Originally Posted by
The Juice
Suggest you get your facts straight and stop taking crap just for the sake of talking crap. There are many regionals with less pay for the equiptment than Colgan, Great Lakes, Lynx, Gulfstream, CommutAir, and Mesa to name a few. I know those airlines are not the "gold standard" of airlines but lets not act like Colgan is the worst, you just like to bash Colgan.
Colgan is improving by the day when it comes to scheduling and work rules, although we have a long way to go and continue to make strides in negotiations.
Since our union has been working with management we have been able to totally revamp our scheduling/bidding practices. No more are the days of upgrading and not knowing your base assignment untill after upgrade, we now know the base before hand and have the option to turn the upgrade down for a later date. This was never before the case, you either took the upgrade or you were blacklisted.
We can bid build up line with preferences and all lines are reviewed by the scheduling committee before being sent out to the pilots, no more 9-10 leg days. Base changes are now done through a vacancy bid, whereas before it was done by whomever kissed the most butt and then got the base they wanted. People senior to others always got stepped over for base changes because of this. This is no longer the case with vacancy bids.
The schedules are better as well. Before, your schedule would be a mix of 4 days, day trips, morning shows, evening shows, and reserve with a possible standup in order to keep the credit down. This is no longer the case as our schedules are reviewed beforehand by the union. We also now have online trip trade/open time.
These are just a few things we have acheived without a CBA. This was done with the hard work of our scheduling committee and others.
Out MEC is working hard to improve things for the pilot group and I believe the Colgan in 2 years will not resemble the Colgan we know today.
Sounds like you're on your way to having a normal set of work rules. I certainly hope the process continues.