Originally Posted by Bucking Bar

Buzz,

My father spent 9 out his first 16 years in our profession on furlough. He had two airlines go bust out from under him, or rather I should say, flew for two airlines that had their assets transferred. He worked as a mechanic when he could not find work flying. Sometimes he worked three jobs, not only to support us, but also as the sole provider for his mother and help with a couple of nearly destitute relatives. Can not recall that he ever complained, but he was tired and never really happy unless he was flying.


The second asset transfer happened when I was 16. I took my first full time job two weeks after my 16th birthday and have worked at least one job every day of my life since then. My schedule for the six years it took me to get my undergrad done was 07:40 am at work ... a few of my classes let out at 00:20. My parents never asked for money, but I did save up some cash so we could take a family vacation. Dad found work flying in Saudi. I do not recall seeing him much until I was 24. I will leave the details of our family life out of this, but yeah, I get it. He is a great guy. He really appreciated his later career with FedEx.


This thorough understanding of what furlough and career instability is the exact reason why I've worked to try to improve our profession's perspective on unity.

Rather than focus on the emotive question of how anyone feels about furlough it would better if folks like CGHerk would refocus on the structures their association has created which caused our pilots to be furloughed. It frustrates me that his posts criticize pilots for their feelings when these emotions impede the objective changes that we need to get done to unify our profession, thus avoiding asset transfers, furloughs and job losses out of seniority.

In other words; you probably took a furlough that should have been mine. Why did you (and the Delta pilots) allow that to happen? Was disunity with ASA and Comair worth it? (not picking on you, it is a rhetorical question and I think we agree on the answer)

I've heard a couple of pilots who are in the know state considerations for what would amount to a one way flow up to Delta. Management wants to avoid flow down because it makes it more cumbersome to administer furloughs and a lot of men with ALPA lapel pins seem to have no problem with that idea.

How can it be that we are so against Norweigen, Emirates, Etihad et. al. taking "our" flying when we still happily outsource 40% of our domestic flying to alter ego versions of our own airlines? We have no moral authority to ask for restrictions when we build half of our Section 1 on permitted arrangements to outsource flying within our own brand.

We can change these structures. I do not ever want a pilot on this list to be furloughed.

Originally Posted by Hornet1

I'm on reserve and I noticed on the reserve availability list that my max number of short calls is 8 for this month. Did I miss something? Do we have a new LOA? I have not received a reply from my rep asking the question.

Originally Posted by Seaslap8

I think that at this juncture it is wholly appropriate to relegate that group to squeaky wheel minority status...if there had been anything close to critical mass we would have seen a vote by now, don't you think?

Originally Posted by Cogf16

Are you serious????? SOPA SMAC fan are you? I understand sterile cockpit procedures but do you really think the Feds would care if you added a few info things to a PA? Like, "We're #4 for T/O, it's an hour and a half to XXX, we should be on time, it's clear and 70 degrees, since it's late, we won't bother you with any PA's. F/A's please prepare the cabin for T/O. Use a little judgment and common sense.........

Originally Posted by get there itis

Assuming the parking brake isn't set, that's a lot of extra info. I think good judgment and common sense would be to only provide info of an operational necessity to the crew. This is not a customer service PA.

There's a PA guide on DeltaNet that describes "the basics" as asking the flight attendants to prepare for departure. Even though it's supposed to be done within three minutes of takeoff, I think it would be ok to provide what number you are in line because it provides a clear time frame to them.

The guide also says that IAW sterile flight deck regulations, this PA shall be limited to "the basics" unless the brakes are set.

Originally Posted by UnusualAttitude

Sometimes when the FO includes all of the ancillary info I wonder if he/she (FO) has any awareness that the CA just gave us the exact same info 10 minutes earlier.

Originally Posted by forgot to bid

Alright here is an idea and I have no idea how it'll turn out beforehand, but do any of the CPZ, EV, 9E, RAH or OO guys flying 76-seaters care to share their trips? Pick your favorites.

Originally Posted by JungleBus

About to head out the door to do a daytrip & then head down to St Maarten to sail in the Heineken Regatta, but here's my next three trips (CPZ E175), which are pretty representative of what I've been doing the last ~4 years:

Today:

MO 03 5786 MSP-YVR
MO 03 5786 YVR-MSP

(7:36 credit day trip)

13th:

TH 13 * 5737 MSP-DFW 0905 1142
TH 13 5808 DFW-LGA 1214 1645

FR 14 * 5801 LGA-IAH 0640 0958
FR 14 5772 IAH-MSP 1046 1333

(13:13 Credit for 2 days)

18th:

TU 18 5717 MSP-MDW 0700 0836
TU 18 * 5717 MDW-MSP 0910 1042
TU 18 5816 MSP-FCA 1135 1336 -

WE 19 5760 FCA-SLC 0605 0750
WE 19 5757 SLC-IAH 0950 1355

TH 20 5803 IAH-LGA 0645 1116
TH 20 5810 LGA-DFW 1215 1531

FR 21 5710 DFW-SLC 0825 1020
FR 21 * 5714 SLC-DFW 1105 1445
FR 21 5698 DFW-MSP 1605 1834

10-leg, 26:50 four-day trip.

If the 175 was brought over to mainline, I suspect I'd take the pay hit to fly it for QOL alone. DAL uses it largely on long, thin routes that make for efficient flying.

Originally Posted by Free Bird

That's significantly better than about 80% of the 88/90 trips in ATL.