A scab is someone who crosses a picket line to perform struck work. Full stop. A scab is not whoever you don't like. Words mean stuff.

 

As a HVA whose previous ALPA airline is being shut down by a nonunionized airline... call me a scab to my face. I dare you. Really you should be thanking me for taking that reserve spot so you can waltz right in to a line in the left seat.

 

The HVA guys/gals aren't scabs...that's just ridiculous. The HVA's are going to end up getting screwed by being eternally forced on to reserve as the current pilots on property start hitting their hours. The biggest thing this pilot group can do right now is to steer people away from this HVA BS at all costs. Management has surplus of FO's on property. They are reducing hiring classes to ~30 with a focus on 1,000 hr 121 guys. They need to feel to hurt in the hiring numbers, and hopefully word is finally starting to get out about how the HVA's will end up being forced to LGA/ORD with low QOL. It does them no benefit to hire zero time 121 guys right now because their immediate need is finding qualified FOs for upgrade. Blame the union all you want, but at the end of the day management doesn't seem to give a ******* about the rest of the pilot group once they have them on property and it seems like our hands are tied until there is a drastic reduction in filling new hire classes with qualified CA candidates.

 

Nobody would call a HVA a scab to his or her face. Just an Internet tough guy.

 

Anyway, back on topic:

everybody hired prior to today would be upgrading on top of the forced upgrade "HVAs", would take probably 3+ years to get them all upgraded, ergo, it would theoretically be 3+ years before someone in my shoes had any QOL (weekly commuting to and from ORD, LGA, reserve shift etc)

I make mid-senior fedex captain money doing what i do now in my non flying job, QOL is total garbage, im talking 100+ days in a row on a contract with no time built in for visiting home. Personally, I'd rather be flying again.

If i go sit reserve as a CA and can get 1,000 hours turbine PIC in 12-18 months and move on to something else, I'll do it... but im not going to bunk in a crash pad in LGA for the next 2 years while 2 or 3 hours a week get tossed at me. not even for a $40K +/- sign on bonus.

 

You think about it. OK, the company screwed up the recruiting process. They are hardly unique in that. Look at Horizon last Fall. They didn't have enough warm bodies to fly their lines. In this case it was people ELIGIBLE to upgrade to Captain. But that's done.

So do you really think it is in the interest of management OR ANY OF THE FOs, senior or junior, to cut back flying? Sure, they could put existing Captains on premium pay and cover some of those hours, but probably not all of them and certainly not without burning out some of the current ones.

So given the situation that pertains, why be mad at someone who is willing to accept a fairly lousy deal and who will ultimately be a junior captain to everyone he's temporarily leap-frogged?

In an era when regionals are FORCING FOs to take the upgrade, when flow to the majors is as good as it' been within your LIFETIME, how can you use words like 'scab' for people like this. They may be the last ones to still pay the sort of dues for their advancement that everyone commonly paid a decade ago.

 

As far as DFW goes, it’s difficult to predict when you would hold it as a captain. These are the current numbers - most junior DFW captain is DEC 15 hire. There are about 350 DFW FOs right now (that would be senior to you) which you have to assume most will want to be DFW captain. Then there are quiet a few DFW FOs and captains that were displaced out of base that will proabably want to come back to DFW. And last they haven’t had DFW Captain position on a vacancy in over 6 months. Hope this helps

 

good information, thank you

any idea what the reserve CAs are flying per month in the northeast? I cant imagine they are doing a lot of sitting around

 

Someone based up there can proabaly give you that info. Looking at the LGA captain reserve list for this month, it looks like this month the average amount of hrs flown so far is about 20ish. Couple guys have flown 0hrs and a few have flown up to 30. Not sure if this is typical.

 

Also more food for thought, once you finally do make your way to the top of the reserve CA seniority list you are still likely to be called in to sit Airport Standby as the award trips to all the new CA’s off IOE that are getting close to not meeting their 100 hour consolidation requirement. So it’s a double whammy when you first start and when you finally get to the top of the list.