Question regarding Mesa pay
 

I understand that Mesa does not use the industry standard "greater of scheduled and actual block."

What do they use? Scheduled block? Flight (hobbs) time?

Technically, they use "historical block" which is a fictitious number generated by the company. It rarely has anything to do with scheduled block...they can't fudge scheduled block or the FAA will get on them about flight/duty limits.

I always suspected that when they determined historical block, they threw out any "abnormal" data points...ie holding, deicing, ATC delays, high winds, etc.

They re eval the times a couple of times a year. Right now they are running long b/c of the winter delays.

EX/ DEN-ASE blocked a 1:05 right now. It's a 25 min flight. In the winter it comes down to about 50-55 mins.

Historical block time is what you are paid at Mesa. It's annotated as "Credit" in the bid packages.

In other words it's possible to get a 90 hour line, fly 98 hours and only get paid (credit) 92 hours. Also possible to go the other way as well, but not likely.

Mesa publishes the "credit" time for all of its legs as an excel spreadsheet every now and then.

I found that if enough pilots collude, it is possible to get the "credit" time to go up - an example was a flight that was blocked at 45 minutes and credited at 45 minutes pay. After about six months of all of us flying the flight slow at 55 minutes, the credit went up to 55 minutes.

Then you get the pilots who go the other way - short the block, in order to pick up more flying/credit - in the short term it helps out the individual, but in the long run it causes the historical block time / credit - what you get paid, to go down.

Go on strike until you get block or better by the leg.

This was what I observed...there was no immediate gain to the individual to fly slow, so everyone cruised around on the barber-pole. Slowing down would only help six months down the road, and only if EVERYONE did it for six months, which was not likely. JO really has that group where he wants them.

Just think about it, If ORD to MSN was blocked at 1:00 and more than half way there they had an in flight emergency (lets say they had to return to ORD.) The flight from T/O to TD took 2:00 because of returning to ORD the last 1 hour of QRH, trouble shooting, declaring emergency, emergency landing they are NOT getting paid. :p

That is truly awful. I'm trying to think of something to say but I am rendered speechless..

Also, if you have an emergency and divert to another airport early in the sequence, you'll lose pay for the subsequent flying that was on the schedule.

Basically, at Mesa there is financial incentive for pilots to not: notice worn tires, leaking fluid, land at the nearest suitable airport other than the destination during an emergency, etc...

Not really - ORD to MSN blocked at 1:00 credits say 0:52...

inflight emergency return to ORD - there is no historical block time for ORD to ORD - so you get paid block. if it takes 2:00 you get paid 2:00

say you fly ORD to MSN - hold for weather at MSN and finally get in late after 2:00 of flying you get paid 0:52.

say you fly ORD to MSN - hold for weather at MSN, get low on fuel and have divert at 2:00 hrs to another city which is also a Mesa destination - say MKE, you only get paid ORD-MKE even though you were originally sked for ORD-MSN. ORD-MSN credits 0:52 ORD-MKE credits (making up numbers here) say 0:45 - so for the ORD to MSN hold - divert to MKE - 2:00 hours of flying - you get paid 0:45. plus you lose the rest of your schedule, and since another crew has flown your legs, you get squat for the lost legs.

If you were extra nice to the crew scheduler, they would go back and code in your actual block for your diversion, then you have to ask to make sure they fix the FO's credit too. Finally when you finally get your makeup check at the end of the next month, you have to go through it again with paycomp or contract administration, who "fixed" it back to historical block when they pay you.