FlyingforMe

Any idea if the new contract will include an extended call out time for reserve pilots? 2 Hours makes commuting impossible, I'm only 3.5 hours away driving and obviously less if there is a flight available.

beech1980

What new contract? We still have 1 year until this one becomes amendable. Generally the only reserve call outs longer than 2-3 hours is a long call. Sun country only has the 2 hour short call. Long call was on the table during the PDX discussions but the company shot it down... heads buried in the sand is a good analogy.

Noisy1

Total fail. Sure would be easier to recruit commuting pilots with long call rule for reserves. Head in the sand is right!

Pull and Rotate

Long call would be great. Problem is that senior mucks living in Lakeville would bid it so they could go fishing on their work days while someone who really could use the 12 hours to get to work is sitting in a crash pad with 10 days off and a two hour call-out.

Gonefishing

The company tried long call before. The brain trust in scheduling couldn’t figure it out. They thought if you were on long call they could call you 24/7 and assign you a trip as long as it was 24 or 12 hours out. To get that they would have to re due the whole scheduling section. Which could really screw everyone if we got PBS with four parameters; morning, evenings, max days off or max hours. Those were the only parameters they wanted us to have. How do you think that would work out so guys would bid reserve for sure to avoid getting screwed with a line. We need all these changes but the pilots have to be in control of them.
Jude is using the same tactics Krandel did with American. Pit the pilots against themselves have them focus their anger on the union and he gets his big payoff from Apollo for keeping the lowest paid labor group in the industry.
You have to look beyond what would be best for you personally and see the big picture.

PiperPower

Agreed. With that said, not everyone at SY wants to do turns out of MSP everyday. And to me, that seems to be all this group really cares about protecting - and crew meals.
This place needs to grow, make money, and in exchange for that, the group will have a bigger piece of the pie to gamble for when it comes to negotiations, because some of that growth would have been directly executed by US. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, so yes, I really do believe that. An airline that makes money, or has the tools in place to be profitable in the future, will have a direct impact on how much we get on this next contract.
You can do turns all day long, but if this business doesn't grow into something that is actually sustainable, you're trading job security for the convenience of turns. And that sucks for like 80% of our pilots. I absolutely support the union, and they do a great job, but damn it would be nice for this group to get on the same page at some point soon.

Gonefishing

I don’t want or like all turns either. It’s those kind of assumptions that are toxic. “All the senior guys want turns out of MSP” first off it’s wrong, second that’s just the wedge Jude wants. Jr. v Sr. I commuted for 15 years and was a new guy for 11. We had 32 airplanes when I started. Now we own most planes that’s the only growth. Growth of capital which directly effects Jude and not the employees. We have to grow but you can’t let the short term goal dictate the long term negotiations.

nibake

Where is the like button?