Originally Posted by fr8tmastr

hueypilot.

I do appreciate your service and the sacrifices you and others have made, my hat is off to you.

However Doug is not uncle Sam, and we are not defending freedom, we are here to make a buc. Doug is here to make millions, he and his cut throat bean counters WILL take every penny they can from all. Why you ask, because its their job! They don't care about you any further than if you are well enough to move a plane. They count on you and your integrity to make sacrifices to make sure their bonuses keep on rolling in. You are a fool to apply your integrity and honor to management, they don't have any!
You posted the CPO has better things to do than watch your check in time. In case you forgot, or were not here, about 5 years or so ago they did just that. They used Map quest or similar to plot pilots locations to verify they were withing the 90. So yes they can, will and have done exactly what you say they wont.
If the language they want is "essentially the same" as current then why change it? That question alone should raise your eyebrows.
A contract is so much more than an hourly wage, sure we will make an extra nickel, but I guarantee we will pay for that raise with other parts of the contract. That is how management especially this group does business. If we get an extra 5K per year, that will be paid for with 5k in concessions in other parts.
As far as I am concerned, I am tired of playing directly into the hand of management. They use the exact same play book every single time and yet so many never see it

Originally Posted by eaglefly

Exactly. One of the problems involves people wandering in from non-airline environments and applying inapplicable concepts. Ultimately, undefined language like the callout term will end up being challenged as a result of a grievance and traditional arbitrations almost always favor management interpretation of vague, undefined contractual language. The "available promptly" call out term is an unexploded mine.

Originally Posted by Hueypilot

Min calendar day would fix that. The only problem is I don't believe there's any real way to force their hand to give us min calendar day at this juncture. I think our best shot at getting that went out the window when the BOD flung the $2.5 billion grenade back at the company.

Originally Posted by Hueypilot

Yeah, I did come from the military. And as much b*tching as I hear, this job is actually pretty damn good.

Where I came from, we deployed to crappy places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait...the list goes on. We got to sleep in dorm rooms with 4 dudes in it. One of those dorms was across from a landmark known as the "poo pond". I had a rocket land 25 feet from my room, failed to detonate and bounced over the concrete wall and exploded on the other side.

Flying involved showing up to fly in 120 degree heat wearing ballistic vests, helmets, gloves, etc. Flew 18 hour duty days, landed at sunrise after flying all night on NVGs and then got to go do "camp clean up" since technically we weren't "working" anymore...got to listen to the non-flying office workers complain that we smelled...probably because my flight suit had been drenched in sweat for the better part of 16 hours. Finally got to go to sleep after being awake for nearly 24 hours. Got hour 12 hours of rest and then went back out the door for another 16-18 hours of bouncing around various sh*tholes. On top of that, we got to deal with all the other office and various other military queep.

I spent a total of about 3 years deployed, flying those schedules. We'd come home for 4-6 months, and spend 2-3 months of that time TDY to attend various schools or attend exercises...so we really didn't get to spend a whole lot of time with momma and the kids. Two of those deployments involved a 365-day stint flying with Iraqis crews that constantly tried to find new ways of killing you in an airplane, and another was a 7-monther where I flew half the time and spent the other half walking around Afghanistan with a 9mm trying to recover wrecked aircraft.

I'll edit to add that I spent a number of years teaching at the schoolhouse too. That was a "good deal" assignment because you typically didn't deploy (much). But that involved flying 4 times a week, and as the new guy I got stuck flying nights for nearly a year. Teaching kids with 200 hours total time flying on NVGs, showing up at 4pm and going home at 4am, and waking up at noon to do it over again. Day 5 (we couldn't fly 5 nights in a row, that was unsafe) was spent teaching ground school. By the weekend, I was beat up and didn't have energy to do much. Flying days was better but was pretty much the same...we had to show up at 5am and I usually left to go home around 5pm. All of our sorties were 5 hours with students in the seat flying at 300' in formation. You were often worn out.

We sat alpha alert sometimes. That's one hour from the call to wheels up. We had leadership who would have slide shows to the commanders showing how often our alphas were late for takeoff, and as the aircraft commander we had to explain why. We often sat bravo alert, which was a hard 2 hours from the call to show time. Very rarely did we ever get charlie alert, which would be called "long call" around here.

When I went through my last military initial qual course, all my sims were at midnight or 2 am...for 4 months in a row. Sometimes our annual CRM sims (military version of CQT) would be at midnight as well. And back then I was a captain making about $75-80,000 a year. Now we've got a political climate where military retirement may go away, and they are already cutting military pay and benefits right and left (or trying to).

Then I come here and guys are making double what I made in the military, working half the time and complaining about midnight currency sims and haggling over callout times.

I'm certainly not a company man, and I think corporate leadership in this country is lacking...they are typically all about the money for the most part. I would certainly object to any language I thought was onerous for sure. But I think it's a little ridiculous to talk to me as if I came from the land of rainbows and unicorns and have to learn how to really roll up my sleeves now that I'm at an airline.

The only thing about this job that sucks so far is commuting, and I do that to myself.

** I wanted to add that this isn't meant to bust anyone's chops over the military vs airline thing. I think I just wanted to point out that despite the arguments about what's best for the airline in these negotiations/arbitration, we've actually got it pretty good. Pilots love to b!tch, I know that as a fact. But I think about what I was doing and what I'm doing now and I feel lucky.

Originally Posted by sailingfun

We have used that term for 30 years at Delta with no issues. If you set a hard number you open pilots up for discipline for being 1 minute late. The term comes with a defined industry standard that any neutral in a hearing will have to fall back on.

Originally Posted by eaglefly

As it stands now, "90 minutes" is the only hard number referenced. Besides, you have Anderson, we have Parker.

Originally Posted by sailingfun

Promptly available has always been interpreted as approximently two hours under normal driving conditions. We have had it for many CEO's besides Anderson including a infamous pilot hater. If you ever have to take that term through the grievance process you will do just fine with the neutral. Lots of precedence at several airlines.

Originally Posted by asacimesp

If there's one thing I've learned in my relatively short time in the airlines (11 years) it's that if there is nothing in a contract/MOU that specifically forbids a company from doing something... Then it is fair game. An arbitrator/mediator in a grievance hearing is only looking for contract violations. If it is not specifically addressed or forbid then you will hear "well... Management has the right to run the operation as they deem best". I've seen way too many "reinterpretations" and failed grievances that seemed on the surface to be cut and dry go the wrong way.