Daily Archives: Jan. 15, 2009

Vought Machinists to vote on contract offer today; send me your views

Jan. 15, 200910:54 a.m.

Machinists union members at Vought Aircraft’s Nashville plant will vote today on whether to accept the company’s new contract proposal and end a strike that began in late September.

The offer is largely the same one that union negotiators turned down in November and slightly different than the original proposal workers rejected by 94 percent on Sept. 27, the Tennessean said today.

Vought last week threatened to begin hiring replacement workers for the strikers. It also said it was considering moving work it had won on Cessna’s new Citation Columbus to its plant near Dallas because it had to assure Cessna that work would begin on schedule.

About 1,000 Vought workers in Nashville are represented by the Machinists. About 900 of them remain on strike, the report said. The rest have crossed the picket lines and returned to work.

What do you think?  Will Vought’s threat to hire replacement workers impact union negotiations at other aircraft companies in the future?  I’d like to hear your views.

By Molly McMillin | Filed under Uncategorized | Comments (2)

A question to ponder: Is aviation splitting in two?

Jan. 15, 200910:37 a.m.

J. Twombly, associate editor at Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, poses an interesting question on his blog today: Is aviation splitting in two?   What do you think?

Twombly wonders whether aviation may be splitting into two distinct camps, as he says, the “no foolin’ around go-somewhere types, and the very light airplane fly around the pattern type.”

The first types use the airplane as a tool, for business or pleasure. The second group uses it purely for fun, and wants flying to become even more fun as time goes by, Twombly says

“In other words, we have one group that wants airplanes to be faster, carry more, and have a high dispatch rate, and another group that wants the airplane to be cheap, slow, and carry one or two people. An extreme view might be that when the dust settles, no airplanes exist between a Cirrus and a Sport Cub. Well, nothing except for 172s used for training,” he says.

The catalyst is money, Twombly says. As credit tightens and things get more and more costly, a family’s income is increasingly dedicated to survival.  “Those who believe the middle class in this country is going away probably also think our industry is changing to reflect the split scenario,” he said.

What do you think? I’d like to hear your views.

By Molly McMillin | Filed under Uncategorized | Comments (1)