This is interesting, and the height of hypocrisy from a "do as I say, not as I do" leader. Way back when a friend of mine interviewed for a domicile chief position at Compass, this same individual went to great lengths to emphasize to him in the interview that this was a management position, and that as a chief pilot, he would have to be available 24/7 to answer his phone. So much for that theory. This is also the second time that a line pilot at this company has been bawled out for "bothering" a chief with a legitimate question. After being told not to call ever again "on my anniversary," the offending line pilot used bad words and unbecoming anatomical terms describe this chief. They got some time off for it, but kudos to them for standing up for themselves to this character. The company even sent out a chief pilot memo about what days are acceptable to bother the chief. I printed that one out for my scrap book.

The lesson here is, don't communicate if you have a question, just exercise your PIC authority. If you later get called on it, set up a three way meeting at the FSDO to talk about it. Explain that you tried to get clarification, but the company was too busy to care. For those who advocate calling SOC, you need to understand that we have a problem at this company of getting the answering machine far too often when calling dispatch, crew scheduling, or mx control. If they won't answer the phone in SOC, who else are you going to call?

I'm not normally an advocate of running directly to the FAA, but this problem needs some attention of the legislative kind. What a DB!!!