Originally Posted by
jabone
I was rebooked on UA today because of one of the canceled flights. I am sure UA is a nice airlines and all, but it is not where I have spent the last 20 years building up a real affinity.
So when someone uninformed comes on here and starts reading about time "worked" (and I put that in quotes now so I don't get slammed.) at 66 hours a month, which is less than half of the normal work month, people wonder what is going on. I am sure you have heard the comments.
I am on here to better understand why, to gain some empathy, AND to see what it is that I am dealing with on a better level.
I have thick skin, so I can take whatever you guys dish out.
Pilots think in terms of flight hours, not work hours, because that's how we get paid. 66 flight hours could be anywhere up to double that time (or more; I personally get paid 3.5 hours for a full day's training at the schoolhouse, for example). It's a confusing system if you don't live with it. It also sounds great... until the unpaid hours at work are considered. The public, who don't realize that we don't get paid for all our work hours, thinks we're living the life of Riley. This is the fiftieth or eightieth time I've tried to explain this to people who've asked, so you can imagine that it gets tiresome. Especially when those you've explained it to end up walking away with a bemused look, and you know they're going to go right back to how they were thinking before. I don't blame them, but it starts to wear thin on me the 20th or 30th time that happens. What should you, a consumer, know about flying on AA for the next few weeks? That you're taking a gamble on getting where you want to go when you want to go there. That's just true, and it will be true for any airline when you get toward the end-game of contract negotiation.