If only working 7 days in a row was illegal he’d be all set......

Yep. Gotta go to 8. Even then they could junior man you into 30 hours rest and then back on the road. Theoretically.

Gee I wonder why regionals are having a hard time finding pilots that want nothing more in their lives than flying planes? Guys we are getting paid to fly jets, they’re doing us a favor here!

^ this. If your regional is hurting on staffing, plan on a glance into your hotel stay (time of entry and exit/ entry of room and bar/restaurant receipts, van log) prior to you getting sick if it’s on a trip as well as bidding history and previously scheduled non-rev travel on the event of a sick call so see if it’s legitimate.

here's what I'm gonna tell you. Take it for what you will.

In your next interview, you're going to be asked how many times you've missed work in the past year. Be honest and transparent. If you're sick, you're sick. If you miss work, you miss work. My previous employer was merciless in how they tracked you down when you called in sick (chief pilots calling you asking why you're sick, company plants searching your social media, etc), so if I'm you and you're "sick of working", be EXTREMELY careful of what you have posted on social media. One Facebook post can unravel your entire sweater.

The fatal post can come from one of your friends.

At this point in time, I would honestly not get photographed at all while on a sick-ation.

Also... leave your EFB at home. My legacy fired a dude for taking his EFB on sick-ation. Ipads are normally never off. If you have to take it to commute to/from work, buy a faraday bag. And hope its a good one.

Also... don't sign on to ANY company apps, they can see your IP. The IP can be looked up and geo-located (this is not 100% precise for a variety of reasons, but if you get called and asked where you were, are you going to lie? You won't know exactly what they know at that point).

All that said, I've had a long and uneventful career but not calling in sick for vacation, and always leaving myself adequate commute backups (usually two flights, but more if loads are crazy).

They're ONLY having trouble because the bigs are hiring. If there was no movement, each regional would have a line of hopeful pilots all the way around the block, Seen it before, and I'll see it again... and so will you.

I’m not sure what his company offers but when I was at RAH you could call in unavailable and do whatever you want. Now obviously multiple events like that is going to raise issues but if it’s something important enough you could do it. Even if you shut down all of your social media you would still have to make sure that no one who is photographing you and potentially posting is associated with anyone at your company.

Amazon has faraday bags for pretty low prices. Even if you burn the battery down until the device shuts off it still holds some reserve power on the battery that could allow it to give location information.

Years ago I called in sick around midnight for my pairing that started the next day. I was going down hill fast with a cold, and knew I wasn't fit to fly..I was also on probation since I just started..when I woke up the next day, I had a friend request on facebook that was from a company person, but when I clicked the link to see their profile they must have blocked me since they sent me this request on accident...that being said, I am sure they were looking at my facebook to make sure I was truly sick.

If you can't make it to work and have a family event or something else very important, I always find its better to contact a chief pilot...at my company, they really seem to work with you.

Also, it's never smart to call in sick when you aren't...you never know if you're going to come down with something that will take you out of work for awhile. That cold I mentioned above lasted weeks, and affected my ears so I was out for quite a bit of time. If I would have called out sick a bunch prior to that I would have been completely screwed. All I'm saying is don't put yourself in a bad position down the road when you truly need the sick time. Not worth the stress.