Greetings,

December 7, 2008

While we made a valiant effort this fall to address our staffing challenges through voluntary venues, unfortunately we have every reason to believe that there will be a mandatory furlough effective January 31, 2009.  Today the number sits at roughly 130 Flight Attendants.  We will get more detailed information out to those impacted as the number firms up.  You can review Section 18/Reduction in Force as well.

Management will offer the contractual Extended Leaves of Absence and Voluntary Furloughs again.  That is largely responsible for the variable. We want those potentially affected to have as much of a heads up as possible and we want those of you that might be interested in one of the leaves to know the information is coming in the next day or so in a “Must Read” bulletin.  The time frame for bidding will be short.  It will probably be just under two weeks.

There will also be another Early Out Program (EOP) offered.  That information will be posted soon as well.  This offering is a result of a technical problem that affected a group of those folks that took the 11/1/08 EOP.  The details of the problem are not really relevant? just good news for those of you that might have had second thoughts about passing up the last one.

Please stay in touch.

Kelle Wells

MEC President