Hotel is paid for while you are there, but when you leave on a trip you have to check out every time. Plus, you better hope that you don't have vacation during your TDY or you get to spend it in Madrid unless you want to pay to get yourself back and forth.

Also, we have guys on furlough so we probably aren't interviewing, but you do realize that as long as Omni has this contract and you get on the 767 you are going to be junior assigned to Madrid for 90 days...let me repeat that...90 DAYS!!!

 

It's Madrid, some people may want the adventure.

 

It may be Madrid, but you are gone from your friends and family for 90 days. That's a long time.

 

So you have a TDY base that you have to pack up all your stuff and take with you every time you leave on a trip for 3 months straight? For 90 days you have to live out of a roller board suitcase or deal with the fuss of packing multiple bags every 3 or 4 days? Are there laundry facilities to do your own laundry or is a person's only option the hotel service that charges the European standard of five bucks a sock to do your laundry and 8 bucks a T-shirt? Are the hotels near city centers so that one would have options to eat or are they isolated and disconnected from the local society that one's only option is to pay 30 dollars a meal from the hotel or pay a taxi to town for cheaper options every day? This all sounds more like a 90 day trip as opposed to a traditional TDY base, except for the pay to get yourself to and from part for vacation and days off. If the pilots are having to deal with that, I can't even begin to imagine how bad it is going to be for the flight attendants.

 

The company has told us that it is approximately $15 per load of laundry. The crews have a secured crew room that they can leave excess bags in, but once it is in that room there is no way to secure in privately. Hope you trust you fellow crew members not to steal you stuff. If the rumors are true, they can kiss the 95 hour average on the 767 out the window. The plane is already broke and I heard they have had a 777 doing some of the flying to make up for it.

We are still trying to get the company to work out all the kinks in their plan.

 

I hope the guys who were junior manned and are being kept from their families are looking elsewhere for employment. Junior manning for this TDY is unconscionable, and in my opinion, should be illegal.

 

Maybe so, but unfortunately the Omni pilots ratified the document that explicitly and specifically permits it. You can't agree to something then fuss about it. Well, you can, but...

 

Baxter is correct...over 51% of the pilots and flight engineers voted yes for this contract. Omni pilots are stuck with the POS CBA. Now we have to live and die by it just like the company.

The TDY section of the CBA is fairly short and brief that leaves a lot of grey area to be interpreted. I'm sure that is by design by the company during negotiations and allowed by the 1224 to be passed along to the pilots for a vote on the basis of "this is a first contract and it's as good as it's gonna get so take it." Enough people did so we have it now.

 

That's true, but as a guy who was present during negotiations, brought up these concerns before ratification, then voted against the CBA, yes, I can fuss about it.

But of course, a number of us eventually voted with our feet. I hope these guys sent off to Madrid for this 90 day trip are planning to do the same ASAP.

 

Point taken. I was speaking in the collective sense.