That's shortsighted on management's part. Crews would simply taxi out on both engines instead of single engine taxi. I promise you 1 minute of extra engine run time is far more expensive then 1 minute of crew pay.

 

Oh the joys of no ACARS. door closes, look at watch, write down time....

 

Almost..

Door closes
Look at watch
Subtract 5 minutes
Write down time.

Same checklist for calling "in times," just replace "subtract" with "add"

 

So this is the the same company that wants gate agents to close gates/flights 15 minutes early, turning away late-connecting paying pax who have theoretically made it to the gate in time for their flight but are denied boarding-- but then wants the pilots to wait for brake release 1 min before sched. departure?

Just so I wrap my head around this...

 

Be glad that is your "situation", at QX the out time is generated by the EFB. It has a GPS unit inside it, that looks back one minute after the aircraft has moved 50ft.

Take into account that we have more than a few stations where we start both engines and spin out of the gate..3-4-5 mins after the main cabin door is closed...or same places have de-ice at the gate.

 

So no single engine taxi?

 

Ramp doesn't want you to call for push unless the ground crew is in place. Especially when de ice ops are in effect. We never have had this problem at Colgan. In fact a lot of guys I fly with will brief the notams prior to closing the door. Then close door, release break, brief the flight, start engine, then call for push. In fact that's kind of the order the FOM suggests to do it in. Briefing the flight is part of your job.... I don't know about you but I don't work for free!

 

You don't work for free? So your daily credit is ALWAYS greater than your duty time? Sign me up!!

 

As an ex OO guy I have to chime in here. It's not United that is pushing this, it's your own company. UAL wants the on-time. They pay by the flight, not flight time. Many contracts pay whether the flight runs or not. Others pay less so your management needs to cut costs to make a profit. Your regional management pays you, the pilot, by the minute. They are the ones driving any cost savings inititiatives. By not paying you a few minutes here and there it saves millions per year.

Back when Skywest had only 700 pilots we manually filled out overtime sheets for each leg. Even if we only had one minute of overtime we would fax the pay sheet to headquarters. I personally overheard BH at a Christmas party in PDX say the company saved $1.5 million per year in overtime due to lazy pilots not sending in the overtime sheets. See, the captain had to send it in for the whole crew.

Skywest was growing like crazy now. The volume of faxes to headquarters grew and grew. Pilots were getting smarter about pay. Only one person in St. George was manning the overtime desk and was swamped. The company asked SAPA to ask the pilots to stop sending in overtime sheets for just one or two minutes. Personally knowing how much the company saved for each lost minute I was happy to see SAPA grow some nuts. They said they would agree but only if 10 minutes of credit was added to each leg. The company got the hint.

Long rant but my point is that each minute counts. Millions can be saved by screwing you, the pilot.

 

It is United that is pushing this one minute brake release to call to push. United actually wants every single company to call the captain that exceeds the "one minute" window and get an explanation as to why. They send the company a laundry list of flights that exceed it. Just my option here but they are focused on pilots as the root cause rather than the ground crew, frequency congestion, or just ramp congestion.