Originally Posted by Andy

Call me stupid. I'm not able to draw the same conclusion, much less the concept of allowing a single PI both run the sim and do seat support in a sim. And I seriously doubt that United's FAA POI would ever sign off on that. Same goes with FTIs doing FTDBs.

There are some things that United can unilaterally change in the way it trains pilots. Most stuff, however, is dictated by the FAA and would require their permission for United to alter our Ops Specs. If it sounds the least bit nuts (single PI both running a sim and being seat support), it's extremely unlikely to get past the FAA POI.

Now, just to close the loop. Do you know of any US certificated airline that's permitted to use other than line pilots for simulator training? I don't have the answer, but I'd be surprised if that's permitted for any US carrier.

Originally Posted by 89Pistons

Andy, I know you don't mean any malice but to your first point.....that's the same rationale that you and I heard from some of the 1995 hire Captains telling us 2000 hires as we were getting furloughed in January 2003. I heard exactly what you wrote and it really got under my skin. They usually followed it with "don't worry, we'll make this a better place by the time you come back" or "we'll be a lean, mean fighting machine when you get back."

We came back after two rounds of concession under the bankruptcy contract flying for the LCO. Remember the LCO that took us down to 10 days off and 95 hours a month? That was lean. As lean as you can get. And we still got furloughed again.

Your point seems disingenuous to me. I think I know enough about you to think that isn't your intent. But that's how it comes across.

To your second point, Southwest hasn't needed to furlough simply because they are a better run company that historically maintains a good relationship with their employees and doesn't feel the need to blame those employees when things don't go well. They also don't have hundreds of RJ's doing a lot of their flying.

Our contract doesn't cause furloughs. A bad economy mixed with bad management does.

Originally Posted by terminal

Their management is better-but somehow they’ve convinced their pilot group to fly the same number of block hours as us with only 8500 pilots.

Originally Posted by svergin

Misleading at best. A block hour in a 777, 787, or 767 generally all have 3 or 4 pilots and we have over 160 of those planes. So we need more pilots per block hour.

Originally Posted by terminal

Their pilots do a lot that we just won’t do...that’s not better management, that’s the pilots.
Their pilots are incentived to WORK. And the culture there is to maximize their pay by picking up trips and working over vacation...and they’re compensated for it.

Our guys want to have flight hour caps to get more people on property...just because.

Originally Posted by John Carr

Did you peruse that thread about utilization a while back?

PLENTY of our guys are willing to do the same.

Originally Posted by terminal

Not without the naysayers comparing you to a scab because apparently picking up open time makes you a bad union member.

Originally Posted by Itsajob

Most of those guys would call anyone who likes a different flavor ice cream a scab.

Originally Posted by terminal

I guess my point is that it is a part of their culture to finagle and trade and pickup etc...we don’t have that