ASA Staffed Adequately??

[jstyle13]

Because you don't bid reserve......

I've been on res for almost 2.5 years now. I've only broken 75 once and that was last summer. There are a handful of guys who break 75 each month and they are scr cmf's that have tue-thurs GDO's. Scheduling is pretty good at making sure everyone gets 55-75 credit hours a month.

As much as people like to say we are short staffed when the bucket list gets down to a few guys and they keep tacking assignments on to us reserves, the truth is probably closer to adequate staffing. Until nearly all res's get 75+ hr's and line holders get extended, I would imagine they will stick with what we got.

Now come summer......

 

[79%N1]

Because you don't bid reserve......

Um, I do bid reserve because I am forced to.

 

[Abernathy]

They are understaffed... The word is that there has been a lot of sick calls lately and do to ASA being so understaffed sometimes flights cannot be operated due to lack of reserve coverage.

Word came down from the top from SH/CT for the Chief Pilots office to begin strictly enforcing the attendance policy. Rumor I heard was that like 20 plus 19 B disciplinary hearing letters were sent out last week for people with excessive occurrence's. I guess threatening people with their jobs are supposed to improve moral.

Anyone here know if punitive attendance policies are legal particularly when you can prove that you were sick, i.e. doctors note.

Call the FAA and tell them you were disciplined for calling in sick and now feel forced to fly sick for fear of losing your job.

OR just dont worry about it. Good thing about being unionized.

 

[Data]

Call the FAA and tell them you were disciplined for calling in sick and now feel forced to fly sick for fear of losing your job.

OR just dont worry about it. Good thing about being unionized.

Yeah, cause when I hear a guy with 10+ occurrences whining about wanting to call the FAA, I side with them....

 

[777forever]

They are understaffed... The word is that there has been a lot of sick calls lately and do to ASA being so understaffed sometimes flights cannot be operated due to lack of reserve coverage.

Word came down from the top from SH/CT for the Chief Pilots office to begin strictly enforcing the attendance policy. Rumor I heard was that like 20 plus 19 B disciplinary hearing letters were sent out last week for people with excessive occurrence's. I guess threatening people with their jobs are supposed to improve moral.

Anyone here know if punitive attendance policies are legal particularly when you can prove that you were sick, i.e. doctors note.

Correct. ASA's running the reserve staffing pretty thin. Reason is they are trying to save money by keeping as many pilots as close to 75 hrs as possible by having low line values. This increases the number of lineholders and many lines have min days off resulting in less opentime pickups and more work to keep the reserves busy. As a result there are a few days where the reserve coverage is little to none.

Come summer time they will up the line values and increase reserve coverage. And if we run out of reserves for a particular day they'll just extend people. When extensions start happening on a regular basis we will be approaching an understaffed situation.

 

[restart]

So! Anybody been extended yet? Anybody seen flights cancelled due to lack of staffing?

 

[jetracer5]

Call the FAA and tell them you were disciplined for calling in sick and now feel forced to fly sick for fear of losing your job.

OR just dont worry about it. Good thing about being unionized.

I called in sick and the chief pilot said I was in risk of being fired......So I said "So your forcing me to fly sick?" Chief Pilot quote "Now I'm not telling you to fly sick but with the amount of occurrences you have you can loose your job and the union will not be able to help you" ?????????? This is starting to get out of hand and somebody (ie FAA, NTSB, ALPA) needs to address company policy vs federal law. I WILL NOT BE FORCED TO FLY SICK! BTW I got FMLA and got everything covered.........

 

[jetracer5]

Yeah, cause when I hear a guy with 10+ occurrences whining about wanting to call the FAA, I side with them....

Hey most companies give you about 20+ days of sick coverage. I have only missed 6 days in the last year.....guess what I have 6 occurrences! The occurrence policy needs to be trashed and a more mainstream sick policy NEEDS to be put in place. We dont even get close to the sick pay that most companies provide.

 

[Tarzan]

So! Anybody been extended yet? Anybody seen flights cancelled due to lack of staffing?

Yes. Was extended early this month.

 

[wms]

The next contract needs PTO (personal time off) days that we use at our discression without occurences. That's one of the reasons I voted no on contract '07.

We're not going to get much more money so we need to work on issues like this, as well as insurance. It's insulting that grown men and women are threatened with occurences for using the time they've accrued.