this comment seems reactive instead of principled.

This comment leads me to believe you fly when you should be calling out sick

It's a negotiated benefit, use it when it matters

Tell me you fly sick without telling me.

it’s just allergies!

Some people don't actually get sick very often. The last time I got sick was approximately two years ago. Yes that includes the common cold.

We get the sick time we do partially because a lot of things that wouldn't stop another profession from working stop us.

I have a prescription medication that I might need 2-3x a year that is 72hr grounding. Im ok to drive, ride a bike anything else but fly in 8-12 hours. But FAA says no, 72 hours.

I get whopper sinus gunk "not a cold but don't feel ok" because my face was reconstructed. Guess what. I take my med and call out sick. Im sure Nantonaku would call me a sick abuser because I could suffer through it and be ok and not take the med. But I don't.

I was out 2 months and burned 160+ hours with a torn tendon. I'm sure NanuNanu would just grit through because hard working culture.

Guess Im just a lazy POS

good for you not getting sick ever, do you have kids? They bring home stuff every other week, in my first year and half of parenthood, ive been sick more times than in the previous 5. It is what it is. Am I a sick abuser? we have 18,000 pilots and a negotiated sick benefit. Use it or don't but saying you'd give it up just because YOU never get sick is great. And the whole Capt Flannigan never being sick, its a great company story, but the reality is he was probably flying sick, and getting others sick doing it too.

Good for you. That ain’t the norm. Some pilots have young kids who are petty dishes. I get ‘flu’ type sick WAY less now that my kids are grown).

Besides, “Sick ≠ the flu”. Older pilots bodies start to creak and grown as we age. Sprained ankles, achy backs, knee replacements… Tons of pilots flirt with the 120 hour threshold, usually not due to “a little here, a little there”. One bad case of the flu relative to a busy part of a month, or a single moderate event like above, and you get treated like you are in Kindergarten for 12 bid periods. Every little sniffle from then out is either fly sick, or deal with the thrash.

And there it is. There is nothing to be proud of for toughing it out. This ain’t the gulag. And that culture doesn’t have the FAA reps to worry about with their Class 1.

I think the cost leverage dwindles by the day as the company figures out their own countermeasures. That said, the only thing we can do is try to increase the cost by plowing more fields. Once the RES utilization is full they will have to skip all the way to IAs again.

I'm not saying anything about people who do get sick often. I'm simply saying that accusing people who don't get sick of going to work sick is BS. Sure, some do it, others just legitimately don't get sick.