LOUISVILLE, Ky., Oct. 5--PRNewswire-AsiaNet/InfoQuest After months of deception, UPS finally owned up to the fact that it will breach its pilot's contract by failing to deliver the flying from the Menlo acquisition on December 19, 2005, as promised. Under the Company's new timetable, integration of Menlo flying into the UPS network will not occur until July 17, 2006. "This is not a matter of a Company trying in good faith, but simply failing to meet a contractual deadline. For months, we have received nothing but assurances from UPS that the transition of Menlo flying was on schedule," said Capt. Tom Nicholson, President of the Independent Pilots Association. He went on to say, "the Company only admitted breaching the contract after the IPA obtained third party confirmation that UPS had awarded aviation subcontracts to cover Menlo flying well into 2006." The IPA has been meeting with UPS on a regular basis since it announced the purchase of Menlo nine months ago. At all of these meetings, the IPA has been assured by UPS Labor that Menlo integration was on track and that IPA Crewmembers would be taking over the Menlo flying in December. UPS Labor is the same group currently negotiating a new contract with the IPA. "It is insulting to think that while UPS was making these assurances to us, they were canceling Airbus A-300 orders and negotiating the Scope clause of our new contract. All the while, they knew they were setting us up for a massive contract breach," said Capt. Nicholson. "UPS's timing could not be worse. This month, we will enter our fourth year of contract talks, our union is in the middle of leadership elections, and we are on the eve of the Christmas shipping season. This is the wrong kind of news to be delivering just before the most critical quarter of operations," added Nicholson. The impact of UPS's decision to outsource IPA contract protected work to a patchwork of carriers for the next seven months means the loss of a significant amount of new IPA flying. "It would be one thing if the Menlo Scope breach were an isolated issue. But, when you consider that UPS currently outsources six weekly flights to China Air to move computer parts from Asia to Nashville for Dell, and its current negotiating proposals on Scope, it becomes systemic," said Capt. Nicholson. SOURCE: Independent Pilots Association CONTACT: Brian Gaudet, +1-202-494-4332, or [email protected], for Independent Pilots Association --Distributed by AsiaNet (www.asianetnews.net)--