Originally Posted by Swakid8

Plus eating out of a cooler is a great to mitigate those times you get to the hotel room and there is no food around or have a 4 leg day of quick turns can’t grab lunch, stuck in the world in DCA with a 40 min turn time.

Originally Posted by chrisreedrules

Honestly who cares? If someone wants to go out and do their thing. Do it. If someone wants to stay in their room and eat our of their cooler. Do it.

Half the time if I go out I’d rather go out alone anyway. I get plenty of, “So what do you do for fun?” “So are you planning on sticking around for the flow or are you trying to get on elsewhere?” “Hey have you ever flown with (insert pilot you don’t know)?” “So what do you think about (insert current world event)?” “Do you know anything about the hotel we’re staying at? It isn’t ringing any bells for me.”... in the cockpit.

You want to know what really gets old? Hearing what seems like the same story over and over of pilots getting steam-rolled by HR because they decided to go out drinking with their crew or with their FAs and then inevitably someone says or does something stupid. All it takes is an accusation and it can ruin your career. Why risk it? I’ve heard more than several unfounded and outright fabricated stories told by FAs to try and screw over another member of the crew.

I’m good, I have friends and a family at home I’d rather socialize with. I’m sure you’re a nice person but quite frankly I don’t want/need more friends. If that hurts your feelings then I’m sorry. I’m not at work to, “go out and have fun”. I’m at work to make money. Money to pay my bills. Money for my wife and I’s retirement. Money so my daughter can go to a good school. Money so I can help take care of my disabled mom. My days off are for having fun. Work is for work. The two aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive but I don’t judge anyone for their decision to what they want to do. It’s their business.

Originally Posted by captande

You sound like a blast to spend 4 days with.

Originally Posted by Approach1260

"Hey there Cap, you live in base?"

"I'M NOT HERE TO BE YOUR FRIEND!!!!!!"

Originally Posted by Swakid8

Plus eating out of a cooler is a great to mitigate those times you get to the hotel room and there is no food around or have a 4 leg day of quick turns can’t grab lunch, stuck in the world in DCA with a 40 min turn time.

Originally Posted by irrelevant

Lol

I get it. I’m just past that stage in my career where I need to save per diem to pay rent. Half the time if I can get a crew to go out to eat, they want to go to Taco Bell or similar in any event,

There are certain layovers where I’ll cover the Uber to/from the hotel in order to take the crew out somewhere fun or to a great local restaurant I know of. Sometimes I’ll rent a car, or pay admission fees for fellow crew members.

I don’t do this job for the money. At this point it’s about making every minute not at a legacy carrier more tolerable, and if I can help improve the layover experience for my crew, I’ll make a reasonable effort.

I’ve no reason to fear drinking too much, or too late, and in over ten years I’ve never experienced a false accusation.

If/when I get to a legacy, I hope the culture will be different. If not, I’ll have had several years of experience with it while at PSA, so it doesn’t really matter.

Originally Posted by irrelevant

40 minute turn time or not, if you need food, go get it. The contract allows it, and if the company didn’t want to take delays for crew nutritional requirements, they’d provide proper crew meals. That doesn’t mean you go have a sit-down dinner, but you aren’t obligated to schlep around four days worth of Cliff bars just to maintain schedule integrity. They never have an issue pushing the departure time back when it’s necessary for them to do so.

Originally Posted by Urban achiever

The flight attendants are always surprised when I tell them “we have a long day today with basically all quick turns so if you need to, we can take a break to get food / bathroom break / whatever just let me know”. And I’ll try to get to the gate a few minutes early so that we can keep on schedule. Judging from the reactions I get, seems like that’s not the norm and the contract definitely allows for it.

As for bringing food, yeah definitely do so. Good luck finding food to eat when you get to an overnight and you’re delayed... and while it was Sunday night it’s now stupid early Monday morning. Microwaving each meal can get awfully repetitive though