Nobody is forced to live at base. You just have to work with the "commuter clause" which is as good as toilet paper

 

Sorry, not familiar with "commuter clause" yet. Could you please explain? I'm still a CFI without 121 experience.

 

He is Santa's older brother

 

Depending on what company you work for, it can be a life saving piece of contract language, or not worth the paper it's printed on.

The GENERAL language goes something like this; If you commute, there has to be TWO flights to get you to domicile before showtime. If for some reason you get bumped off, or it cancels due to WX or MX, you call scheduling to inform them that you tried to get to work but were unable to make it due to circumstances out of your control. You will get pulled off the trip and a reserve pilot (or a reassigned line holder) will get your trip. And yes, you lose the pay credit. Again, depending you my be allowed to join your trip when you make it to base and fly (get paid) for the remainder, or you may be out of luck and hope there is some open flying to pick up to recoup the loss of pay.

Like I said, the above is the GENERAL language of most commuter clauses.

There can a lot of caveats or "gotchas" written into them, you simply have to read the contract and follow the rules to use it. An example can be that you can only use it so many times in a year, or you have to prove that there were seats "available for sale to the public" when you listed for the flight, if applicable. Another can be that if you were going try to commute tomorrow and a blizzard is forecast, you may not be able to use it because of exercising "bad judgement" trying to commute in those conditions.

In some cases, some guys have their own "version" of a commuter clause that ensures they get paid.

 

Does Santa's brother have pass privileges? I hear that his more successful brother will not let him touch the sleigh except to wax it.

 

It's not that, Santa has bullet proof scope language to protect his sleigh, and his flying.

 

Thanks for the reply. Does this statement mean that pilots are expected to commute EARLIER than possible bad weather cancellations?

 

Maybe the unions should hire Santa! Unfortunately, I think the economy might hurt Santa's flying and some elves might be out of work.

 

BOTH companies I worked for had commuter clauses that didn't contain such weak language, so I don't know.

I would assume that the answer is yes, you should have given up ALL your days off and commuted in a day early.

Or, just use your own version of a commuter clause.

 

Everyone needs to stop worrying about the dam Q400s ... YES, it is a great aircraft, and YES it is VERY fuel efficient and can take on a CRJ-700 up to 300-400 miles before the CRJ starts becoming more economically sensible with it's faster cruise speed and almost equal pax capacity.

Management is going to tell you EXACTLY what you don't want to hear regarding the new bright and shiny aircraft to get you to take their side.

It was circulated MONTHS ago that we wouldn't get the additional aircraft until 2010, so I really have no idea why people are wondering why an announcement hasn't been made. How are they going to tell the public they are getting new aircraft when we don't know where they're going to go or what codeshare they're going to fly for?! It wouldn't make sense to announce anything right now.

As for the new hiring boom that will take place when they come along ... seriously, why would we start that anytime in the near future?! There would be absolutely no point in starting to train pilots to fly those new planes until the time came to actually fly them ... or at max maybe a few months before we were scheduled to get them.

Right now the ONLY training that is going on is getting the Beech guys into the Saab, upgrading the guys that got screwed back in June, and upgrading the guys that are getting captain pay for being overlooked so many times. I couldn't care less about the FOs getting captain pay ... good for them But I think it's a load of poo that the company is transitioning Beech street captains into the Saab as captains when we have so many FOs now ready to upgrade. The excuse we got was "we feel they would quit if we downgraded them.." YA THINK?!?! Most anyone that wasn't desperate for a job would quit if they got hired to be a captain, and had to be demoted and make half the money they were promised. We have several FOs that have put in their time and effort and deserve that promotion that are being denied it right now because of this.. it's not right.

This is quite possibly the most volatile industry on the planet, and things can change from black to white overnight. NOTHING is for certain until it actually happens.

I've had to use our commuter policy once, and it worked just fine (it may have something to do with the crew schedulers liking me, but I doubt it). Never spoke with Honan, only Klipp (and that lasted all of 2 min). As long as you can prove that you were at the gate and listed on 2 flights that had seats open (policy doesn't specify any given amount), you should be good to go!

As for Santa's brother getting pass privileges ... um, dude, Santa makes it clear around the world in a single night while delivering presents ... I think his brother's got his own set of pretty sweet privileges