The pilots who got fired were not out of position one or two times.....or even ten times. One fired pilot was out of position over 80 times. That pilot was on the 747, so in other words he could have held a line on another airplane and not been commuting to reserve. No, he chose to abuse the system and sit at home getting paid, not even attempting to comply with the contractual requirements. In the meantime, when the company did need a short call pilot someone else had to go out and fly.

I don't feel sorry for anyone of the pilots who got fired.

If you don't miss an assignment how would the company verify you weren't in base?

Nonrev records, jumpseat records, KCM records. I'm sure the fired pilots were given a chance to prove they bought tickets or drove, but if you live in Florida (for example) and there is no evidence you got yourself to DTW, it's hard to argue you were in position for short call.

Xray is spot on. These guys sat short call several states away from base and would just call in sick if they got called. They were gross abusers of the system and have put us all at risk of losing "promptly available" and screwing thier 14000 brothers and sisters.

I don't abuse but greatly appreciate the flexibility of our short call. Luckily by choice I can make it in an hour . I can get a call, be doing anything at my house , take a shower, get dressed and make it to work. If it went down to a solid hard time that would suck!

That's what I figured but it still seems like it would be hard to prove.

To be clear, guys that acknowledge SC's knowing they can't possibly be there are punks who deserve a time out from being paid.

But since everyone deserves the most robust and aggressive defense possible, how exactly will anyone prove where you were or weren't in the past? If you rolled the dice and won on previous occasions, that closes the book on that anyway. You got lucky, end of story. Oh but our records show you flew to FL a day or three before and didn't fly back. Yeah well sometimes I drive (I love road trips) and sometimes I fly a small plane and sometimes I buy offline tickets and you don't have access to that information.

I'm all for holding guys accountable within reason when they actually get busted (but that approach should include graduated discipline and not cleared direct to UFIRD). But we shouldn't facilitate or tolerate blind fishing expeditions that try to retroactively prove guilt by inference. That's just ridiculous.

So they have to "prove" they drove/flew/train/bussed? 80 times? Over all those years?

Please.

Hold them accountable for what they actually got busted for within fair reasonableness. Absolutely. But assumptions of guilt based on them not being able to "prove" something in the past is unreasonable.

Sorry but we gotta dig in and defend them against that BS.

Yes, but if they ask whether you were in position, better tell the truth. You don't know what evidence they already have, and you might convert a wrist-slap for carelessness into a termination for lying. :(

If you're on short call and playing the company, it's stealing. Disclaimer, I don't know the details of the terminations. When I did short call, I was available. That's reserve 101.

It depends on what kind of data the company has on them. I was assigned 7 Short calls last month - first time in 18 years that I maxed out on SCs. No wonder scheduling is going bonkers on assigning short calls. These guys are screwing it for all of us. It will be interesting to see what "proposed changes" to SC/reserve come up in the next section 6.

Suppose every time these guys have a trip they leave a easily verifiable digital trail - KCM, Jump seat, Non-rev etc - every time they have a trip and show up in base. Yet for years there is Zip, nada, squat for every SC. I will say innocent until proven guilty not the other way around but the fact is these guys were out of position when they were needed and apparently out of position for years.

How much bargaining capitol do you suppose the union should spend on guys that were cheating? It will be very easy to see if this was a one off or if these guys were gaming the system for years.

Oh and how many guys take the Bus and train across country to commute to work - I hope that you are not really serious here.

Scoop