Isn't ED retiring at the end of the year? AH could go away tomorrow and the only ones who would care would be the ones who he protects. The problem is RW. When he took over for JW it was foretold that it would not be a good situation for the pilots and that prediction has come true. Envoy needs new blood. Look at the management group. RW, RN, AH, JW, ST, JD, JE and many of the upper echelons are all lifers who don't have any concept of life outside of AMR/AAG. If AA is upset about the PR that has been created and wants to fix it, then it starts with a cultural shift. I am not going to air the dirty laundry out here, but we know what it is.

I don’t think ED is retiring at the end of the year, as far as I know it was not his plan. I couldn’t agree more with your post. Trust me, we’ll soon be seeing some management changes at the ‘voy. You know I still have good sources.

Get rid of RW, AH and JE and 90% of our issues will go away.

While I certainly believe JE is a lot of the reason for the toxic culture in crew scheduling, even if there is a change of management, I seriously doubt that she would be part of it. Definitely a problem, but a lot harder to directly attribute that to the type of issues that have been highlighted.

It's not unusual in other industries to negotiate management changes as a part of contract negotiations. While unforunate, Perhaps ALPA should start to look at that.

I'd lose a few bucks to work under less toxic management culture.

Years ago the faa listened to a couple of cvr's that were part of an investigation. What the faa heard on the recordings freaked them out and jumped on management.
basically whats being said here less colorfully is what they heard on the cvr's and it scared the faa.

I've known more people get fired for what they said on the CVR vice what they actually did. About half of those were not at fault at all, or flew the plane before the incident crew. If you have an incident that puts you an employment grey area to begin with, gross unprofessionalism or bad-mouthing the company on tape will make it very easy for them to pull the trigger, and the union won't have any high-ground to save you either.

One guy got fired because his CA hit the jetway on on taxi-in that the FO 100% could not see... but he left a running profane monologue on the tape about the company in general and specific managers (all the way from cruise to impact at the gate). The CA, who suffered the tirade in silence got run through the wringer for a year but got his job back and he was the one who hit the jetway.

Your professionalism on the CVR is your best defensive pitch to keep your job.

My guess is, if the FO had stopped his rant at 10,000ft, he wouldn’t have gotten in trouble. I can’t imagine the company could take action if you do everything right, but call a bunch of managers D-Bags while in cruise.

That said, unfortunately, we have to remember that anything we say in that cockpit could end up getting printed in the papers if something goes wrong. On the whole, I agree with you, just keep it professional.

Now that would have been a good cost neutral item. Can JE and Todd.

Todd is as toxic as it gets. I don’t know how he has a job. Absolutely incredible.

Dont forget his friend Ruben... just as bad in my experience

Indeed. The formula for epic fail was as follows...

1) Infuriate all the company people who would listen to the tape.

2) Kept talking from 10K all the way to the gate, giving everybody he pizzed off in #1 the necessary justification to fire him. Especially since his lack of sterile could readily be construed as a distraction and contributing factor to the incident.


That's the other thing, your friends and family will read the transcript if there's a serious incident/accident, and if it's unprofessional it will be on the news... maybe even your own episode of air crash investigations.

He has a job because he does exactly what JE and management want him to do. He ****es pilots off, violates the contracts, causes us to file disputes that take forever to be heard and carries their torch forward. He is exactly the type of employee that they love.

I thought the same until I stumbled upon this...

Visual Callouts

The following callouts are not included in the individual profiles but can be included to enhance situational awareness.
-Intermittent ground contact
-Ground contact
-Approach lights in sight

EMB-145 AOM 1 Profiles 5.7

yup I saw that too a while back, was too lazy to look it up again

you ever seen the guy? I have. He looks EXACTLY as you would expect.

Years ago IIRC XJT had a guy like that in crew scheduling... their next contract included language specifying that the guy in question, BY NAME, was not allowed to be employed in a position involving supervision, scheduling, or interacation with flight crew (think he went mesa after). So there's always that.

Correct me if I am wrong but isn't the FAA NOT allowed to use CVRs in enforcement actions? The company can do as it needs to.

So they were really THAT bad at their position that the union went and put that into the contract OR was it more of an attitude issue towards flight crews that caused that language to be added in?

Correct the FAA isn't supposed to use CVR data for enforcement: 121.359(h)

But the company can, and it doesn't even have to have much to do with safety. Any office worker knows that if he's going to stand around the cubicles and bad-mouth the boss that he needs to be careful who's listening. With pilots we basically know the company is always listening, unless you have CBA provisions about that.

My understanding was that the one individual was so toxic that the union made him a priority target. He was well known in the industry, and had held the same job at other airlines, using the same methods so obviously management liked his MO.

MAX crash saved them from that story.

I see someone has mentioned RTP pilots, does anyone have any input on direct entry captains or forcibly upgraded captains? I'd imagine CNN could put out another hit piece about how Envoy was upgrading first officers against their will back in 2019, even going so far as to implementing a LoA that forced near-minimum time FOs who were trying to avoid the upgrade by simply not getting their hours.

Not saying they're responsible for the letter, but the idea of forcibly upgrading people to the left seat made me question how safe they would be as PICs at the time.

here’s some input on that.. towards the bottom

https://www.flyingmag.com/story/news...oy-air-safety/

While some of the issues of people avoiding upgrades by not flying may have been not feeling ready for the upgrade, you don’t get the experience you need by NOT flying. A lot of those trying to avoid the upgrade had to do with not wanting to change aircraft (which certainly doesn’t help with feeling ready), but more with QOL issues of being forced to commute or a longer commute or being stuck on reserve for eternity.

But I’m certainly not condoning a forced upgrade. Whether or not a lot will admit it, there’s a lot you just don’t get to see with someone else that has more experience if you move over to the left seat with minimum required experience. There is a BIG learning curve.

At some point the FAA may tell the company no more forced upgrades. At some point it becomes a safety concern and for the pilots who are forced into an upgrade class the odds increase of a negative PRIA result.

Maybe they should tell the company to stop mid-day rest layovers when there are reserve pilots available. Or when you have a long sit in another base and want to burn a commuter hotel for a day room but they don’t let you because “there are adequate rest facilities in the crew room.”

Double-edged sword.

You can argue that forced upgrades put people in the left seat who don't want to do it and maybe aren't up to it.

But you can also argue that forced upgrades put the most experienced pilots (on average) in the left seat, rather than letting them bypass and pushing upgrade further down the list to less experienced (on average) pilots. AA mainline had a mandatory upgrade policy for a long time... you upgraded when a few people junior to you took it.

And fundamentally, airlines hire people to be CA's... they shouldn't be hiring anyone knowing he/she is a career FO. And you shouldn't take the job expecting to be a career FO either... odds are good you can do that if you want but junior-manning happens sometimes.

If you wanted to mostly ignore seniority, you could come up with an arbitrary junior-manning scheme which prioritized pilots based on their experience... TT, 121, turbojet, etc. So instead of upgrading a CFI at legal mins because his number came up, you could instead upgrade the guy with 10K and previous 121 TPIC, etc. But again, seniority.

Is there a requirement that you have to be a Capt to flow?

Yes, one year.

yet they still do.

Does anyone else think that TC is the one that leaked the FAA investigation documents to CNN?

That’s a bold question,

That’s what I have been saying. Where there’s smoke there’s fire.

Dera coming to the rescue in 1,2,3…

That letter was being sent around by everyone back in March. It’s honestly surprising it didn’t end up in their hands sooner than it did.

4...5...6...7...8...9?

Not sure about your smoke and fire, but it was leaked when TC was still the chair.
I know who it was. It was not TC (or anyone else directly linked to the association).

It was leaked in March. It just took them a few months to write an article about it.

Doubtful. Why don’t you ask him instead of posting wild opinions? Or do a FOIA for information relating to it all? I still think it was the FAA internally.

I think many people had a copy of it. I'd bet the majority of flows and a great many former Envoy pilots were sent it from their friends still at Envoy. If it was supposed to be secret, it was the worst kept secret in history

The "hey, check this out" emails were flying long long ago....

I haven’t been at Envoy since 2014, and had a copy of it almost immediately 🤷‍♂️