this happened about three years ago at my company, the guy left for another job, spent a week in training at his new company. during that week, the airline went bankrupt(aloha), ultimately the union got his job back and now a captain here(no loss of seniority) ! the excuse the union used was he was using his vacation time during that period and not considered off property at the moment !

 

Two weeks ago may be doable from the company side IF you gave them proper notice. From the union side, it may be a bit dicier. The issue is obviously seniority and unless there is a provision in your CBA, (and very few if any have one) in order to gegain your seniority, each crewmember who was junior to you would have to agree to it because your regaining your number is negatively impacting their rights and just doing it could lead to a DFR lawsuit by any or all of those crewmembers.

Best of luck.

 

And that is why pilots are not "professionals." Sure we get paid to fly so technically we are professional but we are not "professionals" like doctors and lawyers.

We don't set our own hours.
We don't have clients and bill them.
We don't use our own tools.
We don't set our pay rate.

We are technicians. Highly trained, (and sometimes), highly paid technicians.

Sorry for derailing this thread. As to the question, you might think about sueing the company that offered you the job that disappeared for fraud. Essentially they lied to you and you lost something based on their lie. They could have and should have known they were not going to be able to fulfill their offer before they made it.

There must be president on this so you'll need to do more research.

Good luck.

 

I was wondering too if the company that hired and then fired the pilot after a week into training could be held legally liable. This seemed like a deceptive tactic and it cost someone their career. Truly a loss of wages situation? I've always kind of felt this way about an airline that calls back furloughs only to keep them for a month or so and then furlough them again. There should be a minimum pay period for anybody who comes to work for you in good faith that protects them from an employers inability to reasonably forecast their business needs.

 

.................

 

Was the 'corporate gig" flying a Legacy? The reason I ask is I have seen that most 91/135 ops want you to have the type/time in type/recent recurrent. I have been dropped from 2 such bizjet gigs myself and I feel that the wealthy have absolutely zero concern about the pilots of their aircraft. The pilot is simply a required employee that operates the aircraft that takes them to Aspen. They live in a world where you better have a $800 seafood platter for that 10:00 a.m. flight from PBI to TPA and make no plans to do anything later in the week because they might go to Grand Turks. If you are flying for such an operation,they will also likely cut you loose after your currency expires and use contract pilots when you are gone. These operations are good for the CFI who wants to get training in turbine aircraft or the retired airline pilot who wants to still fly and earn some more $$$. Pilots in their late 30's,40's and 50's are well advised to consider the stability of these operators. Good luck to your career.

 

Many shady 135 operators are like that; so are some 91 operations.

"Good" 91 and 135 operators hire a person, not their type ratings.

Some owners have that opinion...but not all. Our company founder/president is certainly considered wealthy, but treats the two of us VERY well.

This thread is a good example of the grass not always being greener...

 

So what? People are missing a far bigger picture here...


Why has this career been in the perpetual state of decline in the US? Just that - people are tied by the seniority system, and to make matters even worse, the government makes it virtually impossible to strike due to RLA.

Ability to vote with one's feet is about the only thing to counter this, and it just ain't gonna happen with your entire existence tied to your date of hire with absolute zero regard to your experience.

 

You shouldn't have quit. You should have used vacation time, called in sick, whatever...it's not much, but it'll buy you two to three weeks of time during training to make sure it's what you really want to do.

 

You are implying that this person quit their job. They could have very well took a LTLOA when it was offered at the beginning of April. At least this is what they should have done if they were smart...I believe the LTLOA required at least 1 year off, but I could be wrong on that.