Originally Posted by
El Peso
Ok sure. What’s the holiday pay at UAL? It’s 200% at AA. What’s the ACD at UAL, 5:00? It’s 5:15 at AA. And don’t you guys use reserves to seat fill in the sim? That’s a non starter around here.
And I’m sure there’s things that are better at UAL, like profit sharing etc, but the point is that this idea that you have some superior contract over there is delusional. Sounds like you have much better trip ownership, but as your compadre explained above, it comes at a very hefty cost. Field Standby. No thanks. All one has to do is look at your vacancies that are constantly going unfilled these days. That tells me all I need to know about what’s it’s like to be junior in your seat at UAL. I can just about guarantee the you won’t see wide body jobs or Captain jobs go unfilled at AA, because it doesn’t suck to be junior.
Yes, I get it, FSB sucks. Sometimes it’s beneficial to pick it up (because you can control your start/finish time and are rarely used), but only if you’re a commuter or live near the airport. The folks with the 2+ hour drives understandably hate it.
Junior widebody positions go unfilled because as a new hire you would have a better schedule on the narrowbody with quicker advancement. For a new hire on the 787 it is unlikely that they will be off reserve by the time their seat lock is over; the 777 might go a little quicker. Narrowbody captains go unfilled because of how good of a job being a lineholder on the widebody is. I would argue that even if we had the best reserve system in the industry, you’d still see unfilled narrowbody captains. We have a bunch of pilots that are content with their 18-22 days off on the widebody and would never dream of doing domestic flying with more responsibility and work for almost the same pay.
We have a couple backstops in the UPA too that contribute to unfilled captains, a flight time requirement for new hires and a requirement to be off probation. IF the company wants to fix the unfilled captain issue (and right now they don’t seem to be concerned about it), improving the QOL of narrowbody pilots relative to widebody schedules needs to be on the table.