Originally Posted by
hockeypilot44
The new hire freeze was not the only thing we gave up to get rid of the recovery flying. When they merged the 767 domestic into the ER category, a pilot wasn't considered done with training until all TOE's were done. Now a pilot can fly domestically while waiting to finish his/her TOE's. That kept pilots from sitting at home getting paid to do nothing. That was a bigger concession than the freeze, but well worth it to get rid of recovery obligations for OE.
I think creating the new hire freeze was a
WAY bigger concession than the 767 ability to fly domestic priot to TOE. Many, many times bigger. There are way, WAY more new hires that would be going through training twice in their first year (in many cases immediately back to back only to have to be replaced, with someone who will also touch and bail, etc) than you will ever have ER pilots flying domestically prior to TOE.
In addition to that, we were told that many pilots wanted to fly domestically so they could get more time instead of languishing at min guarantee. While its hard to believe someone would want to work 85ish hours to make 85ish hours versus exactly zero hours to make 75ish hours is mind blowing…yet sadly probably true to some degree.
The new hire concession effects many times more pilots to a much greater degree than the sit at home waiting for TOE pilots. Not to mention, the company isn't taking advantage of it nearly as much as they can, as there are still plenty of ER pilots not flying anything until finished with TOE.
Both those concessions sold jobs to the company in order to gain jobs with the OE trip drop. Now we are looking to sell those jobs as well, for what it seems like are a small buff to payrates.