Originally Posted by
johnso29
Everyone has a different situation. Some people truly can't leave. Perhaps they have a sick child or parent. And I understand that. To be clear, my comment was not directed at you but rather made as a general statement. I simply made the comment because I saw so many guys follow the QOL line of thinking to justify their decision to be a regional lifer. Chances are, their QOL will still be better as a junior guy on reserve at a Major. So again, it wasn't directed at you. Sorry if it came off as stand off-ish.
Out of curiosity, was the SA crew who ran off 10/28 in CLE a CMH crew? I thought I remembered the CA making a statement that he had a sleeping disorder, so I found your comment regarding the trips effecting your sleep interesting.
..and I took it as being directed toward me, so if you'll excuse the harsh nature of my response, I'd appreciate it.
To clarify my point about the senior pilots, if rjet based in hubs (like almost everyone else) it would be much easier for senior pilots to move on should the opportunity present itself, because the commute (if there was one) won't be any different and it wouldn't involve pulling the rug out from under your life to take a job at the mainline carrier for whom you've been flying contract feed.
I don't know about the CLE crew. That was before my time and both pilots, as you may have guessed, uh, moved on shortly after. However, the FAA/NTSB got on rjet for it's punitive sick leave policy, so the company made some very minor modifications, labeled it "non-punitive" and basically still has the same BS punitive sick leave policy...I bring this up because the CPT was not only tired, he was sick, and would have called in such had he not been facing disciplinary action from the company for doing so.
Also, and I hesitate to bring this up, but my understnading is that the FO that was convicted about a year ago for OUI on the AUS-DEN (or was it DEN-AUS?) flight apparently had chances to call in sick as well, but doing so under rjet's "non-punitive" sick policy would have pushed him over his occurance limit and he would have likely been fired. Now, I fully realize that that story has a lot of chapters and footnotes, but rjet's "non-punitive" sick policy put pressure on this guy that really shouldn't have been there.
My situation is that I've made a promise to this company to stay for two years...I plan to fulfill my obligation and move on the second I'm able.