You are right, we don't care. It is 6 weeks too long.

The CJC ALPA has been doing a tremendous amount of work improving the pilot group's QOL and grievance issues....among other areas, as well. All this DESPITE having a contract! In fact, there is a great deal of transparency in what goes on w/ the CJC ALPA committees.

Any pilot employed at CJC that says they are unaware of what their MEC/ committees are doing.......is only unaware due to their own negligence. The information is distributed in multiple media forms. The MEC can only distribute the information......they can't make you read or listen to it! ;)

Captain,
You have to much faith in a management team that has jeopardized a safety valve with punitive measures and left the ultimate decision of fatigue in doubt of wether it will be accepted. This is blatantly against every safety principle in the industry.
All will agree that abuse is flat out wrong. Abuse needs to be addressed seperately and with peer pressure among the solutions, not via a 'temporary' punitive fatigue policy.
Colgan management fails the public affairs test, the professional pilot credibility test, and the most critical goal, the safety test.

I or no one is doubting the tremendous amount of time and effort the CJC MEC has done behind the scenes. Or all the tremendous support of line pilots from other airlines and ALPA National following the events of Flight 3407.

Although the MEC may behind the scenes politic any sort of disciplinary issues with a line pilot, they can still not legally represent one.

Should management decide to pull a line pilot for a disciplinary meeting the line pilot is left unrepresented.

Management is suspending pilots on a daily basis for anything they feel like. They suspend w/o pay and ask questions later.

If pilots are abusing this policy, they should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.............that's not what looks to be happening here. If a pattern of the above is occuring that would be suspicious and the company would have the right to question the pilot on this, but Colgan management is intimidating ALL pilots who have never had an issue and insuring they fear their first occurance.

This is a policy using an assumption that any pilot who claims fatigue based on previous days off or a 12 hour rest periods will automatically be assumed to abusing the policy unless and until third parties agree that they are not. Colgan pilots will get the message that big trouble for them will occur even if they have a genuine fatigue issue based on previous time off and that's the point of the message................INTIMIDATION. It's intimidation because it isn't targeted toward specific indviduals with either a history of suspected abuse, or clearly questionable claims, but a blanket policy based on THEIR third party judged acceptability of previous rest.

I think you need to re-read that memo. It states first and foremost that, "Fatigue calls will not be accepted......." and only that "consideration of mitigating circumstances" will be "ultimately determined" by others.................others who can in no reasonable way judge how capable a pilot felt regarding fitness to fly.

The message is clear....................you'd better avoid calling in fatigued at this carrier or your going to have trouble with this management and your job is in jeopardy.

........and these are the people who will supposedly "ultimately determine" whether a pilot remains employed and are the people that will apparently act fairly when they have supposedly already DEMONSTRATED intimidation ?

What more needs to be said ?

Maybe some pilots are abusing the policy, maybe not. Colganhas been abusing pilots for years. The right thing for the company to do would be to consider the abusers "collateral damage" and ignore them. If this memo is true, the company should be shut down. It is not safe. I don't care if the pilots that work there find employment or not. I care about the public's safety. Colgan is detrimental to safety, and therefore should not be allowed to continue operations. If you work for Colgan and are defending this policy, you need to take a long hard look in the mirror.

If Colgan were to attempt to terminate employment of any pilot on legitimate causes based on this memo, believe you me, the pilot would be in a much better financial position after the dust settled.

Legally, this memo has zero teeth and is a terrifying example of how middle and upper management continue to throw issues of safety aside for their own agenda.

I'm even going to go out on a limb and state that whomever wrote this memo didn't even touch base with their legal representation.

...........

I'm too fatigued to write anything worthwhile.