Quote:
Originally Posted by ZapBrannigan
There's no significant cost to the company unless the pilot asks for relocation. The hotels are pennies by comparison. There needs to be a disincentive.
Over at brand X, before you grow you hire and, yes, you intentionally overstaffed to build a training float. Once all of those new FOs are hired THEN you can upgrade bunches of people, which creates vacancies in the right seat, which are immediately filled by the newly trained newhires.
Here they're putting the cart before the horse. Sadly, it works for the bean counters because there's virtually no cost to the company when they choose to do things like that. Except good will.
The hidden costs are the head shot. When you displace someone, you now have to potentially get them, and possibly a few others, ETOPS qual'd. I am willing to bet a paycheck that there is also a significant uptick in sick calls, especially for those displaced two or more time zones.
You also lose goodwill, which cannot be measured. It's like I told a captain I was flying with on a leg that I was supposed to get released from and go home but now was flying it (changed before I even showed for the trip), incurring an additional half a day away from home and a hotel: No worries, I am not emotional over it. I will get that day off and $100 back in the end.
You can burn the manning wick at both ends for a few months, but eventually folks get tired of playing. I know my GAS factor for picking up extra flying has almost completely deflated. If a trip touches the weekend, you are almost certainly going to get rerouted all over the system and earn a bunch of extra money, so why even bother picking up any more unless you are going for some personal record or remodeling your house? Most of the big "game players" aren't legal for the big money trips, and the rest of us aren't willing any more.
I open up my phone in the morning and see over 100 VPF alerts sitting there and just laugh. It's comical how we got into this situation. It's great if you want to make some extra dough, but it's ridiculous for any sort of QOL or quality product.
If it's any consolation, it's not just here. Our friend is a RN and her boss called her yesterday and begged her to come in. When she declined, she told her that she would make 2,000 for an extra 8 hour shift. I am not good at math, but it sounds like desperation to me.