Best "I quit!" story
 

Current topics are getting a little long in the tooth. Was thinking this morning about an opportunity (and plan) to quit with a bang 10+ years ago. My desire to be a professional, however, as well as not wanting to burn any bridges at the time, caused me to wuss out and give (and honor) 30 days notice. Assessing my current career situation, I realized that not only would I have NOT burned any bridges (as it relates to my current position) but makes me a tad, oh.....I don't know, regretful I didn't follow through with my original plan. Hindsight being correctable to 20/20 and all...


Was curious if anyone else has a great story giving the proverbial middle finger to an employer as a pilot?

https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/g...-response.html

https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comm...pria_question/

The answer depends on whether or not you want to stay a pilot in the 121 world. This guy gave his employer the bird, then the new one found out.

I knew a guy flying beach-18s who after his third engine failure that week quit over the phone and left his plane where he landed due to said engine failure.

I heard a story of a guy that quit during indoc at his new airline. One of the managers came into the room and pulled him aside telling him something came up on his background check and they needed to talk about it.

This guy gets hyper defensive saying they shouldn't know about it because he spent thousands of dollars getting his record expunged. The manager basically says well we have it right here so if you could tell us a bit about what happened we'll put you back into class.

So he begrudgingly explains that he was having a tough day and decided to "relieve some tension" That's when the cops found him and cited him for lewd conduct and indecent exposure and so on.

The managers jaw about hits the floor and says "I just wanted to know about an illegal title transfer...."

After a pause that must have felt like an eternity the guy handed him his badge and walked out, never to be seen again.

Famous old-skool story about a prop CA from an unmentionable regional who on his very last flight before moving on claimed that a prop governor was misbehaving and so decided to divert... to the non-121 GA patch in his hometown. Set the brake and walked away.

Lucky to avoided avoided federal charges, but not-so-lucky with regard to his new employer which naturally didn't see the humor...


Ya'll be careful out there, especially in the digital age.

Flight instructor left to fly single pilot freight in the Midwest somewhere.
First flight solo on the line WX is down to the ground and he goes to his alternate and has to hold and all that jazz in horrible weather with an ILS down to minimums in a turd with no autopilot.
Another guy from his training class experienced the same and landed the plane at the alternate and quit over the phone.

I really feel sorry for this coming of age generation and the next. You can’t have any fun or make any mistakes anymore.

Did he tell them where he landed it? Or just let them stumble onto it?

His employer and then lost his CJO at a ULCC later.

This isn't true at all. But you shouldn't brag about your mistakes on public forums and social media.

he told them

Back in the hiring frenzy of early 2001, we had three pilots in my major indoc class who all had a class start date with FEDEX coming up in exactly 2.5 weeks.
After the first week of rah rah company BS their minds were made up and during break, they went to a phone in the break room and called FEDEX HR and one by one on the same call, all three canceled their CJO/class date. A decision that they would obviously soon regret in less than 9 months.

Wow. Ouch. I have a hard time quitting in general… I wonder how they justified it? Jeez

I know a guy who was given a class date at a legacy airline, and so happened to receive the call while operating a turn into the city from where he commutes. He went up to the gate, left his ID and walked straight to his car and never looked back. This was more than a decade ago.

I've heard this before, sounds like a urban legend type story.

And that regional airline never bothered to find out where he went? Oh wait, they do know, they got a PRIA request. You mean no CP or management level reached out to that legacy carrier and informed them what he did? It's a small world. What that guy did would be an easy way to get fired at both the new legacy airline and the regional he worked at.

Im not saying I endorse doing this, geez. I think everyone in their right mind would agree that this was a stupid thing to do. I just thought it was an amusing story and I also happen to know that it’s true.

LOL! Def Urban legend Non sense. Heard it as well EXCEPT I was told it wasn’t the call from the legacy.

Guy finds out he just won the lottery and goes home 😂

I knew a guy that got his class date at the majors on his email while on gogo WiFi. Acars’d his own oooi time to dispatch, got up, shook the fo’s hand and took a seat in the back with a cold drink.

I know a guy that accidentally shot his good friend and a well know Texas attorney, with a 28-gauge Perazzi shotgun while participating in a quail hunt on a ranch in Riviera, Texas. Rumor has it, he was the Vice President of the United States.

And they both lived to tell about it…

AND the guy who got shot APOLOGIZED to the guy that shot him.

This story has been recycled a lot, but actually happened (I flew with people who were there when it did). Supposedly he lost his job offer, but did end up at a major eventually.

It probably happened more than once back in the day.

Best "I quit!" story
 

How about those who were retiring during the republic frontier and midwest fiasco. They’d just leave their manuals and charts in the jetbridge and not tell anyone.

I know a guy who wrote up every single cockpit seat he came across as being "worn" for the last month before his United hire date. Created absolute havoc. Of course this was in 2008 in July or so. Then of course United canceled all their classes and he tried to rescind his resignation a couple days prior. The regional did not let him rescind so his employment was terminated.

Taxied on to BFE Wyoming one day to find a Beech 1900 in our spot, asked the rampers what’s that doing there? They said the pilots that flew it in quit and left. It was a Great Lakes or Mesa 1900, can’t remember who.

UPS - We had a captain quit over in Asia (he lived there). We have also had folks retire halfway through their CQ, just not feeling it anymore.

One too many LP2?

I liked the FA story a few years back when he took two beers and popped the slide and took off.

Had a bombastic guy who had training anxiety and a massive target on his back. Kept getting put on the short track to come back early for CQ. (Participant in one of them myself, just deserved imho). Supposedly one year he announced “I’ll quit if they ******* with me this time” and stayed true to his word when they did.

Pilot quit when his wife called and told him she was going into labor. So he called scheduling to get released and was told that there were no reserves available and that he had to operate the flight. He talked to the chief pilot who told him he had to operate the flight. So he tendered his resignation on the phone right there. Got in his car and drove down to headquarters, turned in badge, Jepps and flight manuals and kept on driving to the hospital.

I never know if these are true stories or not but this was would be walking away for.

This happened to a friend of mine in 2001. Lived in PHX, less than 1 yr on with AA based in MIA. Lots of "talk" about furloughs post 9/11 but nothing "official" from CPO and/or company.

Many were not showing for trips because they thought they were going to be furloughed anyway so take one last sick callout etc, he shows up and flys trip in MIA. When he finishes, AA rep meets him at the gate with a letter informing him that he is furloughed effective immediately and takes his AA ID, thereby blocking any JS back to his home.

Had to beg a buddy pass on another airline to get back to PHX.

AA was a very harsh company back in 2001. Many considered their treatment of furlughees unnecessarily rude. They used to charge their own pilots a fee to ride their own JS if a seat was vacant in the back to/from work.

Here's one, confirmed. Throws back some, best I ever heard. As surrender becomes inevitable, an ME262 pilot gets 'out of position' on patrol and diverts to a Swiss runway. Effectively terminating his Luftwaffe commission while ducking harm's way. Won't recount other parts of the story since there's a wiki page, attached. He owned a small apartment not far from where the condo collapsed recently on Miami Beach. Invited him to join us and a few friends for dinner one evening in the mid-eighties. This is how he showed up. Talked my wife into dropping him off at MIA for his ride home on Pan Am a few days later. At the ticket counter, the agent was loudly advised she had neglected to write the intercourse. "How can you find your flight without an intercourse," bellowed the dapper doc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Guido_Mutke

Attachment 6295

Yes, that one is hard to top.

Better option would be to call in unfit (tell them, don't ask them), since you can make the legal case that you'd be too distracted if a close family member was in a medical crisis of any sort.

Look squirrel!

Pay no attention to the covid vax thread

This is "airline" pilot central, not "unhinged covid pilot" central.

But there's a forum for covid if you want to go there.

+1 vote for you guys immediately deleting the incessant boring repetitive COVID/VAX/horse dewormer threads that keep popping up like mushrooms in my lawn! Oh the huge manatee!

I agree I just found it funny that the minute that thread got closed you decided to post on another thread that hasn’t seen a post in two days just to bring it to the top.

Back in 2010-2011? things were beginning to ramp up at skywest and reassignments were becoming common. Lax Fo got reassigned one too many times. Got out of his seat, walked over to the lounge/cp office in terminal 8 and turned in his badge. Said he was done and was not going to put up with scheduling anymore. HG was the ACP at the time and who handled his on the spot resignation.