with our industry – the lack of a national seniority list. By establishing a minimum pay scale, pilots displaced from work due to failure of an airline are cushioned from the entirety of the blow by avoiding the food-stamp wages of new hire pilots. It doesn’t address the entirety of the problem, but it does address part of it.

A national seniority list (NSL) would solve many problems in our profession. The problem comes from getting from our present point to one of a mutually agreed NSL. Seniority is a relative term: you are senior relative to someone else. That someone else most likely does not share your concept of seniority, but has one of his own choosing where he is senior.

Look at ANY airline seniority list integration. Fences, DOH, relative position, surviving carrier, financial health, equipment rights…the points of disagreement are endless.

This project is about unity. Unity is essential to our purposes, and needlessly wasting energy on quibbling over how the NSL would be structured would instantly dissolve any bonds that we may share. Any pilot would look at the proposed NSL metrics and instantly decide that he is getting improperly placed, and rightfully not support Operation ORANGE.

In fact, The Committee regards any talk of a NSL (within the context of Operation ORANGE) to be highly divisive. Any such talk will be regarded (rightly or wrongly) as airline management’s attempt to sew division within our ranks. The time to discuss NSL metrics is long after our more pressing goals are met.

See Section 5 – Labor Protective Provisions for more details regarding how we are seeking to ameliorate the effects of loss of jobs due to cessation of operations of Part 121 and Part 135 carriers. Most of the features and protections of a NSL are addressed in Section 4 and Section 5 of the proposed “Fair Treatment of Experienced Pilots Act – Part 2.”

Why not lobby for repeal of “AGE 65?” 

“AGE 65” was put through the Congress in December 2007 without regard for the opinion of the majority of Part 121 pilots. If the measure had been voted on by the professional pilots in the US, the measure would have been soundly defeated.

ALPA used its much vaunted “influence” in Washington to actually get it passed. The excuse was used that ALPA was told it was going to pass, so they wanted to be on “the right side” to help influence its crafting.

Last we checked, the proposal was AGE 65, and we got AGE 65. So much for ALPA’s “influence.”

Why can ALPA get unpopular laws passed that are against the bulk of the rank-and-file pilots, but not move anything that will tilt the playing surface toward pilots? How are our dues being spent in Washington? What do we have to show for thirty years of lobbying?

Like it or not, AGE 65 is here. Many of our peers have decided to stay beyond 60. While we don’t agree with that decision, we understand why it was made. Most of the pilots who choose to stay beyond 60 had their pensions wiped out by the management-government axis, and these last few years are trying to close the gap in that shortfall.

We will not oppose AGE 65 for unity purposes. We don’t agree with the policy, as we believe it is a back door to ICAO pilots flying cabotage in the US. We view AGE 65 as a monument to ALPA’s tone deafness to the membership that funds it. Remember, our collective bargaining agents are nothing more than hospice care for our careers. We do note that APA opposed the legislation, but the division between unions allowed government to pick the answer they wanted.

This isn’t the military and we don’t have a UCMJ. If you don’t show for work, you are not AWOL/UA and you won’t be sent to Leavenworth by a military tribunal. We are civilians and can choose to attend or not.

The First Amendment applies to all of us and we are able to write and discuss civic matters of our choosing in a peaceful manner.

The government’s breaking of past strikes almost always was justified by the repression of violence, which is why there will be no mass demonstration in support of our efforts. Our “demonstration” will be done in the privacy of our own homes by very peaceful means. The government isn’t going to fix bayonettes and force you into the cockpit. Pinkerton won’t be patrolling your neighborhood. 

What is the crime? Protesting in a peaceful manner? Saying things management and government don’t like? Petitioning the government for redress of grievances? Wearing orange lanyards? Covering your book bag with orange stickers?

Your responsibility is to you, your family, and your fellow pilots. If a plane is stranded at the gate in Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, or New York, that is the problem of the airline management. If they treated you better, their airplanes would still be moving.

This was the means by which the various war departments could coalesce the widely dispersed airborne forces into well established lines.

It works the same way with us. We will have pockets of acceptance in all airlines and across all bid statuses and we need to encourage one another and show solidarity.

Rather than clickers, we will have ORANGE paraphernalia that signal that we are part of the solution. To recognize one another we can use a very simple sign.

The 1973 Academy Award winning film for best picture was a movie called “The Sting.” Most of us have seen it. The principle players in the very complex team that brought about the “sting” would recognize one another by simply brushing their index finger along the side of their nose.

It’s discreet enough not to bring about undue attention yet characteristic enough to effectively communicate the message. You don’t need any special equipment to carry and you can still pull your luggage without interruption. Most of all, it helps identify the pilots we can rely upon to fix our industry while simultaneously identifying those pilots who are either too cowardly or self-serving to bring about change.

If you see a fellow pilot wearing ORANGE, give him the sign (brushing your index finger along your nose) like Robert Redford, Paul Newman, Ray Walston and the rest of the cast in “The Sting” did. It gets the word out and builds unity.

We highly recommend that ALPA, APA, SWAPA, and all other CBAs condemn our efforts in a public manner to help deflect the flurry of actions by government enforcers and federal judges.

We do anticipate that management will snap their fingers and the government will grab our unions as hostages to pressure us to relent. Industry friendly judges are certainly going to hear complaints and be asked to quash our First Amendment rights.

While disappointing, we understand that the management-government axis will have to exercise their “nuclear option” to attempt to stop this (and keep their bonuses flowing). Taking innocent hostages will be just one tactic they use. Reference United Airlines taking ALPA to court over the independent efforts of junior pilots burning their contractually mandated sick leave prior to their second furlough.

Ultimately, we can’t structure our actions and goals to account for every innocent hostage the government may take. A judge may slap a union with a ruinous fine but that is no different than if the same judge targeted any other innocent organization with a baseless fine.

Public key cryptology enables us to verify our messages in a manner the government can not corrupt. Our key is available for download, as is the TRIAL VERSION for PGP, and are the only two things you need to verify our messages. Each key is signed by The Committee members for your verification. Any false key will not contain the signatures in the keys we release.

Our “PUBLIC” keys are exactly that – public. Please distribute it far and wide. The greater the distribution, the more difficult it is for people (the government) to corrupt our “web of trust.” This public key is how you determine that the signature made with our “SECRET” keys are genuine.

The various websites we use to communicate our message will have a “LATEST REVISON” file that contains the text of the new changes. This file will be electronically signed by either Mr. Brown, Mr. Green, Mr. Black, or Ms. Plum, enabling you to verify that the changes on the website are the changes we put there. Any differences with the signed text should be disregarded.

We will also TWEET any changes to those that sign up for the service after we set it up.  Be patient.  It is coming.

Can we join The Committee?

We do appreciate your enthusiasm and willingness to be part of the solution rather than just griping about the problem.

Due to operational security concerns, we can not accept any additional members to The Committee. This policy will prevent infiltration and disruption.

The biggest contribution you can make is to get the word out to your peers in your airline and other airlines. We all have sympathetic friends at other carriers, and by passing around the word, using the talking points, and shoring up support in the cockpit, you will be doing more than you can possibly imagine.

If you are passionate enough to wish to get involved, the most effective thing you can do is get in the faces of 20 of your pilot peers and make them choose sides. Get 20 hard commitments to the cause and ask them to do likewise. If 200 of you get 20 pilots to join, and they convince 5, that is 20,000 pilots, which well more than enough to ground the entirety of the US air transportation system.

Airline manning is so tight that a 10% disruption would be highly problematic. 20% would be catastrophic.

Government should take a longer view of the situation. By making labor unable to exert leverage at the bargaining table, they sew the seeds of resentment. The RLA’s “perpetual contract” concept is being abused by management to extend the time between negotiations. Longer contract lengths, along with the artificial delays brought about by the RLA, make it such that labor only has one chance every 7 to 10 years to revisit their working relationship with management. This gives management an enormous incentive to gain competitive advantage by abusing labor, as once implemented, it can’t be revisited for almost a decade.

Eventually labor will revolt. It will revolt by seeking remedies outside the normal collective bargaining process, or the high levels of talent that pilots have brought to the industry will be lost to other industries, resulting in a revolving door of young, inexperienced pilots that have no other aspiration than making less than a common truck driver. If you liked Cogan Air-Buffalo, you will love the entire industry in 7 years.

In each situation, the public is faced with some form of catastrophic work stoppage.

The industry is being held together by a confluence of events that will not happen again in our lifetime. The high levels of leadership and aptitude that airlines have recruited out of the top 10% of military and civil aviation over the past 3 decades are trapped by age considerations. They are too young to retire, yet too established and old to retool for another career that is well suited for their aptitudes. Many of the younger military pilots have returned to the military, and others have left passenger air service and are flying cargo. The pilots remaining are holding things together with raw professionalism, dedication, and personal pride, but they are seething under the surface.

Over the next ten years, half of them will be retired. This will be in addition to those that will have resigned.

During that time, the industry will be partially restaffed with some of the better pilots at the smaller, regional carriers. The bulk of the replacements will have to be pilots with little or no experience, indebted over $100,000, and no other aspirations or ability to pursue a career that pays more than a waitress, garbage collector, or data entry clerk.

Additionally, if government was so concerned about the reliability of air service in the United States, it would have been much more interested in preventing the wholesale looting of the capital and wealth of the airline industry. With few exceptions, the entire industry is run by people that view airlines a greater value in disarray and fundamentally broken, than healthy. Viewing labor as the only factor in reliability is very short sighted.

Government could not have cared less as Lorenzo, Ferris, Tilton, Mullin and Carty brought their airlines to the brink of disaster, yet react with unflinching resolve as pilots demanded that management make good on their promises by threatening to withhold their labor once every few decades, in accordance with applicable law. Such interference was lacking when Lorenzo was intentionally destroying the components of Texas Air Group, yet in full force when pilots struck to determine who flew what aircraft at AMR. Such interference was the direct cause of the “sick-out” one year later – an action the government also quashed.

When we see the government take an equal interest in managerial incompetence at the top of the industry, we will entertain meaningful discussions on how our role in reliable passenger air service can be improved.

We gave that much consideration and it always came back to unity. It is enough of a challenge to unite pilots across the industry with distinctions such as: various carriers, regional, mainline, domestic, international, senior, junior, military, civilian…

To put such disparate groups together for such a purpose is just begging for failure. Reaching beyond our grasp is not going to help our cause.

Nothing is precluding other airline employee groups from seeking their own redress. We also believe the general cause of organized labor and American prosperity is furthered by pilots doing what they do best – taking a leadership role. Perhaps other people will take an interest in standing up to the insidious threat to everyones’ standards of living, and reverse the decades long trend to outsource American jobs to illegal labor and overseas sweatshops.

Every social movement has a leader of some form. As Lorenzo lead the charge for financial alchemists to destroy the airline industry, we will lead the reversal of that movement. If others like what they see, they are free to follow.

Donations are appreciated but not accepted at this time.

We believe that you have been hustled enough by management’s empty promises over the past years, along with the biannual promises that Washington will cut taxes, spending and be more accountable to the people. Every time something is needed from us (concessions, votes, taxes, and forfeiture of freedoms), management and government talk a good game on how things are different this time. The story ends the same way every time, with management and government getting “paid” first, only to find that things have changed and our consideration will have to wait until the present “crisis” is over.

They all do it (except Southwest). Both political parties are culpable. We have fared no better with modern Democratic administrations than with Republican administrations. Birds of a feather flock together.

For once, we would like to see results and then judge how much they are worth.

Upon the conclusion of Operation ORANGE, we will ask for voluntary donations, but not before. You can decide for yourself what the changes are worth.

Until that time we would like you to use your resources to support the effort to get out the message and create the unity needed to make this a success.

Management has been very resourceful in the interpretation of applicable government regulations, labor contracts and history. They were able to outsource flying to “regional” carriers to the point where many of the “regional” carriers had a scope of flying greater than some of the “major” airlines. Parsing of scope language (backed by government regulators, bankruptcy proceedings and the NMB) enabled management to outsource flying to a degree that was inconceivable a generation ago.

By allowing management an exemption through Part 135 they will undoubtedly shape the regulations and their interpretation to accomplish what they presently have with the “regional” airlines, and the flying public, shareholders, and Part 121 pilots will be back in the same position we are today.

We must give management no other option but to fix what they have broken. Shareholders have nothing to show for their investments, employees have been the funding source for the viability of the industry, and the traveling public deserve better service and amenities. By allowing financial alchemists and legal sharpshooters to repeat their present folly with non-scheduled operations, we will ultimately return to the problems we face today.

Additionally, the public deserves to fly on an airplane with a well rested, stable, and competent cockpit crew, regardless of the nature of how the tickets are sold. Shadow flight schools are not much better for non-scheduled operations than for scheduled.

This is the universal constant of our industry. Every election cycle, our ranks bring forth steely-eyed unionists that are just itching to “fight the good fight” on behalf of the rank-and-file. As night follows day, those same unionists get elected and brought into the back rooms of our pilot associations where staff attorneys brief them on what they are allowed to do and prohibited from doing. They are frightened with stories of union leaders being personally responsible for any uncivil behavior on the part of union members. Couple this with the normal inducements from management and government, and it is no wonder that our metal chewing unionists quickly become declawed, neutered, malleable functionaries whose only purpose in life is to give us a dozen excuses for why we are failing to right our profession.

To put it simply: THEY WILL OPPOSE THIS. Not might. Not probably. Not highly likely. They will oppose this.

There is going to be a career opportunity of a lifetime for the ALPA/APA officer who sells us down the river on this. Systemwide Chief Pilot? FAA Administrator? Cayman bank account? P.O.I?  High paid lobbyist for the ATA?

This is one of the primary reasons we have avoided the pilot associations, as we don’t wish to be an opportunity for that kind of betrayal.

This suits our purposes because we need the pilot associations to distance themselves from OPERATION ORANGE, lest industry friendly judges reach out and hold them hostage on behalf of the ATA.

This is not a union effort. This is a grassroots effort availing itself to the freedoms our nation’s founders intended for us. We seek to change the law, not maneuver within its confines. As Jefferson said in The Declaration of Independence,  

Take your union leader admonitions for what they are – excuses for continued acceptance of failure. This is nothing new.

Granted, not all of our leaders are similarly afflicted, but they are in the minority. If they were not, OPERATION ORANGE would not be necessary.

(More FAQs to follow at a later date.  Please direct comments and questions to the Facebook page.  The link is in the sidebar to the right.)

OPERATIION ORANGE now has its own page on Facebook.  We have linked to it on the sidebar of this blog.

Pass the link to your pilot friends on FACEBOOK.  All commentary should be directed to FACEBOOK.

PGP Corporation has been recently purchased by Symantec Corporation.  This
does not present a problem  with the PGP software, keys, or any feature
needed for the implementation of the SOS.  However, Symantec Corporation
will be changing the links to the various PGP versions they offer, and as
such, The Committee cannot keep up with their changes in real time.

We will endeavor to keep the link to the PGP Trial Version as updated as
possible, but the possibility exists that any PGP links we post may fall
dead.

To get the PGP Trial version, go to the Symantec website, and follow the
following to get to the trial version of PGP Whole Disk Encryption:

- – -Select “Business” from the top masthead

- – -Select “Products” – “Products A-Z”

- – -Scroll down  and select”Whole Disk Encryption”

- – -Click on “Trialware”

- – -Click on “PGP Whole Disk Encryption Trialware”

Follow the directions for download.  Registration is required, but is free.
 This will enable you to receive the trialware licensing code.  Note that
some funcationality will disable after the trial period, but the “keys”
function should remain active after the trial is over.

We appreciate your flexibility and improvisation as we move forward with
getting the word out about the SOS.

Also note that the PGP links in the “Authentication” document may be
obsolete.  The “Authentication” document will be updated when Symantec’s
links are more stable.