Originally Posted by
HighFlight
Then we are all fools. We already show up 45 minutes early to start our jobs so that we may block out on time. At one or two flights, that's not a big deal. But have a 6-leg day, and we are giving up a lot of valuable unpaid minutes of our lives.
Start paying us the 45 minutes prior to block out, and I have not a problem with waiting to drop the brake.
OTOH, it is also frustrating to fly with CAs who refuse to drop the brake more than 4 minutes prior to scheduled time. We can gain so much more advantage over A-0 by starting to move on the ground than by wasting fuel in the air trying to fly faster.
And it's also annoying when they don't want to send an A/C/S message when the rampers walk away from the plane after the door is closed.
I agree, we should get paid for showing up 45 prior to block out. Will it happen? No, because it's the industry standard to start getting paid after blocking out. But why should we give the company more of our time than they're already getting? I usually ask if they want me to send a ACARS message. If they say no, then oh well. Doesn't make me much of a difference. I also think this is the way Delta does things when it comes to releasing the brake, or at least they did a few years ago so this may just be one of those things that we're doing to align our operations with Delta operations. It would be nice to know who's going to get blamed when the D0 takes a dump.