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Old 01-04-2014, 04:31 PM
  #1171  
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I only poop for Alaska air. I already had an interview offer for FlexJet and turned it down. So ur opinion is off.
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Old 01-04-2014, 05:27 PM
  #1172  
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Originally Posted by bgmann View Post
I only poop for Alaska air. I already had an interview offer for FlexJet and turned it down. So ur opinion is off.
Nice BGmann, you made my day. Alaska, I totally whiffed on that one, but a great company. Flexjet was weak guess but my wild card nonetheless.

RI- I sure hope you are not blind to the issues. From your posts I was starting to think otherwise. Lets hope that EAS is successful for a long time to come, and that the entire company(pilots included) shares in the success.

727-wow, you have an interesting way with words and imagery. Do you play a lot of video games? I am with you though. I am a big union guy. I believe in pilots, and unions are full of them.

I am going to bail on this forum because my opinions are boring and my wife is starting to make fun of me.
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Old 01-04-2014, 06:55 PM
  #1173  
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Exclamation Yep, I'm a gamer for sure

Sorry for the thread drift, Grease, but yes I am definitely a gamer. Back in my 3 man crew days, we would buddy bid to get on the same trip to get on one of the 24 or 36 hour layover lines, typical in 121 cargo, and carry our Xboxes with us to LAN battle it out over our layover on Halo, then Halo 2 through adjoining rooms. I know, pretty pathetic to some, compared to the bar hopping, houses of ill repute visiting, etc. that we were supposed to be doing as airline pilots.

Now, as a Dad, and husband, I don't play near as much as I'd like to, but I am still addicted to 7 year-old Halo 3, where I'm a 41 out of 50. I also like all the COD:MW's and I'm a 72 on MW3.

Now, back to the EAS thread.. Here is some more info about Astro: The Optimal Path In what should be particularly scary to EAS Pilots is their only mention of one of their biggest former customers and supporters, Avantair in their advertisement for Astro..: "When fractional operator AvantAir, which has since suspended operations, cut its fleet to 24 aircraft from 54, it only reduced revenue flights 10%, he says, by using the optimization engine to work aircraft harder and minimize dead-head flights." A friend of mine from Flight Safety told me that several former VNR folks now at EAS have expressed severe concerns about Astro to the highest levels of EAS Management. If you guys have the power to fight this, you'd better fight it now. Or, at least, request for a better schedule closer to 7/7 or 8/6, where getting A$$-tro'd for 6-8 legs every day won't be so painfully fatiguing.

Good luck all!
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Old 01-05-2014, 11:47 AM
  #1174  
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Nothing wrong with the company trying to be more efficient, but I don't know how you can be any more efficient crewing aircraft on a 12/3 schedule.
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Old 01-06-2014, 01:55 PM
  #1175  
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Just in!

We have just recently opened a Phenom 100/300 SIC position in Kansas City, MO.

PM me if you have any questions.

BP51
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Old 01-06-2014, 05:15 PM
  #1176  
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Originally Posted by BP51 View Post
Just in!

We have just recently opened a Phenom 100/300 SIC position in Kansas City, MO.

PM me if you have any questions.

BP51
Good news!! How's the hiring going for the other PIC positions?
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Old 01-06-2014, 09:57 PM
  #1177  
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For anyone interested in coming to EAS, I would sincerely wait it out until things settle down. There's a recipe for trouble between our schedule and this "Astro".

This was once an active recruiting thread, those days are over. I have a large writeup coming shortly, a no BS evaluation. This is for real line pilots to share their experience...not the hopes and dreams of ONE very lucky member of this thread who was given the "golden spoon" from the start. Probably good intentions, but a not an accurate example or designated spokesman of the real day to day life for the average line guy.

I am so happy to see more folks put up their experiences. Not everything is negative here...we have some perks. Between the old schedule and the new one with "Astro", our pilot morale is degrading at a rate faster than I have seen before.

We need you out there to post your experiences, the positives and the negatives. All of you reading but not participating need to put it out there...YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE! We can't expect change if we don't stand together, this is how and where we start making the change.
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Old 01-07-2014, 07:12 AM
  #1178  
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The view from both sides of the fence is always appreciated.
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Old 01-07-2014, 09:10 AM
  #1179  
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Where are people leaving going to? Other corporate, 121, 135? Where?
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Old 01-07-2014, 11:38 AM
  #1180  
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Exclamation Astro makes no exceptions for human factors

EAS Pilots,

The biggest problem with Astro is that it makes no exceptions or predictions for human factors such as fatigue, not even obvious, common sense ones. Take a good look at their website The Optimal Path and you will see that nowhere in it is pilot fatigue even mentioned. Astro could work great if it had a pilot fatigue prevention and recognition subroutine embedded in it, like Jeppesen's CrewAlert Pro app for the iPad Articles - Jeppesen Introduces CrewAlert Pro for iPad to Manage Fatigue Risk for Airline Crew , but it does not even consider it. Only FAA regulatory compliance is considered in something that software engineers don't seem to understand: You can be legal time-wise, but still not safe to fly. Much like NASA's German scientists in the space program who caused the Astronauts to threaten to walk out if the space capsules were not fitted with a porthole and given autonomous control. Unfortunately, the Cosmonauts could not make the same stand and they were simply remote controlled guinea pigs in the early stages of their space program with much heavier losses than NASA's. Astro, as it stands, would be great for robots flying drones.

When Astro became "self aware" at the Fractional Avantair (Yes, I'm referencing the pariah, human-hating program Skynet from the Terminator movie series), conditions for pilots degraded immediately. 4-5 legs per day became 6, sometimes 8 legs a day. VNR's top whiz kid Director of IT sold other top management there on how they could do more with less, typically a noble cause, but not when it conflicts with safety and customer service. They were addicted to the "OPTIMIZE" button like a test monkey addicted to crack cocaine, so much so that schedules would change 3-4 times from when pilots took off from their last leg. In addition to numerous schedule changes in flight with a call from Center, the schedule would change numerous times overnight forcing the pilots on a short layover to do rushed flight planning in order to make their new departure time or different destination.

With airplanes breaking or crews calling fatigue after numerous seemingly endless 14 hour, 7-8 leg duty days for 7 days straight, the QOL of an Avantair pilot was effectively over other than the 7 on/7 off schedule which temporarily went to a forced 8/6. When a friend of mine asked a Flight Scheduler "So if Astro told y'all to jump off a cliff, would you do it?", they told him that upper management was using Astro not for the customer's behalf, but for their bonuses based on Utility. Go on the Avantair owners forum and ask them what they thought of Astro and you will find that they hated it as much as the pilots as they got optimized right into a delay or cancellation due to crew duty time burn out.

Finally, in what was the most maddening part of Astro for VNR pilots, was Astro's lack of "common sense". One VNR crew would be arriving at the hotel in, let's say ASE, TEB, wherever, after 4 straight days on 14 hour duty days, fighting 10-24 issues all along, and had another 12 plus duty day in the next morning after another minimum rest night. There, they meet another VNR crew at the hotel restaurant (since they didn't have time to eat anywhere else), who has been sitting around at the hotel for last 3 days covering a perfectly good aircraft and were on hotel standby the next day. When both crews agreed to the unfairness of this stupidity and called OCC to swap schedules, they would be told "well, that's what Astro says to do... and during this break-in period (which I heard never ended), we are letting Astro make ALL decisions, good, bad, and indifferent". Therefore, all decisions became based on "UTILITY". After a fatigue call from the abused and battered crew, the OPTIMIZE button was pushed again and commom sense took over allowing the well-rested crew to fly instead. But it took the stalwart pilots rising up against the Astro abuse, with tacit Chief Pilot approval, through the use of fatigue calls and a Teamster Drive to get management to agree to go easy on Astro and work on reducing the fatiguing schedules. I fear about what would happen at an airline where pilots don't stand up to Astro, but really it is just another tool. The only question is just how far EAS management will allow this Astro tool to push its pilots. The answer will say a lot about them and I hope its good.

Good luck and fly safe and rested..
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