Then I wouldn't recommend commutair either. Why you don't want to see progress here is mind boggling. I don't think you are management but I think you are delusional.

 

It's not rare at all on the 145. Super common infact. Just goes to show how out of touch you are with the other 65% of the airline.

 

This happened to me WAY more than once a month last year.

 

Here's one I've seen. Sat 2 pm to 10 pm at 930 got called for a 1005 departure somewhere. Fine. Inbound airplane ends up diverting and makes it back in at 1130, can I leave? Nope I'm still on the hook even though my standby ended at 10. But hey 8 hours isn't bad especially when you tack on another 2 waiting for a plane. I mean I did get to watch an entire season of The Office

 

Scheduling interprets "scheduled to depart w/in 45 minutes after the end of your standby shift" to apply only at the time they assign the flight. So in effect if they really need you, your nominally 8 hour standby shift is only limited by 117 duty restrictions. You can and will sit another 4 hours and bang out a 2 hour midnight run with manual closeouts on both ends.

Sadly, if you are stuck on reserve and too senior to get called off RAP and there's no open time to proffer because there's nowhere near enough flying to go around here, standby is the only way to get stick time/possibly an overnight.

 

I agree with you that there are worse options out there, but what is bothersome is the lack of common sense reserve rules. 'If' we are going to do the seniority reserve system - allow a senior reserve to 'appropriate' from a junior reserve. Allow a proffer to put equal weight on Trips, RAPs, and STBYs, and let my seniority dictate what I get (if that's what the pilot group wants). Talk to ExpressJet guys if you want to hear about efficient and reasonable reserve rules.

This combined with our overnight hotels, current pay rates, and general inefficient schedules and QOL should have prospective Envoy pilots really trying to decide if this is their best option.

 

That really sucks - the only way to salvage that would be to call dispatch if they were already diverting, then there would be no reasonable way the flight would be leaving within 45 minutes of the end of your Stby shift.

 

Here's some of the good things about Envoy that people always forget to mention:

Operationally we run a good show. As a lineholder, most of the time you just show up to work and fly your line. We are well staffed so we don't reassign and shuffle flying just to cover some of it, we also have plenty of reserves, so irrops most of the time are handled smoothly.
If you lose a turn, you just go home. If you lose an overnight, you get a hotel in domicile (or go home, if you live in base).

Obviously when ORD and DFW are ground stopped for wx, all hell breaks loose, but that's the same everywhere.
Our planes have ACARS, printers, and our IT systems are pretty good (as long as you learn how to use them!). (yes, DECS is actually really good).
We also have a few really good third party apps, that make daily life much easier (Quicktrade and Quickbid for example). We can pick up OT or Pilot to Pilot trips with a few taps on the (company provided) iPad.

We use Jeppesen, not some neverheard cheapest provider of garbage.

As of now, we also don't have long wait times for class dates. Training is AQP and pretty decent, unfortunately the trend is lowering though - they are aggressively hiring PSI's, and most of them are pretty horrible. You will be given plenty of "study guides" to make sure you pass the written test and the SV (oral).
You bid for your sim slot during training, they don't do BS like Endeavor with their "dynamic scheduling" or whatever they call it(basically: you sit in your hotel room, waiting for a call to go do a sim. And sometimes you sit there for a week without that phone call).

If you have to commute, I would look at Republic. They have a pretty damn good package right now. If you need a class date earlier, Envoy is not a bad deal. If you get the 145, your first year experience won't be great.

 

That's a lot of contractual nuance for a newhire FO or a DEC to try to grapple with and I've never seen it done. Maybe a union email on the topic would be helpful. I'd also note that SCHEDULING is supposed to call dispatch, not First Officer Nosebleed.


[MENTION=54707]dera[/MENTION], how is it that you are making your pitch for Envoy and manage to compliment Sabre without talking about any of the actual good things about working here? Lol...

 

Expressjet has a great contract, no doubt about that.

There are a few things in our contract that crew scheduling doesn't know about or care. For example, if you get called for a flight you don't want, you can skip as long as a senior guy to you agrees and has the same amount of reserve days available as you do. Or that as a commuter you can list yourself to get all additional flying you are legal for before they call anyone from home.

We also have appropriation which is good, and we can also protect our trips from being appropriated, which is even better. We also have the IT systems so we can see everything that happens to make sure our assignments are legal and done in the right order (CS _SUCKS_ with this).