WOW! Tool of the day award goes to Packrat

 

Nope. Never ferried an AAY airplane. I just know the system. And the Tool award goes to the Teamsters who allow AAY to farm out the flying.

 

Actually, when they were short handed and the flying wasn't being farmed out to you guys, they did pay 2 and 3 times the normal rate plus a comp day. So yes, there were plenty of guys who could easily make $800 a day before the contract pilots swooped in.

 

Explain how you stop a company with no scruples and a contract with no barriers. Correction: it's not a contract... it's a bunch of work rules that the company has gone on record as saying is up to them to follow or not follow.

I'll help. You vote in a union and negotiate. Then you expect some level of help and respect from your fellow aviators while in the process. In the interim there's nothing to be done but hope that people don't undercut what eventually help all of us.

 

...FIFY...

 

I just rode on Virgin America and the Captain told me he was recently contacted and offered $1,000 to ferry an Allegiant Airbus from Goodyear to Mesa...

 

That's about right for ferrying narrowbody airliners these days...$800-$1000 a day. Interestingly enough, large cabin bizjets command significantly more because the annual PC on them costs a LOT more.

 

I hear a lot of people asking things like "how long till I'm off reserve" or "I live in Florida, so I should be able to be at home and cover all the Florida bases while on reserve, right?" It doesn't matter where you live or where you are on the seniority list because everyone gets to sit reserve with the way they do things at AAY, and you will cover what ever base they need you to at any given time.

Even if you are the most senior guy at AAY, if you time out or they change plane types on you, they put you on a reserve period that covers 90 minutes before your original trip and lasts 10 hours. No PPSK and day off for you! Once you are on that reserve TOA period, they can and will send you anywhere they want. So much for your senior schedule and so much for your plans that you made around that schedule.

If they send you to another base for that day on reserve and figure out they are short on pilots in that base the next day, you might be staying there and covering whatever schedule they want until they are done with you. Your original schedule and original days off no longer matter. If you are a captain you might be sitting FO too. Good luck planning your life around that, no matter how senior you are.

Reserves are on the hook for this type of thing all the time. In addition, management has hired a bunch of buddies from their old airlines and additional other sources and put them in the seniority list and made them instant Captains. That always feels good when you are on the bottom of the list and hoping to move up or have opportunities within the company.

TDY seems to be growing and growing here. Seasonal satellite bases seems to be the hip thing at Allegiant these days. If you want to come to Allegiant plan to give up your personal life and be totally flexible for the company. Flexibility is their favorite word, but it only works one way.

 

+1 uncle wurmy

And please hold on to your hats for the next work rule violation heading our way, "Floating Bases." They are coming. So now you won't even have a real base and, the company has every incentive to make as many pilots "floaters" as possible. It will start small, just like mission mode did, bring them to a slow boil so they don't jump out of the pot, but I would not be surprised if EVERY pilot was a floater within a 2 years of introducing the project. And it will be spun as "opportunities." They post massive TDY requirements and label it "TDY opportunities" on the email. As if 10% of the pilot group wants to be TDYd. Incredible brass. Hopefully we will have put an end to these atrocities by then.

 

Contract, contract, contract!!