Originally Posted by hockeypilot44

I thought I just did. Years ago, we had a bunch of widebody pilots on reserve in Detroit. There was a 777 base with no 777 departures on some months so every trip started with a dh. Well, something happened on a flight so they diverted a 777 into DTW to cover it with short calls and none of the short calls were there. Then not too long after that, they needed to recrew a 747 with short calls and as they were assigning trip, all the short calls called in sick. The company did some digging and found a bunch of pilots hadn’t commuted to shortcall in years. One pilot was actually sitting shortcall on vacation in Europe at one point. The company fired a bunch of these guys. I believe most got their jobs back with severe pay reductions for all the short calls they were out of town for. The rest of the pilot group had no sympathy.

Back to the pilot recently fired. Sat reserve last two years, had barely flown (averaged less than 50 hours per year), wasn’t commuting in for short calls, and would call out sick anytime assigned a trip. But yes, said pilot was technically fired for sick leave abuse.