I’ve heard there was a very large amount of no shows for the street CA class.

We are the ACMI industry. It’s time for us to tell the ACMI “slave driver” to treat us how we deserve to be treated. Not the other way around. If some “particular work rules” don’t fit the ACMI model, then we should push to make it fit.

Allow me to point out some of life practical realities.

You don’t deserve anything. You are, hopefully, in control of your own professional destiny. As long as you willingly continue to work for the “slave driver” you have forfeited that control.

You don’t get to tell the “slave driver” how to treat you or how to run his affairs. They’re his.
You however, have the opportunity to run your own. Use it.

Constantly coming here to cry and complain wont do you any good. Just makes you look small.

You make a point about the constant whining. I'd re-think saying something along the lines of "Just get another job.".

If you have a house and ten years later a land-fill is allowed to be placed out your backyard, can you just get another house? Sure. You'd also lose most of your equity, put your wife (or husband) into a commuting situation if they work, put your kids into new schools, etc. Like it or not you become invested in your life. Whether or not you want to call this a sunk-cost fallacy or realistic life choices is another matter.

Instead, wouldn't it be more productive to try to get the county board to re-think their decision to place a landfill right out your back door?

Essentially this is the position of a lot of pilots. Due to a number of factors (say being about 30 when great recession happened), they wound up with about ten years invested into some of these crummy, ACMIs. The pilots of ABX especially went from having a really nice career at Airborne turn into a complete disaster. Telling these folks to just get another job trivializes the realities of life.

All that said, I agree constant whining makes us look small.

A similar thought which is usually expressed is something like this: "You made dumb career choices to land you in this ACMI, so eat up the terrible return on your dumb investment."

Let's be careful about entertaining these notions as well. It wasn't so long ago that we had UPS and United furloughs and those UAL and UPS pilots were beating our doors down to come fly here and elsewhere. We could have turned that same thought on those guys. "You made your dumb choice to go to a giant company that has a history of dumping pilots. Enjoy Walmart 'til you get your recall, chump!".

The reality is there are a lot of factors behind your seniority number. Some of those factors are within your control and some aren't.

Best two posts I’ve seen here in a while.

Yes. If you pick up an extra 5-8 day trip, which is doable on the 74 right now, you will be making 20-25k every 28 days. Additionally you can sell your vacation back for $10k per week as an F/O, most likely. You get 2 weeks on 2nd year. 1st year pay for me was $70k gross, ymmv.

That would be the case on any fleet, but the schedules and staffing shortage situation on the 74 just make it easier to accomplish.

I am on track to easily double my 8th year Atlas CAPTAIN pay as a 2nd year F/O. Sad.

^^^ Wow. Outstanding.

My point was simple. The whole picture includes time to get upgraded. ATI pilots have had that happening very quickly.

ATI pilot after 3 years is a CA doing $200/hr
ABX pilot after 3 years is a FO doing $110/hr.

Before you do a comparison to ABX captains rates (in caps) - to become a CA at ABX takes a long time. 20+ years? That's a long time to sit as an FO and get paid as an FO.

If it wasn't for the stupid games, there would have been sub-three-year captains at ABX.