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.

 

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...

 

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!

 

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.

 

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.

 

It's a great plane dude.

 

Plus it helps the company by not allowing you to stockpile user and vacation time. If you always have to call in sick, then you always have to burn your user time to get time off.

 

If you call in, do they make you take user time automatically? I actually don't know...

 

Yes, you can't call in and not burn time.

 

Do this, and be prepared to be terminated. Calling in sick when not sick is a terminable offense, per the PPM. Get called in, stick to "flying around in a petrie dish isn't conducive to good health"
The company uses fear as a motivator, it's only time till they use termination to set an example, want to be the unlucky example? You will probably get your job back after 6 months off and countless review hearings.