Booyakasha!

You might want to remove the hotel listings next time.

FlyerJosh

If it will make you feel better I can... but it should be noted that the hotels listed on the schedules are the hotels that my company used in 2001/2002. Anybody who works for the airlines knows that crew hotels change just about as much as flight schedules. Since the airline is now defunct, it really doesn't make much difference either way...

Besides, anybody that wants to know where airline crews stay just need to go to the hotel and watch what vans pick them up.

sgrd0q

Everything in aviation has to be encoded. I bet they are doing this so that it is easier for them to replace everyone with computers some day!

ChrisH

I notice that flight hours may equal around 5.5, but duty time might be 7.5. When it comes to being paid for a trip, are you paid for the 7.5, or the 5.5?

freezingflyboy

Most airlines I know of pay only flight time (or something less like "average block" if you are at Mesa). Per diem is paid from the time you start a trip till you finish it or what is called "time away from base" this is usually abreviated TAFB. So the difference between your duty time and your flight time is the time you are making that cool buck and a half (or whatever your per diem rate is). Thats why you will hear airline pilots ***** about "sits" and schedule "efficiency" because it sucks to be at work but technically off the clock.

To answer your question specifically: you would get paid your flight pay for 5.5 hours and per diem for 7.5 hours. That means for 2 of those hours, you were making just per diem.

undcmsu

The company I work for has trip rigs....which basically is a ratio of block time to duty time. If you don't block much per day but have a relatively long duty day in comparison to what you fly your pay for the day is more than block. It all depends on the language in the contract. Also some companies pay per leg, per day, per trip, scheduled vs. actual, whichever is greater...again it's all dependent upon contract language.

AirWillie

While we're on the subject, I don't know if others do it but I hear Skywest pays you more credit hours even if you flew less. How could this be possible? On the other hand MESA is supposed to be the worst as far as pay, what is the difference?

fosters

You're probably referring to "block or better".

Let's say you do this trip (as posted on here):

I've highlighted the "block time" for each leg, essentially what you'd get paid to do the flight if everything ran on time.

Now, let's say you did the first leg and it took you 1:05, so you went under "block" by :05. For the better companies, you'd get paid 1:05 plus what my company calls schedule differential (SD time), which would be :05, so your total pay for that leg equals 1:10. Which was block time.

Now, let's say you had some delays for the next two legs, and it took you 1:35 and 1:25 for the second and third legs. You'd now be + 0:10 for the second leg and + 0:10 for the third leg, so you "made" an extra 20 minutes.

The forth leg went real quick, and it took you 0:59 to do it, so you'd have an SD time of 0:15, to bring the credit for the leg back to what it was blocked for, 1:14.

In short, you can't ever get paid LESS for doing flights, even if it took you less time to do it.

However, some companies handle this block or better in different ways. Some pay block or better based on the entire day, ie for the day you:

flew "under block" 20 minutes (5 mins on first leg, 15 mins on last)
flew "over block" 20 minutes (10 mins on second and third leg)

So by underblocking 20 and overblocking 20, it would be a wash and you'd just get paid your credit for the day (5:04).

At AWAC, we are paid on a leg-by-leg basis, so even if we underblocked by 20 mins the first and last leg, we overblocked the second and third leg, so we'd be up 20 mins on the day or a pay of 5:24 for that day.

Figuring leg-by-leg gives me an extra 3-5 hrs per paycheck of SD time that would most likely be washed out if it was considered on a day-to-day basis.

Another cool thing about "block or better" is several days ago, for a 2:05 blocked flight, we sat on the ramp during a thunderstorm for over 2 hours. We ended up block 4:15 for that flight. If you worked at some of these bottom feeders, your pay would still be 2:05 (essentially credit time), your pay wouldn't increase based on the fact that you sat in that airplane with pax on the ramp (or in a hold, or whatever) for more time than it was blocked for. Having block or better, I estimate I make an extra 10-15 hours per paycheck. This is SIGNIFICANT.

Another thing to consider is duty rigs. Viewing the schedule again:

Here I've highlighted the ground time, essentially the time spent on the ground not working or making any money. It can vary here from 25 minutes to over 4 hours. This is "unpaid time" for the most part. Yeah, it sucks. It's the reason why the pay per hour is higher than your burger flipping job.

The 0929 is your total duty time. The total duty time is the time spent from when you are first scheduled to appear at the airport to when you are scheduled off on your last leg, plus 0:15. You are scheduled to check in at 1330, and scheduled to finish the last leg at 2244 + 0:15, so that would be 2259 when you are scheduled to go off duty. 2259 - 1330 = 9:29 of "duty time". (note: the duty is figured off of actual values, so if you got home later your duty would be longer, but for sake of simplicity I just used the above trip at face value)

Air Wisconsin has a 2:1 duty rig, which means you are paid 1 hour of flight pay for every 2 hours of duty. 9:29/2 = 4:44 of duty pay. In the case above your "credit" for the day was 5:24 on the awac contract assuming you overblocked 20 mins (Note: this isn't an awac trip though, I'm just referencing it) so you'd get paid your credit of 5:24.

If you had a different trip that happened to credit, say, 4:00 hrs for the same duty time you'd get paid 4:44 for that day. This comes in handy because it basically forces the company to put together efficient schedules otherwise they have to pay you half your 'hourly' wage just to sit around and do nothing. It's not so much a money maker, just more of a way to make it so that you aren't sitting around doing nothing not making any money.

AWAC also has a trip rig, where as you divide your "time away from base" by 4 to come up with that. A typical trip will have you away from home 80 hours for a 4-day trip, so no matter how crappy the days are, you'd be paid 20 hours of pay for that 4-day trip (80/4 = 20). Prior to concessions, which were needed to keep our "costs" in line with companies such as mesa that are now doing the flying we used to do, it used to be 3.5, so an 80-hour 4-day would have credited a min of 22:51. Doesn't seem significant, but that would worth an extra two days off a month...

Companies that only pay 'credit time' should be avoided, IMO. I make CONSIDERABLY more than a mesa pilot, (which isn't much !!) even if the payscales were equal (which they aren't).

If my flights are canceled for ANY reason, I get full pay. Mesa? Those trips are removed from your schedule and you aren't paid. That's just the tip of the iceburg. Remember, there is a reason upgrade at mesa is so short!

MikeB525

Fosters, a couple questions about you: how long have u been at AWAC and what seat do you fly? What is your domicile and about how many credit hours do you get per month?? Thanks.

BoilerUP

I'm not fosters, but I am at AWAC, so a little info about me:

CL65 FO, based in PHL, with the company just under 9 months. Only sat one month of reserve, and try like hell to bid commutable lines - I don't care about working weekends. I have had typically 12 days off per month, pick up no opentime, try to swap for better trips in opentime as much as possible and have averaged line awards of 82-85 and have credited 85-95. Because I commute I value time at home more than pay, so I try to drop turns & days & even some short parings to have more days off.

I know a couple ORF guys that average 95+ hours credit per month...living in domicile & working the system is quite lucrative.