Originally Posted by
baseball
It's a double-edge sword here. Here's what I mean. On the one hand the company HATES, and I mean HATES military people because they take too much military leave and it messes up their PBS wet dreams when they put in MLLV past the so-called PBS deadline, but on the other hand they LOVE, and I mean LOVE military people because they are black and white. They are mission oriented people and they see the company (ie commander's) point of view before any other.
If the Commander says, this is the plan, the mil guys buy-in.
What really needs to take place here is the military laison committee at ALPA needs to do a better job of educating the military community as to the long term benefits of holding the line on scope. Pilots, to include military guys and gals all tend to see the shiney ornaments on the Christmas tree first. They may miss that lump of coal in their stockings...… Scope relief is that lump of Coal that we wouldn't begin to be able to quantify for another ten years. Heck, we've just now figured out and cracked the code on scope relief on the CAL and UAL side post 9-11 within the last 2 years.
Go ask an over 40 ten year Captain, and 10,000 hour RJ pilot what he feels about scope and scope relief. I'd bet dollars to donuts he gets it, and he's not an O-5 with either a full AD, or guard pension. Heck, he probably doesn't even have a pension or retirement yet.
That’s a nice generalization, and surely a few bad apples can ruin a bunch, but over the last 15 years many of us flew with guys furloughed from *pick an airline* or got out at the wrong time and couldn’t get a job. Those guys who either came crawling back to our active duty squadrons or were fortunate enough to have Guard and Reserve units to help them through the bad times. Those are the same guys who mentored we young LTs on both the realities of the AF and the 121 world.
Now in a leadership vacuum, you have folks fleeing the mil like rats off a sinking ship and are pretty fed up with emptyleadership promises who are landing all across the airlines. I don’t think what you’re describing is something you’ll find in that group, the 30-something O-3/4s, and it’s a far larger group than the retired O-5/6 bunch. It ain’t your dads Salute Smartly and Carry On AF.
And to your point on the committees educating folks, I think it’s a solid idea. The mentors here should also reach out to their folks and discuss this since that’s something that can happen now with little coordination.