Fred Flintstone

Well I see nothing has changed. Started flying for UAX in 86 out of IAD. Their ground handling was so bad we took it over at the hubs and as many out stations as we could ourselves, just to protect our stats.

UA has always treated the UAX carriers like red headed step childern. Glad I'm away from that miserable place. Enjoy.

FlyJSH

You really are breaking my heart.

For WX updates, have heard of calling dispatch? or Flight Watch? or Flight Service? I mean, if you have 3-4 hours in cruise, there should be a minute or two to make a call.

LifeNtheFstLne

ACA? Our staff was excellent.... My how things have changed.

Cycle Pilot

When United makes a UAX carrier late, it affects the UAX carrier's DOT statistics and not United's. We used to run into this all the time. United rampers would do something to make us late, and ops would change the delay code in the computer to put the blame on our airline. It was extremely frustrating! Skywest used to have one of the best ontime percentages before they acquired mass amounts of UAX flying, especially out of ORD. It is a very different world on the Express side of United... a world I DEFINITELY do not miss!

freeflyer14

Wait, what???

I guess I can't tell if you are being serious or just joking around, although I am leaning toward the notion that you are for real. Wow, just wow.

LivinTheDream28

Holy crap, where do I start? First of all, I'm glad to see some of you picked up on my slight sarcasm on some of these issues. Here we go....

Quote:

Originally Posted by jsled

wow. Had no idea you guys didn't have that. We have all that stuff at mainline - a whole herd of cleaners every leg, lav service, acars wx and gate info. But why is the wx thing UAL's fault? Don't you have dispatchers? Can't you talk to them enroute? Why doesn't Express jet wash it's own aircraft? Seriously, I don't know how this fee for departure contract works, but is it UAL's job to wash your jet? As for United's employees not caring....UAL was the number one on time airline in 2009 among the Legacies...even beating the godlike Delta. So I don't buy it.

First of all, our operation is set up in all the CAL hubs because we used to be part of CAL and have been flying for them almost since the start. If we were paid better maybe we could afford to staff our fleet of cleaners but its going to take awhile to ramp up our ops. United might be number one in on time but they are dead last in everything else. Go ahead check it out. Its sad that the only stat they are number one in is only because they manipulate the system. If United is so wonderful why is their balance sheet the worst of all the legacies?

Quote:

Originally Posted by atr42flyer

welcome to our world! no wonder everyone thinks express jet pilots are snobs. you just clarified it perfectly for me. but hey your living the dream right!

hahaha an RAH pilot calling me a snob. Dude, review the history of your company. Hope to see you guys around in the next 5 years!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Slaphappy

And people wonder why expressjet has the highest costs in the industry and headed towards bankruptcy.

hahaha again your source? Perhaps if we flew 70+ seaters for the same pay we get now we could have a strong balance sheet like yours. Enjoy it!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tumbleweed

I had heard Express got the United contract for essentially a loss (less than what Mesa was getting). I might be wrong though. Anyway, perhaps that is why a lot of those perks are being left out compared to what services are rendered by CAL.

Not true, the UAL CPA is actually slightly more profitable than the CAL CPA. We were also told by UAL that we were not the lowest bid offered.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Slaphappy

If that were true then XJT wouldn't be taking a loss to for flying at the same rate skywest could have done it for a profit.

Although there may be several reasons Skywest has lower operating costs than XJT, you'll discover the main reason if you review our contract, because we actually have one. XJT is forced to staff more pilots per aircraft than almost anyone else because of our contract. I love being critizied because we actually have the balls to stand up and get a great contract. Hows that union vote going btw?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Slaphappy

The only airline that "gets it" is republic and one day we all may wish we had gone to work for them 4 years ago.

lol its hilarious to me how everyone thinks Republic has it all figured out. You think they will magically be able to compete with the Legacies? Once all their CPAs are up, you think the majors are going to happily fund their direct competition? The only reason they will last for a while longer is because of all the $$ they are getting from all the CPAs they have. Once those are gone, it won't be long.

Quote:

Originally Posted by FlyJSH

You really are breaking my heart. For WX updates, have heard of calling dispatch? or Flight Watch? or Flight Service? I mean, if you have 3-4 hours in cruise, there should be a minute or two to make a call.

Obviously I exaggerated a little bit. I was merely saying I'm not used to it not that I don't know how to get weather.

Quote:

Originally Posted by freeflyer14

Wait, what??? I guess I can't tell if you are being serious or just joking around, although I am leaning toward the notion that you are for real. Wow, just wow.

As I said before, obviously I'm not being serious. Come on guys lighten up.

cybourg10

You must know more than what a two different VPs have told me and that is the United deal is profitable for us. XJT pays 50% of the already reduced lease rates for our UAL a/c, that is part of the new CAL deal. Again what do you know that we don't?

BE19Pilot

Welcome to our nightmare...
I could go on and on with a laundry list of complaints and incidents that will make your hair stand on end. However, the more remarkable thing is that it is like a night and day difference between this time last year and now. However, just when you think that things are actually improving an incident comes up that tells you that the more things change the more things stay the same.
Case in point, delayed getting paperwork, push crew, GPU connected, etc...Finally, I (F/O) offer to jump out and track down someone (anyone??) alive in the ghost-town that is the "3-gates". Run into a gate agent, and he has no idea where the ramp personnel are. Keep in mind we made repeated and polite inquires with OPS to locate some ramp personnel. To make a long story short, I finally did find a ramp agent walking into the pier. I asked him where everyone went. The answer, "Shift change". Priceless...
Be careful out there on the ramp for FOD in IAD at the "A" gates, keep your head on swivel too. Lot's of very inexperienced and poorly trained, ill-supervised personnel on the ramp there.

Regards...

gearmaid

I hear its a lot better at explus.

Slaphappy

First of all XJT has been losing money for the past two years and will continue to lose money. It doesn't matter if you're getting "slightly" more money because it still doesn't help your ultra high costs.

2nd. I, like the MAJORITY of skywest are VERY Happy with our current situtation and shows because that last alpa drive was frimly rejected by over 60%. We have 0 pilots on furlough and are crediting almost 90 hours a month, life is good for skywest pilots.

Lastly you can poke fun at us for having 70 seaters but as you've seen in the last two years your company has shrunk because they are still set on only flying an obsolete airplane, and for your information we do get paid more to fly the 70 seaters than the 50 seaters.

We're all RJ pilots and this is an entry level job.