Originally Posted by
boiler
I have no issues with the captains that I fly with here, but come on man...you’ve got to admit that this place is awful and everyone has the attitude of “this is how we’ve always done it” regardless of how antiquated the practice may be. You senior guys ought to listen to us newer guys because we know how the rest of the industry works. I get paid better here than I did in the right seat at a regional and I fly a bigger airplane, but beyond that our work rules are so much worse than any regional pilot could dream of.
I do find it funny when its 10am and I'm on hour 13 of some godawful SAS run and conversation in the cockpit is 'we have to protect our work rules'. Frankly, its more of a scheduling and money thing than a 'what does the work day look like' argument anyways, but it is still amusing. There is a lot of soft pay at ABX that comes from scheduling rules- I honestly wouldn't mind seeing things straightened out and streamlined (for both sides), but I don't really see that happening unless Z pulls a rabbit out of his hat.
There is absolutely a 'locked in our old ways' mindset on both sides of ABX. It is kind of an anomalous cornfield airline in the first place, they truly did things their own way and made it work as Airborne Express and now they are trying to shoehorn what they learned into other people's systems (DHL, Amazon... any other operator) and the result is awkward. That said, as far as I can tell they still move express freight more reliably than any other contract operator though it's not clear to me if their on-time margin over other operators is something anyone but ABX cares about.