Originally Posted by
MikeF16
On my last trip my captain had 2 legs on 2 separate days cancelled due to a lack of 717 FOs. The FA listening to the story said she heard it was because we were executing an illegal job action (very similar to another story I heard on this board about what a gate agent had heard). I explained how these shortages are due to poor hiring decisions, the recent simulator move, and that many 717 FOs are working 20+ days a month. I have no idea if she believed me or not, she seemed fairly certain that pilots were out to screw the company and may have just been nodding and grinning just to play along.
So that said, where are the non-cons getting the idea that illegal job actions are going on? Is somebody up the chain maliciously spreading lies in a coordinated PR campaign or are they just jumping to their own conclusions since it is quite unusual for DAL to cancel flights due to a lack of pilots? I wish I'd spent more time discussing how she'd come up with that idea.
Mike,
This is not unusual. A lot of times the other employee groups jump to their own conclusions about things. When we were bringing guys back from furlough the company did it at a glacial pace and we didn't have enough pilots to fly the schedule. When a flight is cancelled it is coded to explain why it was cancelled. There were a ton of flights coded to Flight Operations - crew availability. This was also during the time that we were in extreme backwards negotiations with the company. So other employee groups see the reason for the cancel and make the wrong assumption.