I picked this statement from your post because it demonstrates that you have a very short time horizon upon which to base your analysis of the current state of the operation.

The current pay system has been in place since roughly 2005. Yes, small tweaks have been made along the way, but our current VP of flight ops was processing the payroll manually a decade ago and the payroll process hasn't changed much since then.

Yes, the Company has been busy and distracted over the past DECADE, but suggesting it hasn't had time to address the automation of something as important as payroll is ridiculous. That's like saying I've been too busy for the past 5 years to hang a single picture in my "new" house. I haven't done it because it's not important to me. Or another of my favorite analogies: I'm sitting in a dark room claiming I'm REALLY TRYING to turn on the overhead light… when my fat a$$ hasn't left my chair the whole time. You're not trying or it'd be done.

I don't want to be one of the old guys who says your opinion doesn't matter until you've been here for XX years (believe me, I heard it, too, when I had been here 18 months). Rather, I'd just offer a suggestion that just because you, personally, have only been experiencing this stuff for the last 18 months doesn't mean it hasn't been going on for some multiple of 18 months.

In addition to the ongoing payroll screwups, please also see: Trip Split Automation (hint: Contract 2007); Real time daily open time processing (hint: Contract 2007); Reserve day swaps (hint: Contract 2007); Mutual agreement for hotel accommodations; Crew scheduling assigning illegal trips, etc. All these things have been buggered up for YEARS with acknowledgements and promises made at every recurrent ground school that "we're working on it, but [insert the issue du jour] is a higher priority right now.

I am not a smart man, Jenny, but after a decade of listening to the same rah-rah speeches at recurrent ground school, I AM starting to see a pattern.