Not the same, at all.

My only caveat is that we're basing all of this based on the wording of a passenger who wrote in a letter. So while this person claimed the pilot "volunteered" to fly the leg, that does not actually mean that he of his own accord called scheduling to work something out. He may very well have been rerouted properly and the pax all viewed that as volunteering. As was mentioned earlier by bigger thought is was he FAR 117 legal? The only way he could have done this was if he was DH to still operate another flight that day, which very well could be the case. But if he had finished his FDP and was ending with a DH, or was DH-only that day then that's no bueno.

The problem is that if, and I say if, someone calls crew scheduling fishing for an assignment then that person is willfully violating the contract that we, through ALPA, fought so hard to get. It does not matter about the other effects. (I’m speaking more to the fishing issue, if that pilot was notified legally of a reroute this is a moo point).
How can we as a pilot group complain that the company isn’t following the contract when we have people that will selfishly fish outside of the contract for their own personal benefit? We either have a contract or we don’t.

ALPA spends 7 hours with new hires and exhaustively covers multiple topics, including scheduling and contract compliance.

Every one of those NHs has a mentor assigned to them. I will say that until recent events, mentors were overworked and understaffed. I feel the quality of mentorship has gone down but is trending back in the right direction. I am still dumbfounded by how many questions NHs ask (on social media) without opening one of the many available resources, such as the SRH or the PWA. The age of entitlement/laziness is among us.

A friend was a NH and kept asking me questions. Really easy stuff. I asked if he even checked out the SRH like I suggested. He laughed. No way man, why would I do that when I could just ask you.

I stopped answering questions

No mention of "exhaustively" covering the most important topic of all: the history of our union and the responsibilities of being a union member.

Giving him the trip was contractually legal even if he fished for it. Now if the aircraft was at a crew base and departure was in 3 hours it's a absolute violation of the contract.

My out of pocket total for the year for a family of quattro with 2 appointments each was about $95.

Yeah right. The new hire packet in 2023 said something to the effect of “A release from the mentor program is required to be released from probation.” I never heard a lick from mine. One of the CPs was a personal friend of his and said he would ask him to reach out. It never happened.

The mentor program strikes me as a useless resumé padding program. The people actually putting in the leg work to bring new hires up to speed are everyday line captains.