The alternative is pounding the pavement with the thousands of other pilots out on the street. Give me a break. I can't feed my family with standing on principle and neither can you.
How many would say this exact same thing about 24/7 on call, but show up at a guy's house with a Posse while he's out scabbing a trip for a striking airline?
Just curious. I won't judge.
Our company has been in business for 11 years and we have a lot of blue-chip clients. We're not some fly-by-night operator that's teetering on the edge of failure daily. We train our people well, pay them decently, and don't skimp on maintenance. But let's be real - if we had to put pilots on shifts so that everyone could have 10 hours of scheduled rest a day, then we'd need twice as many pilots and pay them $35K a year instead of $70K. Or, if we didn't hire anyone, we'd have to turn down a crapload of business due to lack of crew.
And?
If you can't afford to operate legally, you need to shut the doors. Or, better put, you need to be forced to shut the doors.
My question is always this. If a company can't abide by pretty simple (135 unscheduled operations rest rules are really pretty simple to understand/follow) rest regulations, then what other regulations or issues are they skipping on? Maintenance? Training? Insurance? I'd be willing to bet my ridiculous September paycheck that there's something else being ignored.
You claim "oh well, you deserve to go out of business then." I say - take a look around you, pal - until ALL operators are forced to play by the same rulebook then NOBODY can afford to play by the rules. You may dismiss this as nothing more than "whining," but then again, it's always easy to take pot shots from the cheap seats, isn't it?
It is whining. As someone who is currently flying 135 (and looking at moving on to a different 135 carrier at the present moment - not that it matters) I'm hardly in the "cheap seats"...pal.
You're the same kind of person that even if the rules did change (and were enforced), you'd look the other way so you could "feed your family". Hey, I won't begrudge you that. If I were in a situation where I had the choice of watching my family go hungry or pretend I'm at rest, I know what I'd do...but the realities of the situation are that even in the worst of economic times, there are jobs out there. You may not enjoy flipping burgers, but sometimes a man just has to do what he has to do so the family has food, shelter and clothes on their back. That doesn't change the fact that 135 operators that don't play by the rules as written should be shut down. 121 Air Carriers would never get away with this and 135 Air Carriers shouldn't. Rationalize it all you want.
-mini