You call Crew Scheduling. Hold time =?
 

I'm very curious to see what kind of hold times the different airlines have when trying to reach CS. I've had to call CS much more than usual the past 2 months due to no fault of my own. Out of 13 phone calls, the shortest hold time was 38 minutes. Longest was 1 hour 28 minutes. Airline is XJT. In the entire past year, my shortest hold time has around 25 minutes. So apparently, the CS dept. here is FUBAR in more than the obvious ways. I cannot afford to spend this much time on the damn phone waiting on hold!

This is for things as ridiculous as trying to get hotel information to getting them to restore rolled days off (yes I'm a lineholder and still getting them rolled!) to contacting them about trip mods, etc. Earliest phone call was around 230 am and latest was 11pm. It made no difference whatsoever what time of day it was, what the weather was, or day of the week. No matter what, I experience ridiculous and absurd hold times. For the two times it was to get what hotel they had for me, the departure times of the next days flights had to be bumped back because of being on hold so long.

Talking to my fellow crews, they have been experiencing the same things. So I'm curious what your experiences are trying to reach CS at your employer. I'm beyond fed up with this issue. Please tell me this isn't normal.

Comair anywhere from 0 at most times to about 30 minutes during the rush hour of 5-9pm during weather situations.

At SkyWest, I've had to wait a good long while if it's snowing in Chicago or something. Usually it's a few minutes. Occasionally they answer right away.

When Mesaba CS puts you on hold their music sounds like something from VIVID videos. Hellooooo Jenna!!!

I've waited 30 mins at Mesa before giving up, as that's the most I'll give them of my time.

Many times, in waiting so long, I will miss a DH they were supposed to list me on.

Should be a better way, but well never see it when we work for an airline that will spend $3 to save .75 cents.

If it's me returning a call I usually let it ring once then hang up and go play golf or go fishing.

At QX the worst I've ever had was about 5 minutes. Nowadays I just hang up and try again later. I'm not about to waste any cellphone minutes holding for CS!

We got a 1-800 number, I'll let that thing go all night if I have to....ain't my cash

Wow. I think the longest that I ever was on hold was about 7 minutes, and that was when the schedulers answered an asked us to hang on. ACA/IDE had a pretty decent phone tree the last couple of years before they shutdown...

It routed you through to the first available, and if you held for longer than 5 minutes, transferred you to voicemail where you could leave a message. Doing so was considered "legal" contact if CS didn't call back within 30 minutes or something like that.

Sounds like some of you guys need contract improvements! Until then, make sure that you document every call you make and how long you hold before you hang up. Personally I think that anytime you have to hold longer than 5-10 minutes (15-20 for irregular ops), you should be able to hang up without issues.

This is exactly what I suspected. I knew this couldn't be normal (well for XJT it is I guess). Management doesn't give a crap of course, it's been brought up repeatedly apparently to no avail. If it was a once in a blue moon thing I'd be ok with it, but this is the norm here, and like I said in the past year I've never had a hold time of under 25 minutes. Cell phone minutes aren't cheap! I'm already broke enough.