ClickClickBoom

Just a few ago months you were a cheerleader, wasssup?

ClickClickBoom

No one is asking for unicorn fillets, just a terd once and awhile. And they wonder why so many go Platinum.......

word302

The elusive open time drop has been happening on the ERJ side from what I hear. Looking forward to seeing what that's all about.

M20EPilot

Unicorns made brief appearances near the end of the Brasilia days, in the right seat. They staffed that up pretty fat before the E175 came online.

I think its silly to complain about not being able to drop. If you were an airline boss, tell me exactly how many reserves you would keep on the payroll to allow lineholders to drop? If I were writing the checks, zero. BUT, staffing is imperfect, it ebbs and flows like the tides. Magically jacking up required reserves (when they are fat on pilots) to prevent the unicorn sightings is just plain cruel, but not unexpected. I seriously doubt one can hope to drop anything unless SAPA figures out a way to negotiate a published formula that they are forced to use to determine min reserves in any particular base and seat.

Crazy Canuck

Ask the FA's about dropping. They'll ***** "I was able to drop everything except that ONE DAY!! ITS SUCH BULL ****"

disillusioned

Yep. You have to do one of two things. Either have enough pilots to fly the hours you need flown and give people the option to fly 80 to 100 hours, or you give them the ability to drop and improve their schedule. If you don't, people will play along for a little bit and then just realize that you need to call off to make events that are important. Pilots will pick up trips, but when everyone is getting loaded with 100+ hours, then it takes away one of the options available to us to get time off.

Problem is once you get employees that are apathetic, it is hard to get that tiger back in the cage. I know that will my job I will miss some things. But I should be able to work around important things. If not, I'll use a platinum day and deal with the passive aggressive email threats.

It's no secret that we are picking up block hours that other regionals can't staff right now. And these hours are being paid at a premium to the company and straight time to us. Allow my bid to finish between 75-80 hours and I may pick up a trip for time and a half. But SGU knows that our wonderful PBS will just load us up with all the hours they need and we have no recourse at all.

amcnd

Depressing to read all the new guys with this "NOW,NOW,NOW" mentality.. Demanding 1 year upgrades and no reserve.. Wish you could have been with the rest of us getting into the Regionals back in the mid 90's... Just happy as clams to be flying a Saab 340 (yes they built airplanes) around the skies...

BigJap

Hi All, been creeping on here for a while thanks for all the info and helping me decide which regional to pursue. Interviewing in a couple weeks and was wondering if anyone can PM me the approaches they used during their interview to practice as I currently use NACO charts; trying to get comfortable with the jepps. I've got some good gouges but any other info would be much appreciated. Many thanks!

N1234

That attitude is bred by all the regionals... no matter where you look they all advertise fast upgrades, signing bonuses etc.. so what do you expect? you get what you pay for ....

And in all fairness to the newbies, none of the lifers I have spoken to expected to be a lifer. Pretty much everyone came to the party expecting to spend a couple of years at a regional before moving on ... until everything came to a halt ... Let's see how long the party lasts before the music stops again.

Turbosina

One thing that drives me nuts is that you can't even pay people to take your trips, because even if they want to, every lineholder has 95+ hours assigned by PBS. I can't count the number of times a guy has tried to pick up one of my trips and failed, since that'd put him over a block time limit.

Can't drop. Can't trade. Can't pick up. Can't pay a guy to take your trip. Oh, and get ready for PBS to award you trips you bid for, then take them away from you and give them to juniors so that it can meet the monthly minimum line requirement (this month was 88 hrs, I got 95).

From the company's perspective, of course, it makes perfect sense. Load up every lineholder with maximum hours. Keep reserves to a minimum. If you do happen to have enough reserves, artificially inflate the 'min reserve staffing' number so nobody can drop a trip. Do this well enough and long enough, and you'll earn those executive bonuses. And why change that strategy? Until pilots leave in droves because of these policies, there's no reason whatsoever for management to change its game. And judging by the stream of new hires, OO does not appear to be facing anything resembling a pilot shortage.