The new airline thread

[TreeA10]

3 hours ago, brabus said:

Seems like a PITA overall, especially international. But can’t say I’ve had an in depth Q&A with an FFDO living it. 

Good point. I fly wide body international so it's pretty clear cut where you can carry. (Rumors are 2 European countries are going to be added but not sure of the timeline.) Flying narrow body with a domestic/international mix with constant changes to your sequence would really make for a pain in the ass.

[Lord Ratner]

22 hours ago, Clark Griswold said:

As long as CAs keep flying premium solving their problems for them I doubt anything
Unless APA and the AA flight crews stop flying premium they (management) are not under enough pressure
Just my two cents from the outside on MLOA


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Delta didn't stop. On the contrary, they forced as much flying into green slips as they ever have.

 

Every pilot knows how to display their frustration. But the dirty little secret is that most aren't actually upset.

 

That *might* change once Delta pilots are making ~20% more for the same job. Pilots are very attenuated to fairness, but that can't trigger from a hypothetical. 

 

But I still have to convince captains to just do the job as it is written in the books. Just yesterday I had a captain ask, "you're going to take a delay to get the windshield cleaned?"

 

Yeah dude, it's night and it's dirty. Let's not even get into the fact we're in negotiations. These guys are programmed to get the "mission" done. It's in their DNA. Fighting for better compensation is not.

[brabus]

@Lord Ratner Valid points. The bitch for quite awhile has been why are DAL pilots flying record premium pay while simultaneously wanting a new contract. But, it has still worked out, assuming TA passes.
 

The “mission focus” vs. “fuck the company, do only exactly what’s required” is a fine balance. I agree do the right thing, which includes not rushing, cutting corners, completely jumping through your ass to make it happen, or doing anything else that may affect safety/your fitness for duty. But also keep in mind your actions can either make a family’s day/life, or they can destroy it. So if safety is not a concern, then I understand wanting to get flights out and help the people in back. You don’t know who on the plane is trying to make it to see their parent in the hospital one last time or make a once in a lifetime family reunion. Once had a CA give me shit for taking 3 min of my time to source a wheelchair for an old lady because Prospect sucks ass. Got it, not my job, but also that old lady doesn’t deserve the screw job either. We all should remember the human aspect still matters for something.

Edited February 12, 2023 by brabus

[xaarman]

Most of the time we take a 15-20 minute delay and still block in three minutes early.

Edited February 12, 2023 by xaarman

[Lord Ratner]

22 minutes ago, brabus said:

But also keep in mind your actions can either make a family’s day/life, or they can destroy it.

That's exactly why we get nowhere, unfortunately. 

 

When you pay me to do that job, I will. Until then, that family will have to deal with the repercussions of doing business with a company that can't negotiate a contract. 

 

I wish we didn't work in that world, but we do. That family is a meaningless number to the people running the airline. You take responsibility for their happiness and you are not only going to fail, but you *directly* impede the progress towards a contract.

 

I hope that one day we will evolve beyond the private capital/shareholder obsessed/metrics-based corporatism that our system is currently stuck in. If we actually escape the government-funded stock market model we've endured over the last 30-40 years, I think we'll get back to the world where you make money only by providing a good product or service, not buying an existing one and cost-cutting into irrelevance while making the investors a quick buck.

 

But we haven't, and for now we work for sociopathic accountants competing with each other over who can make the most while accomplishing the least. You want a contract from those people, you have to threaten what they care about. 

 

Like with many diseases, treating the symptoms (passengers being left to the predations of a shitty airline) instead of the cause (terrible management that doesn't understand human capital) can make the outcome worse for everyone.

Edited February 12, 2023 by Lord Ratner

[brabus]

I get it, but I still think there are situations where some guys go too far with “fuck the company” and fuck over a lot of people because of their quest for ultimate spite. You can play hardball and still seek to minimize pain for people when able, they are not completely mutually exclusive. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating taking extensions, sprinting a mile from TSA to the gate, skipping the shitter, etc. But I’m also not going to purposely come up with a bullshit excuse to force a timeout to force a canx just because I want to be a dick to the company. Seen that one, and I just don’t agree with it. 

[Lord Ratner]

8 hours ago, brabus said:

I get it, but I still think there are situations where some guys go too far with “fuck the company” and fuck over a lot of people because of their quest for ultimate spite. You can play hardball and still seek to minimize pain for people when able, they are not completely mutually exclusive. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating taking extensions, sprinting a mile from TSA to the gate, skipping the shitter, etc. But I’m also not going to purposely come up with a bullshit excuse to force a timeout to force a canx just because I want to be a dick to the company. Seen that one, and I just don’t agree with it. 

Well you said it: bullshit excuses. But at least in my case, I've seen maybe a couple instances of pilots going too far in 5 years. I've seen hundreds of instances of pilots leaning forward, even just considering your examples.

 

The job is very well defined: What you do, what is and isn't allowed, and what the pilots are responsible for within the company.

 

An example (for those not at AA). "Just one ping" means that when something is wrong/missing on the plane, the pilots make one call to the appropriate office, get acknowledgement, then wait. Maintenance call-out, missing catering, fuel increase, etc. You call once, then wait. Often in a chaotic airline like AA that call gets dropped. I can't count the number of times my captain is literally jumping out of his chair to call over and over and over to get the issue resolved. It's not our job. We are not paid to go above and beyond, not are we even encouraged to. Management takes for granted how much gets done on time because the pilots notice it, and so they must be taught. That means people will miss connections, weddings, funerals, etc. Sucks, but that's life. Our job is not a higher calling, it's just a job with a higher emphasis on safety, *not* timeliness.

 

The military guys are usually worse. They talk the same game everyone else does, then immediately lean forward, sometimes literally while complaining about the lack of negotiating progress. It's comical, but also illustrative. We all want to git-er-done. And we are all trained to identify and avoid risk. Great traits for flying, terrible for bringing out your inner longshoreman.

 

Edited February 13, 2023 by Lord Ratner

[Prozac]

47 minutes ago, Lord Ratner said:

We all want to git-er-done. And we are all trained to identify and avoid risk. Great traits for flying, terrible for bringing out your inner longshoreman.

It never ceases to amaze me that these airlines don’t recognize what they have in their pilot groups. We are generally a Type-A, mission oriented group who want to get the job done. And we’re generally pretty good at doing just that when we’re properly motivated. If AA or anyone else offered a Cadillac contract with the caveat that they expected the pilot group to start going the extra mile, they’d strike oil & make everything they put on the table & more back in increased productivity. Instead, they nickel & dime & go out of their way to treat pilots like shit & then wonder why guys are cranking the APU before they’re off the runway. SMH. 

[BFM this]

Flew with a senior CA who'd recently left the training dept after a couple decades to return to the line.  He'd had a front row seat when single engine taxi was rolled out, long before my arrival on property.  The pilot group, being the aforementioned Type-A widgets that we are, were on it like Khloe on the very last cupcake.  That lasted, oh, about a fiscal quarter or two, until...

Company financials were released, touting record setting executive bonuses.

Same CKA, a few years later, sitting in another company meeting where a VP had data up on slides showing SET rates at all major carriers, of which we were distant last in the race.  VP turns to the peanut gallery to ponder why our pilots were so far behind industry practices regarding SET.  Of the dozen or so pilots lining the wall of the conference room...blank looks.

[Velosprints]

On 1/19/2023 at 4:40 PM, Lord Ratner said:

We had a crew in the tanker fail to pressurize. The maintainers in the back all passed out, pissed themselves, etc. One even busted his head. The boom had to drag one up front to get him on oxygen. When they finally pressurized the AC decided to fly another 6 hours, at altitude, to the Died. 

 

When people up, they tend to convince themselves that completing the mission will somehow minimize the reality of the up, even if it actually makes it worse.

Didn't that A/C recently get downgraded to FPQ?

[Lord Ratner]

17 minutes ago, Velosprints said:

Didn't that A/C recently get downgraded to FPQ?

No clue, I've been out for 5 years already.

[Sua Sponte]

21 hours ago, Velosprints said:

Didn't that A/C recently get downgraded to FPQ?

He was FEB’d and lost his wings. The Co and Boom kept theirs.

[Velosprints]

4 hours ago, Sua Sponte said:

He was FEB’d and lost his wings. The Co and Boom kept theirs.

OK, I think I was thinking of somebody else.

[TheNewGazmo]

He was FEB’d and lost his wings. The Co and Boom kept theirs.

The boom eventually transfered to the ANG; went to nursing school, and got out. Bravo!

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[CaptainMorgan]

The boom eventually transfered to the ANG; went to nursing school, and got out. Bravo!

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Would have made for a better story if the boom became an aerospace physiologist.


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[Guardian]

Anyone know if airlines care if you are on military leave while working for them? I’m not talking about terminal to end your military career. I’m talking about a guard or reservist being on a set of orders and needing to get rid of leave before the orders end and using it while working for the airline. So technically the orders are ending but still active and you are using your leave. Similar to terminal but not retiring.

[brabus]

I’ve done it, they wanted a letter from my CC stating I was on terminal leave and the orders would in fact be ending on X date. They don’t seem to care about the nuance of retiring vs. ending guard full time orders.

Edit: I think the verbiage was something like I had 18 days of leave left and would be free to work full time for DAL starting X date, and on Y date I would end these orders and become a DSG. 
 

Edited February 26, 2023 by brabus

[Guardian]

So it wasn’t terminal leave and your cc stated it was? That’s how you got around it?

[HossHarris]

You’re just out on military orders. 
 

whether you’re actively working military stuff or taking the leave, it’s all part of being out for the military. 
 

delta would have a theoretical issue if you were working for delta while on military leave … they’ve got a hard on about double dipping … but that pendulum may be swinging soon. 

Edited February 26, 2023 by HossHarris

[brabus]

2 hours ago, Guardian said:

So it wasn’t terminal leave and your cc stated it was? That’s how you got around it?

It wasn’t terminal as you and I have always used that term (retirement), it was terminal to them since there was enough leave to cover remainder of the orders, which had a stated end date in the near future. The CC letter spelled that out and was good enough for them since it was more than “just my word.”

[Guardian]

Ah. Gotcha. Thanks hoss and brabus. Any one else have experiences like this?

[Chida]

I went back to my job during leave accrued from ADOS. Some rando at my Reserve sq was trying to tell me that leave had to end in the local area. I disagreed and disregarded bc it is a defacto terminal leave, something full-timers who have never been part-timers are apparently unable to grasp. 

[Guardian]

Interesting. So if that guy or my cc says the same if and when I ask for him to write a letter, how do I convince them?

[Smokin]

That letter can also come from the MPF if said commander won't write it.  Just have it say the day the leave starts and the day the orders end.

[ViperStud]

I did the same thing about a year ago, curtailed AGR orders and burned a bunch of leave at the tail end while I started airline training. I just called it terminal, told the airline I’d continue on as an DSG and no one blinked an eye.

The unit did want me to fill out an AF3902 for off-duty employment during that leave, in which I stated that I’d be doing classes and sims during that terminal leave. That form is signed by JAG. 
 

Airline asked for a DD214 a few times. I reminded them I’d have it at the end of the leave and sent it when I got it. Everyone was content in the end.