• US AIRWAYS/DELTA?
• 24/7 UPDATE
• VPLOA
• SECONDARY LINE FLOOR LOWERED TO 70 HOURS
• TRAINING NOTIFICATION AND REST AFTER TRAINING
• 14 HOURS SCHEDULED/15 HOURS ACTUAL IS STILL THE RULE
• HOLIDAY TRIP IMPROVING
• AFA INTERNATIONAL BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING
• Accessing The Hub
• AFA Local Numbers

Dear Members,

US AIRWAYS/DELTA?

As you know, US Airways announced an 8.8 billion dollar takeover of Delta Air Lines last week. The proposal was met with great enthusiasm by Wall Street as US Airways stock shot up after the announcement and closed today at over $62.00 a share. The media and analysts have varying opinions. I talked to one airline analyst yesterday morning who told me, "it (the merger/takeover) is a done deal". I talked to another analyst yesterday afternoon who said, "it is a dead duck". So who knows? Delta management and employees are certainly not interested in a merger. US Airways management is going to have to convince the creditors and the bankruptcy court of their claim that, "our proposal is just better, for everyone".

In breaking the news to Union leaders last week the Company asked for Labor's support and urged us all to continue our merger negotiations in order to complete the US Airways/America West merger. They also said they looked forward to continued talks with labor regarding the merger/takeover with Delta. That is the last I have heard from management about it. AFA is scheduled to continue merged contract talks with the Company the first two weeks of December. For a Company to not have any money to put into a merged contract they sure came up with $8.8 billion pretty quick. We will see how willing they are to negotiate a fair and equitable contract that provides for improvements in every section. If management wants our support we will never settle for anything less.

The Company mantra now is the highest common denominator of the three contracts. That brings me to the point. There are not three contracts. US Airways East Flight Attendants have a contract and US Airways West Flight Attendants have a contract. Delta Air Lines Flight Attendants have work rules and pay rates. Both can be changed by a memo. Delta Flight Attendants have already been forced to accept round one of concessions since entering bankruptcy and the Delta management plan of reorganization, expected in early December, will likely include round two. Clearly we are doing cost comparisons on the Delta Flight Attendants work rules and pay rates but it does not do any of us any good to run around saying "this is better than us or this is worse than us"-because without a contract it could all change tomorrow.

Delta does not have a contract because they are not represented by a Union. US Airways management claims they will stay out of Union business with regard to representation. No one is being fooled here, as clearly one of the attractive components of the merger "synergies" may be the large non union workforce at Delta Airlines. The fact that Delta has 14-15000 active Flight Attendants and an undetermined amount on furlough will require careful consideration. Ultimately AFA International will decide if, when and how to organize the Delta Flight Attendants. AFA attorneys are looking at various strategies. At this time it would not be prudent to discuss any of the options being analyzed.

The difference in numbers could eventually lead to a representational election, not just for Delta Flight Attendants, but also for us. A representational election that is not successful means two things; 1) NO CONTRACT, and 2) A COMPANY DETERMINED SENIORITY LIST. Wouldn't management just love that?

I know there is a lot of dissatisfaction with AFA among our members. The fact is the current contract is the result of two bankruptcies and a liquidation threat. Without AFA things would be much worse, especially if you take into account the merger and seniority integration. We continue to a have union representation, a date of hire seniority list and a contract to bargain with and improve on during the merged contract negotiations.

For those of you who don't believe in AFA there is an old saying- "bad breath is better than no breath at all".

24/7 UPDATE

The Union and the Company met last week to try to negotiate ways to offset the impact of the FAA 24/7 interpretation, as it applies to Reserves, for all of our members. Our position from the beginning has been to create more lines, get more people off of Reserve and make the ETB a more viable way to drop trips for lineholders. From the Company's perspective their attitude was "we didn't cause this and there is nothing much to discuss". After two days of negotiations AFA was able to convince the Company to lower the secondary line floor from 75 hours to 70 hours and increase the number of Voluntary Personal Leaves of Absence (VPLOA). These two agreements will be explained further in this Eline.

The Company was unwilling to entertain our position to allow lineholders to drop to a lower obligation in SAP. Because ETB is not as "user friendly" for Reserves it makes it more difficult for Lineholders to reduce their flying obligation as designed. The ETB was created in exchange for eliminating the low flying obligation. The Company cited data that showed the number of ETB transactions approved had not changed from data prior to the FAA interpretation. The Company also showed data they claimed showed the difference in Reserves picking up trips prior to the FAA ruling and now was "smaller than they thought". That does not mean much to me. They could have thought it would have been "much larger" than they told us. We will continue to evaluate new data as time progresses. On month of data does not make a case.

The Union also tried to demonstrate the increased number of split trips caused by the FAA ruling was giving the Company a windfall from our concessionary agreement of 2004 which reduced pay for split trips to actual time. In fact Mike Finn, Director of Crew Resources, asserted, "it was not the Company's fault the FAA ruling resulted in more money for the Company than originally estimated". We will continue to battle the Company on the items we were not successful in changing and the Reserve System in general in the merged contract negotiations.

The CATS system has now been programmed to recognize the 24 consecutive hour rest requirement on an overnight for Reserves as it does for Lineholders. This will help Reserves satisfy the 24/7 requirement when picking trips either from scheduling or the ETB. CATS will also be reprogrammed to recognize the 24 break from trip to trip in domicile. We expect that to occur in the first quarter of 2007. Until that happens, Reserves need to contact scheduling if they have a 24 break in domicile that satisfies the 24/7 rule.

VPLOA

Over the course of the last two months it has been brought to the attention of the Union that more people would like to take the VPLOA. It is quite obvious in some of the bases there are too many people chasing too little time. In an effort to increase the number of VPLOA awards in order to satisfy both the above goals the Union and the Company entered into an agreement to increase the awards. The agreement was approved by the MEC which is comprised of all the Local Council Presidents. Beginning with the January VPLOA, Lineholder Flight Attendants, who have been awarded a VPLOA holding a carry-over trip, will be responsible to fly the carry-over unless otherwise relieved of the trip via AIL, ETB, SAP or swap/trade.

Reserve Flight Attendants, who have been awarded a VPLOA and have been awarded/assigned a carry-over trip, will be responsible for the trip unless otherwise relieved of the trip pursuant to the terms of the Contract.

We are aware that this has been agreed to after the January VPLOA had already been awarded. The decision was to increase the number of awards and the result was that EVERYONE who bid for a VPLOA was awarded one. That would not have been the case if this agreement was not in place.

SECONDARY LINE FLOOR LOWERED TO 70 HOURS

In an effort to increase the number of Secondary Lines, the Union and the Company have entered into an agreement on a trial basis to lower the Secondary Line floor to 70. Tests were conducted on the December lines using a 70-85 and a 70-90 window. The result was an increase system wide of 107 additional lines using the 70-85 window and an additional 103 lines using the 70-90 window. The tests used the December trip allotment for Secondary lines and may be skewed due to the holiday. We believe the 70-90 window may add more lines in more months than the 75-85 window. We will evaluate more data and make a decision within the next few days for the January Secondary lines. The MEC also approved this agreement. The agreement will be evaluated after three months and will continue upon mutual consent of the Union and the Company.

Both letters of agreement are on our web site:

VPLOA:
http://www.afausairways.org/vploa11_06.doc

LOA Secondary Line of Construction
http:www.afausairways.org/slc11_06.doc

TRAINING REGISTRATION AND REST AFTER TRAINING

The Union and the Company are in the final stages of agreement regarding two items pertaining to training.

The Union and the Company have both agreed to change the training registration process for Secondary Lineholders and Reserves. Training registration will still open two months in advance of your base month but will remain open for Secondary Lineholders and Reserves until 1700 on the day following the posting of the Reserve Line awards. This will allow both groups the opportunity to review their lines and select a training date that does not create a conflict resulting in the loss of trip for Secondary Lineholders or a day off for a Reserve. Training registration will begin assigning training two days after the posting of the Reserve line awards. This process will be announced formally.

In addition there has been an ongoing dispute with the Company over their position that although a 10:15 break is required after training they did not believe they had to adhere to the 8:30 minutes of uninterrupted rest. We are closer to an agreement that would put a system in place that will allow flight attendants attending training to notify crew scheduling of their arrival back in base in order to abide by the 8:30 uninterrupted rest requirement. More information will be reported when we have a firm agreement in place.


14 HOURS SCHEDULED/15 HOURS ACTUAL IS STILL THE RULE

We have had several reports that domestic crews have been told they are required to remain on duty up to 16 hours. This is not true. You can only be scheduled to be on duty for 14 hours and can only be required to remain on duty up to fifteen hours in actual operation - period.

HOLIDAY TRIP IMPROVING

It was reported to me yesterday that a member of the Inflight Services staff had incorrectly told a Flight Attendant that was holding a trip over Christmas she would unable to trip improve off the trip because Christmas was a "protected holiday". Protected holidays have nothing to do with the AIL. Protected holidays apply only to SAP and the percentage (15) of holiday trips that can be dropped in SAP. If you are holding a trip that works over ANY holiday you are still allowed to use the AIL to touch the trip and have the holiday off.

AFA INTERNATIONAL BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING

At last week's AFA Board of the Directors meeting the Board (all the LEC Presidents from all AFA represented airlines) re-elected Pat Friend to an unprecedented fourth term as International President. The Board also elected Alaska MEC President, Veda Shook as International Vice-President and re-elected Kevin Creighan as International Secretary/Treasurer. As some of you may have heard, I made a last minute decision to run against President Friend. As I have always done in my Union career I made the decision based on one principle-to improve your representation. It is nothing short of an honor and a privilege to serve as your MEC President and I will continue to do that with as much effort and desire as I have done since being elected. In no way was my decision to challenge President Friend a decision to walk away from you. In fact, the decision was made to bring change and a new leadership to AFA-and that includes you. In the end things work out for a reason and I will continue to fight for all of the members at US Airways every day-be it at the negotiating table, Company headquarters or on the phone with Company managers.

But enough about me, the Board also made some significant changes last week. One of the most important was the decision to allocate more dues money to the Local Councils. The increase from 17% to 18% of your monthly $39.00, while seemingly an insignificant number when multiplied by the members in a council will put more money at the local level to help support local committee work and other local needs. A complete wrap up of the meeting will be made available on the AFA International website at www.afanet.org.


Thank you very much and have a nice Thanksgiving weekend.

Mike Flores, President
US Airways MEC
AFA-CWA

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

AFA US Airways website

http://www.afausairways.org/

Accessing The Hub:

http://thehub.usairways.com 
Questions about the Hub? Please contact the EDS Help Desk at 336-744-6000 for assistance. More information can also be found HERE.

AFA Local Numbers

Council 40 PIT 724-695-3329
Council 41 DCA 703-212-8090
Council 69 BOS 781-289-8454
Council 70 PHL 215-492-0840
Council 82 LGA 315-736-3483
Council 89 CLT 704-527-0325

New Hotline Number Toll Free: 866-USA-AFA2
US AIRWAYS Benefits Information 800-872-4780

Reply to Inflight: askinflight@usairways.com

The *E-Line* is now in a new and improved format. By updating your profile at unionvoice.org you will be able to enjoy improved services in the near future! Visit your subscription management page at: http://www.unionvoice.org/

Got questions about This *E-Line* from AFA - US Airways or any other Union matter? Do NOT REPLY to the *E-Line*. PLEASE contact your local AFA officers or committee chairs directly