Note to SkyHigh: I am not admitting defeat
Well, 21DEC is the official day of Furlough #2. I can't complain one bit, as I volunteered for furlough. A myriad of reasons drove this decision -
1. The holidays are a nice time of year when you're home. They're absolutely depressing when you're sitting in a hotel in some city far from home. So, the company deciding to furlough four days before Christmas was a big middle finger to some, but for me, it was more of a holiday miracle.
2. Since nothing is really happening at my company and attrition has come to a stand still, there's a fairly decent chance I was going back on reserve. "Forget that noise," I said. Reserve sucks. It's like being a prison b!tch for scheduling. They call all the shots and you don't have any choice but to take it.
3. Trans States is a dying airline. Hulas Kanodia is a business man through and through - we are just pawns in his game of chess. And who can blame the man? He's trying to make money any way he can. Did he spit in our face with the GoJet thing? Hell yeah, he did. But all that matters now is that he got away with it. And now with this BS "preferential hiring" thing in our contract, some Waterskiers are actually considering going over to GoJet with half their longevity and none of their seniority.
WHY? If you were gonna do that, two to five years ago was a good time. Hell, October was a good time, on the front end of the most recent hiring wave. But now? After we get effed? That's just letting airline management all over know that they can get away with any kind of scheme they want, regardless of what legal, binding contract they've signed. Anyway, with the loss of more aircraft, it's time to cut our losses and run. Of course, if something crazy happens and we double our fleet size or some such nonsense, then I'll probably be back. But then I'll be holding a line with some semblance of control over my schedule.
4. I'm so damn close to finishing my A&P I can almost taste the newly minted plastic card
And no reason to let a semester go by when I'd probably end up mandatory furloughed in late Winter, early Spring time. Two classes left, reciprocating theory and reciprocating overhaul. Then it's the O&P's and I'm good to wrench on aircraft for life. So awesome.
5. I'd like to enjoy a little bit of my youth. Chase women. Go do stupid stuff, like jump out of airplanes, off cliffs, etc. I'll enslave myself to the airlines again when things get moving in the right direction.
6. I want to fly something other than jets for the rest of my life. Gonna bob around the DFW area and see what there is for 135-operators, night freight, traffic watch, stuff like that. Once I have my A&P, maybe I can find something a little more interesting in AK or west of the Mississippi.
I gotta admit, ever since I found out there was a finite amount of time left in the regional world (at least, this time around), I have been pretty damn happy. My outlook has improved quite a bit. This turned more into a "Hopes and Dreams" speech than the "Re-evaluating" one I intended. Oh well, there's no rules here... and even if there were, I'd probably bend them.