Bright eyed, bushy tailed newly minted 121 pilot me 3 decades ago, happy to be getting paid to fly instead of the reverse, came across a little too enthusiastic to an old (probably 40) captain.

"At some point, this becomes a J.O.B."

He was right.

Nothing in this business is personal. It's just a business, you're a cog in a wheel. The second the paymaster can find a pilot who'll do it for .01 cent cheaper, you're out. (You wouldn't do any different when hiring a good or service)

Everything else is marketing.

 

That's a part of what is so frustrating. By and large this pilot group would be willing to go above and beyond to extrordinary lengths if we had a management team who ran a competent operation and treated the pilots with honesty, dignity, and respect. The problem is they are just looking at us as costs on a spreadsheet and can't calculate an ROI on treating us like professionals. Case in point - when they yanked PB day washing, all they saw was the straight dollar savings they were getting in payroll reductions. This summer we will have WB and NB flights cancelling because reserves have lost a major incentive to come in on their days off and salvage the operation. They'll see the costs in delays/cancellations and whatever other associated costs those items incur, but they won't connect the dots to see that their earlier PB cost savings are causing these future cost increases.

 

Someone once told me this and it stuck: “if you die tonight in your layover hotel, that flight will more than likely still go. It might even go on time, but it will still go.”

This is a job. A pretty good job, but a job nonetheless.

You work here under a PWA and you are governed by the PWA (transactional=what we get for our time)+FOM (company policies)+Vol 1 (how to operate your jet).

At the end of the day—we all just work here. You have to learn how to answer the following question when you’re assessing things: “is this a ME problem or a DELTA problem?”

Example: Me problem might be—I am burnt out and have kids at home and I’ve been working to much. Ergo my attitude is bad at the moment.

Delta problem: scheduling a day within 17 mins of max duty day doing ATL-MCO shuttle in July and you time out and refuse to extend.

The me problem: I try to correct. So that I am not a douche at work to people I work with and customers.

The Delta problem is above my pay grade. It’s not my fault that they hired 0 pilots in 2025 and want to trust an optimizer to pick up nickels while stepping over dollars. (see PB days as well)…..

Our contract can and must improve this cycle and every cycle going forward. We don’t need to give up pay or QOL items to get improvements.

They have painted us to be the bad guys. Which isn’t good for anyone including the corporation long term.

 

This is what Delta gets when they let a fool who can only think as a 2000s regional manager be in charge, the Gumpster fire! He only knew one tool for years, the hammer. Now he found a second one, the blow torch. Some people only know how to destroy, they never learn how to actually build or even just keep going something good.

 

Today I was the guy who said "not worth it"

Phone rang at 0230 for a 0500 report 1 day QS. RES QS on X day. No work days left in month. 6 hours block plus 2:30 EDP. So 8:30 pay plus 2 banked PB days (1 PB, 1 PR, released after 1500)

This would have been worth 8:30 now plus at least 10:30 if I just cashed them in on a ADG trip later on.

Now? 8:30 plus 9:10 on days not 100% of my choosing anywhere from 11 to 23 months from now.

PASS.

Yeah, some 10k seniority guy picked it up as QS2, so it got covered but this is going to play out a lot this summer.

Pre no more banked PB days, just banked vacation days, I would have grabbed this no matter how craptastic the day was to have 2 PB days to either wash or do schedule manipulation later in the year.

 

Blanket QS/GS and ringer off when I go to bed. I have missed 10+ wakeups with premium possibility(?) this month but the sleep is golden. Someone else can have them because I am not that ambitious anymore. 4 nights in a row with wakeups and no cheese last month taught me not to participate in the QS lotto during quiet hours.

 

if only they started coverage earlier. It’s almost like the 0200 phone calls are on purpose. Also, has anyone noticed that trips are getting shopped around to different bases, ie a dtwnb 0xxx will have a 1leg day1 which later becomes an atl 0xxx rot with a dh to the dtw 1leg day1. Foul: once they pick the domicile for the 0xxx rotation they should have to keep it there- quit fishing the different bases for the sucker who will fly your short notice trip as a ws, only to send it out as qs at 0200.

its time to put out the gumpster fire.

 

Yep. 0500 report trip for tomorrow. Been in OT for hours. Well under the time to report to QS it. Phone will ring between 2 and 3 for it.

 

I like to keep my slips in just to get the satisfaction of saying "NO" to a GS over X days.

 

For the life of me, I can’t figure out why the company keeps playing this game from a safety perspective. If something goes wrong, the question is going to be why are you calling people in the middle of the night for something you knew about many hours ago?