PSA Airlines unable to crew FO positions.
So I have heard a wonderful US Airways-owned regional named PSA is now so terribly short staffed that despite having nearly seventy-five pilots on furlough that management has begun the practice of placing Line Check pilots in the first officer crew seat to make up for severe staffing shortages.
I was unaware this was permissible at any air carrier outside of a scheduled training event per regulation. How does the POI(s) for this carrier feel about training captains abusing their dual qualification privileges? Which FSDO polices such a sorry rabble of management for an American airline? The trusting, yet unknowing public deserve better!
However, I may be misinformed. Yes, it has happened before, I will admit. But I ask if Captain line check pilots are allowed per regulation to act as first officers outside of training events in order to make cover for dangerously short staffing I wonder then why the contract agreed to at PSA Airlines is so weak. So very weak that it would permit such an abuse of crew members, and such blatant disregard for operating a safe, and efficient business. Both the union, albeit hands bound behind their back while standing on one leg upon the hot coals of the Railway Labour Act, and management are guilty here...
...Or is the real fact of the matter that the management group at PSA Airlines, without much regard for their employees well being and the promise of safe passage paid for by their US Airways customers, has decided to stretch, beyond all recognition, the current pilot's contract language into something never before seen by anyone at that company. Fatiguing the pilot work force, and creating numerous potentially dangerous situations. Bait and switching pilots with false junior manning phone calls claiming they never used the words "junior man," so that now pilots are losing days off, days off direly needed to rest and recuperate from the long hours of work day after day, because management claims pilots flew voluntarily on a scheduled day off. There are other instances of abuse. Instances that will not be named here by me, but quite possibly by someone else.
The toxic environment created by management at PSA Airlines is a Molotov cocktail just waiting for a flame, a flame that could have been avoided, but the wheels are coming off, and it is very likely not a soul will have a chance to spot the disastrous flame coming. Management is pitting pilots against pilots, and pilots against the rest of the work force. Only a fool would believe it is not being done intentionally if all the facts were laid out before him. PSA Airlines management is running their company into the ground. The state of affairs really are complete, total, and utter malarkey.
I truly hope something is done to rectify such a sorry situation. It is a shame that some in management consider themselves pilots, hold actual, valid, certificates, yet are unabashed when it comes to terrorizing their fellow aviators through bullying, and pilot pushing. I hope the news media gets ahold of this one, and gets the story right. Feel free to reprint the entire post. When you buy a ticket on USAirways .com you are buying a little slice of the story you read here today.
-The Stig