The article was written primarily for UPS pilots, and has as much (if not more) to do with the corporate culture at Brown. All other UPS employee groups are institutionally taught to resent, mis-trust and envy the pilot group. Classic divide and conquer (a union busting technique), but these hillbillies (UPS senior management) still believe you haven't paid your dues unless you started working the sort as a teenager and they HATE to hire outside the inbred system that they all came up through unless they have to; for example anything that requires anything above a GED from Kentucky. Also, they try to set flight crews up to be anything that could be construed as disrespectful to ground support types so they can slap them with charges of whatever -ism they can trump up. It emboldens and reinforces the resentment of flight crews, divides and conquers unity and makes crews think twice about rocking the boat. The author's point in my mind was to make the "screamers" among us count to ten (in Roman numerals) and then kill them with kindness, thereby taking away one of the union busting weapons in management's arsenal, all the while protecting captain's authority and getting the gas we need. I think it's a cheap shot casing on the author not knowing the context and the audience he was writing for.[/QUOTE]


That corporate culture and union busting technique is alive and well at Purple and many other airlines as well. Thanks for the excellent post and for supplying context for the article. We're in the midst of a "fuel initiative" too, and while I haven't been questioned about adding fuel, we're starting out with a lot less now, so the additional fuel we add will be a significant amount.

As a side note, I remember hearing complaints about certain pilots who would always fly off the handle for some minor issue. I'd cringe when I heard the stories, and swore I'd never grow up to be like that. I remember running into a few of those sanctimonious nincompoops when I first got hired, but they've all retired. (I hope) My point is we're held to a higher standard, and when one of us commits that egregious faux pas, the whole crew force takes the blame. We all know this is true, but like recurrent, it's good to be reminded of it.