P Owed Captain

Have you noticed how they purposely make a lot of the trips under 19.5 hours apiece? I thought about how May had 5 workweeks in it where I could possibly get a whole week off if I bid correctly to get my 78 hours into 4 weeks of bidding. I thought it would be great to get 15 or 16 days off in May rather than my usual 11 or 12. But no, if I bid four weeks of trips that are about 19.3 or 19.4 hours apiece, I will be below 78, and they will be sure to throw another trip in there. It also infuriates me how they try their best to make the trips so that they're not easily commutable on one end or the other, or lately even both ends! You'll have your first and last day, the commute day, chock full of legs, and the two days in the middle will be short days. It would make more sense to have the long days on days 2 and 3, and the shorter ones on days 1 and 4 to make it easier to commute without being forced to pay for a hotel room at one end or the other. I wonder why they want to make life more miserable when it's hard enough to find pilots as it is?

pilot0987

Sounds like my former regional. Just the name of the game for bottom tier airlines.

MagPBS

I know you won't believe me, but you are so wrong on every level of this statement that you think we are doing this on purpose to just make your life difficult.

P Owed Captain

Do you have anything to back that up? What would it hurt them to change the way they arrange the trips? I know Mesa is given x amount of flying to divvy up, but they could still make the majority of four-days have at least 19.5 hours of credit!

MagPBS

And you know this how? Have you ever build pairings? Have you used the software and dealt with the issues of crew staging and FAR rest requirements?

I’ve built pairings. I also have two exceptional pilots building pairings every month. We’ve even had the software company build pairings.

To say you know that pairing are being built crappily just to screw the pilots shows you know nothing about what’s involved and the amount of work that goes into pairing production every month.

Please come out to PHX during pairing production if you are so sure you know how to do it better.

P Owed Captain

Maybe your great team needs a few tips from the airlines that do give better schedules and provide a better QOL, especially if the company's goal is retaining pilots!

P Owed Captain

Btw, you were instantly confrontational when I never specifically addressed you. You seem to feel this is a personal attack against you. You are not the face of Mesa. I was not holding you responsible for my lousy trips. I know about FAR requirements, like any other pilot would. X amount of flying in x amount of hours. But 20 hours of flying in a week's time would be allowed, so why not trips of 20 hours? Why not more legs on days 2 and 3 to allow commutability on days 1 and 4? Instead of answering valid questions, you'd rather come at me with fists flying. Concise explanations would be much more believable than going into defense mode and taking it so personally as if Mesa is your baby that you built from scratch.

MagPBS

You went after my team. I am the scheduling chairman and that puts it all under me. You started out right off the bat confrontational with your post. With quite a few assumptions that are wrong and that you have no supporting information on.

How about we start with this, instead of coming on here complaining about something you assume you know something about, have you ever emailed the scheduling committee to ask what the process is? why pairings turn out the way they do? Or did you just come on an open forum and bash a group of people you haven't met, and don't know a thing about?

Just some examples of how you started out wrong from the start...


"Have you noticed how they purposely make a lot of the trips under 19.5 hours apiece?" - Really, you know they're being built purposely below 20 hours? How?

"It also infuriates me how they try their best to make the trips so that they're not easily commutable on one end or the other, or lately even both ends!" - Yet another accusatory statement without merit.

"It would make more sense to have the long days on days 2 and 3, and the shorter ones on days 1 and 4 to make it easier to commute without being forced to pay for a hotel room at one end or the other. " - Yes because you as a line pilot know way more about pairing production then those who are trained on it and know why X has to happen vs Y.

"I wonder why they want to make life more miserable when it's hard enough to find pilots as it is?" - No less then 4 things in your first post come off as confrontational and being done purposely to "harm" you.

And yet another one you throw out there.
"Maybe your great team needs a few tips from the airlines that do give better schedules and provide a better QOL, especially if the company's goal is retaining pilots!"

Even the thread title is confrontational: Mesa purposely makes QOL worse than necessary


You are the passenger in the back of the plane that come up and says that's the worst landing ever after a 30kt crosswind with windshear. You have no idea what was/is involved in the process and you've made no attempt to learn before sharing with the world that you know better and that we are all doing it wrong.

MrWizard

Let's not forget all of us have the right to freedom of speech. If a pilot on this forum acts like the passenger in the back wrt a difficult landing, so be it.

This thread became immediately confrontational, both ways. We all know this company could be better, and trip scheduling efficiency is only one of many issues that affect QoL here.

With all due respect to MagPBS since he is involved in the work, and none of us others here are: the system needs to be improved.

Right now, we have choices available as consumers (pilots) to go elsewhere to shop (employers). It is a buyer's market right now.

If you think the system here is broken, and IMO it is indeed that, then work to make it better. Any dedicated employee, salaried white collar or hourly blue collar, strives to improve their workplace. I don't think that requires union volunteering, but good on those that choose to do that.

As long as the executive staff remains the same, and in particular the CEO remains: Mesa will never, ever, change. History does in fact repeat itself.

The longer one stays here and accepts the status quo, the more you become part of the problem. We've all seen it with many of the 'lifers' here.

boeingdvr

FAA 117 creates a lot of issues.
Hub and Spoke creates a lot of issues.
Short 1-2 hour legs creates even more issues.
Your goal is to get to 75-80 as quick as possible.

Unfortunately 1-2 hour legs with all the other legalities make it incredibly difficult.