A Question for Blue-Aid Drinkers?

[Skank]

USNFDX, that would be good advice if the 100+ posts were well thought out, concerned opinions which offered some solution. Unfortunately many of these posts reveal a pre-existing animosity which is spewed out with emotion and insults. Idiot, Scab, Blue KoolAide Drinker, etc, etc, etc. Thanks for all the input guys, but I think we've lost any chance at discussion here. Continue your rants, I'll move on.

 

[Michael Knight]

I'll second Skank, I'm outta here.

 

[Dizel8]

Boeing man,

You really think doing a JFK-SJU turn is unsafe? I am surprised, since it is two legs with a duty time of around 10hrs and actual flightime of around 7:15 with an one hour or slighly more turn in SJU.

Just curious?

 

[Blue Dude]

Cute how you twist the original intent on my post. Like I said, there is a limitation not your original cut and dried post. You have actually answered your own finger pointing. Quite nicely I might add.

I twisted nothing. "8 in 24" is inaccurate and a misnomer. That's all I said or meant to say, and you argued the point. I'm done.


Of course I read correctly. You didn't call me a scab, but you did indeed equate me to a scab, or at least a probable scab. If I cross a picket line, you have the right to call me that. It'll never happen, but until then you are out of line.

OK, the flight time exemption may be a bad idea. There's plenty of evidence to suggest it may be. I don't know, all the facts aren't in. Thanks to all those who contributed. But the mere fact that it would deviate from established practice at other airlines does not in and of itself bother me in the slightest. In the context you implied, acting scab-like is just an uglier term for being non-conformist. How dare we think outside the box? How dare we go against the will of the herd? How dare we potentially make life more difficult for someone at another airline? You're darn right I'm more interested in this airline than yours. Is that selfish? No more selfish than in any pilot group. I'll not do anything that intentionally harms pilots from other airlines, but my first loyalty isn't to them or some nebulous concept like "the profession."

Look in the mirror, pal. We're not in the business of screwing over our fellow pilot. ALPA on the other hand seems to have specialized in it of late. Take the beam out of your own eye before trying to remove the mote from mine. A wise man said that once.

Yeah, I'm done too. I think we've mined all we can here. Til next topic.

 

[Aplus9]

But Seriously


It's a refreshing change to have JBLU taking the role of "lowering the bar criminals". Thanks guys/gals for taking the heat off of SWA.

Carry on.


Aplus9

 

[njcapt]

Hypocrits,

I'm not sure what was hypocritical about my position on the issue. I have fought the pushing of pilots, with or without the pilots' approval, all through my 12 year airline career.

njcapt, you would be correct if we routinely flew 6 leg days or even 4 for that matter. Those trips are VERY few and far between. That is why any "exemption" to this rule will be looked at by each company and I highly doubt ANY rule change would occur. The feds aren't stupid, they know their are airline managements that already fly their pilots into exhaustion (Jetblue does not do this).

I want all the forum members with more than one airline's worth of experience to chew on that statement for a couple of seconds...

Just wait until the honeymoon is over, Chief. You WILL be doing four to six leg days. You WILL be forced into maximum utilization at some point. If Song (ATA, AirTran, etc.) really gets under your airline's proverbial skin your contract won't be worth the paper it's written on. Oh... wait a minute. You don't have a contract. Just the sunny good will of a management that hasn't had its back to the wall yet. Your airline hasn't had its fourth birthday yet. In the airline life cycle you guys are still filling up diapers. How do you know where you and your airline will be another four years from now? Should you guys get bent from abusive practices by your management, you'll be left twisting in the breeze by your lack of formal organization... to the detriment of you and the industry as a whole.

This whole thing would really be amusing if the welfare of the rest of the industry wasn't riding on your pilot group's lack of perspective.

I mean really, do you really think the FAA would allow Southwest to do this without limiting their number of legs or any other company that routinely has their pilots fly an excessive number of legs (an VERY unsafe practice in my opinion).

Unlike the jetBlue pilots, the Southwest pilots have SWAPA, a very unified and powerful UNION, with an equitable contract, that stands between them and pushing by management.

Southwest has been doing their thing for more than 30 years, and they haven't felt the need to get an OPS SPEC waiver of the safety related regs. You guys are so hopped up with your own glee that you are considering undermining the collective safety net of the whole industry. No shlt, the minute you guys get this through the feds, our (ATA) management will be busting our balls for relief on the west coast - Hawaii and EWR - SFO flying, and it WILL cost us in our next set of negotiations. Just so a handful of your pilots can slop at the gravy train.

So, why isn't there a limit to the number of legs per day. We all know that the most stress and fatigue comes from the terminal phases of flight. If you don't, I have a few book recommendations for you.

Hey, Don Quixote. Anything else in the industry that annoys you? Please, tell us what we should do. The more mature, organized, airline pilot groups have safety organizations that actually have an impact on national airline safety. What do the jetBlue pilots bring to the table? Sounds like you guys want all the bennies, but don't want to perform the heavy lifting required to change things in a positive manner.

Maybe with your lack of perspective, you fail to realize that ALPA (oh, dear, that dreaded word again) attempted to get modifications made to the current regs a few years ago. Opening the discussion up caused the ATA (the trade group that your f'ing airline is a member of) to use all their power to attempt to RELAX the current flight and duty time limitations. So, your statement that we (I guess that means ALPA) should try to get limits on the number of allowed daily legs is ludicrous. Especially when you say that just so a few members of your pilot group can more easily pick up open time and have more days off. Sounds pretty selfish and short-sighted, doesn't it.

 

[yaks]

If anyone cares to read another post, at my airline we have a 12.5 hour duty day and as previously stated the pilot side of this industry has been fighting just to get a 16 hour day to mean exactly that. So JB pilots, please don't preach to us that we haven't tried to do anything to enhance safety. The problem is every time some genius is able to come up with a new way to exploit what is already there or worse change what already exists, it creates another issue which takes many years to fix. But I guess Jet Blue doesn't really care about their passengers unless it means giving them some mindless drivel to stare at in the seatbacks. I will tell everyone I know as much.

 

[T-Bags]

For the record ALPA DID try to reduce the max flying day based on the number of legs. The holdout? SWA. They argued that they felt MORE refreshed after a 5 leg day than a 1 leg day of equal hours.... They also handfly Cat III's. Do you think they will utilize their much more powerful lobbying efforts to get the multileg extention? Maybe if the wx is forcast to be good? (I filed into Gander with a VFR forcast just last week only to arive to 1/8 mile vis). In a competative enviroment, every other airline MUST match you. It's about a 10 hour flight from ORD-FRA. One leg. Couldn't I rationally argue that I personally sleep in so the 1430 departure time is actually shortly after I wake up? so wouldn't it be "safe". Well you just cost 1/3 of the jobs flying that route. I guess that'll be more pilots on the street willing to work for less than you at Virgin America (and I'll bet branson will hire better looking F/A's..). You can rationalize exemptions to ALL limitations. Why should i be stable at 500 feet? I used to push it in the military to 100 feet. I was "safe". Why not change it. Any limitation you can find will have circumstances that a "just as safe" or even SAFER situation can be found beyond the limitation given an idea set of circumstances, the problem is once the Camel gets his nose under the tent...

 

[#1 Windmilling]

Unstabilized at 100 feet? Is that considered "safe"?

Let's look at this from another viewpoint. Would anyone "push" an approach that was not stabilized down to 100 feet during an annual checkride? I think not.

I think the same might hold true for this out and back issue. Would you want a Fed to jump on in OAK during one of these turns and administer a check? I dunno....this will certainly be interesting to watch....

-#1W

 

[General Lee]

That last leg flying back into JFK (at a busy bank by the way---4-5pm) both of you will be useless. You will have had maybe 1 hour to stretch your legs in LGB, load up on 3 more latte's, and those comfortable A320 seats would have been calling you for a little nap. Then you will be dangerous when the rest of us fly into the NYC area. Thanks a lot! But, you can sleep it off over the next 6 straight days off. You guys just don't get it, do you?

Bye Bye--General Lee