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Captains flying Right Seat...

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motch

motch

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 26, 2006
Posts
349
Recently the carrier I fly for had Captains flying Right Seat to make up for a shortfall in FO's.
To be specific,
-Captains were offered Captain pay at 150% to volunteer to fly as First Officers.
-Reserve Captains were assigned First Officer positions from open time.

My question is this,
I would like to know what the other Majors, LCC's, Cargo and Regional policy is on Captains filling in for a shortfall in First Officers.

At my old job, you had to have had a PC in the right seat within a year to fly as a FO if you were a Captain. Check Airman did their PC's from both seats.

This is actually a serious question and I'm trying to compile data on what everyone does.
I have a feeling it's based on who the POI is, and what's in the contract..
If you would PM me with the info, I would appreciate it. I am doing this on my own, without the knowledge, help or advice of my union or my airline.

Thanks for the help.

Always
Motch
[email protected]
 
Skywest did some of this a while back for freshly upgraded captains to fly right seat while waiting for IOE, I hear GoJet has captain qualed FOs. I know of at least one 121 supp that allows both seats with training in the last year. Hope that helps.
 
motch said:
Recently the carrier I fly for had Captains flying Right Seat to make up for a shortfall in FO's.
To be specific,
-Captains were offered Captain pay at 150% to volunteer to fly as First Officers.
-Reserve Captains were assigned First Officer positions from open time.

My question is this,
I would like to know what the other Majors, LCC's, Cargo and Regional policy is on Captains filling in for a shortfall in First Officers.

At my old job, you had to have had a PC in the right seat within a year to fly as a FO if you were a Captain. Check Airman did their PC's from both seats.

This is actually a serious question and I'm trying to compile data on what everyone does.
I have a feeling it's based on who the POI is, and what's in the contract..
If you would PM me with the info, I would appreciate it. I am doing this on my own, without the knowledge, help or advice of my union or my airline.

Thanks for the help.

Always
Motch
[email protected]
Click to expand...

Motch I think it may be up to the POI to determine that language. I had the same scenrio at my last airline that you did yours.

The scabs are tripping all over themselves to again take another mans flying just before they hit the street.
 
They did that BS to us at Big Sky and there was no 150% pay either. For those of us on reserve, we never knew if the call was for captain or copilot and we had to go either way. Matter of fact, the chief pilot remarked that it made no sense to hire copilots when the captains were dual qualified. Those clowns saw us as two for the price of one.
 
At CHQ/RW/S5, captains are right seat qualified while in training. It is normal (though not very frequent) to use a reserve captain as an FO. No one really likes it, and we all think it just enables the company to run short staffed, but there is nothing in our contract to prevent it. Captains flying as FO's get straight captain pay. In the end, the captains are gettng paid to fly like normal, but they just don't get to log the PIC (and they can't have the bigger ego for a week...boo hoo). The lack of PIC can be a big deal to those who "want to get 1000 PIC so I can move on" types. So you have to wait another month. Big deal. Perhaps this will be addressed in our upcoming contract, but in reality I see bigger issues to deal with than this.
 
They're all gay, except for Timmy, since he's on reserve and has no choice of course, but the rest of them picking up right seat are GAY, I've heard!
 
It is cool

All our Capt's are given right seat task training each year. This allows them to fly from either seat. This needed when doing a heavy crew and also allows more flexibility in granting days off requests. This also menas more pilots are Captains
 
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Are there F/Os currently on furlough?
 
Comair...Ca's can not fly as FO's. Check Airmen are the only exception.
 
pilotyip said:
All our Capt's are given right seat task training each year. This allows them to fly from either seat. This needed when doing a heavy crew and also allows more flexibility in granting days off requests. This also menas more pilots are Captains
Click to expand...


Did you ever think it also allows them to NOT hire the FOs they really need to properly staff the airline?
 
Captain's can fly as FOs at Compass because of lack of FO's. Happened alot in the past...not as much now since staffing is catching up.
 
At Mesaba, CA's are effectively prohibited from flying as FO's. Needless to say, LCA's fly in whichever seat they need to for training/checking.
 
At the company I was at (stoppped operating on June 30 this year) but an ALPA carrier, since the average life expectancy of an FO was about 4-5 months before they quit for greener pastures, we could never keep any FO's around -

So the company solution was to offer upgrade to everyone once they reached 1500tt - in the theory that once you made captain you were less likely to leave - whether there was a need for captains or not. (It did kind of work in the beginning.) At one point we had 160 captains to 75-80 FOs.

If you were senior enough, you got to fly as captain - if you weren't senior enough - you got reserve and maybe got to fly as captain when you covered for some captain's sick or vacation, but more than likely got to assigned to fly an unfilled FO's line at normal captain's pay. - which most people didn't care for - they wanted the turbine PIC time.

Lineholder CA's could be junior assigned for 200% to fly as FO, but not an FO's line for the month.

There was no contractual language preventing assignment of captains to FO lines and originally there was no requirement for right seat qualifications at all - until one captain who was hired straight into the captain seat and had never flown in the right seat complained that he couldn't fly as FO because he'd never received training to fly in the right seat and had no clue as to what the FOs did on their side of the cockpit. Then all captains had to do a right seat qual.
 
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At AAI all Captains have to be qualified to fly in the right seat. The company however can not make you fly from there, try as they may, they try to intice you with 1 1/2 capt. rate, even had some offers at double time. I suspect with the furlough news, that has come to a grinding halt, or at least it should if you had a conscious.
 
Skywest did this about 6 years ago for the reserve Brasilia captains. They were paid straight CA pay to fly as F/O. It only lasted a few months.

I think check airman can pick up F/O open time for 150% pay, if you can get crew support to give it to you. I never tried.

Scott
 
Nothing wrong with captains flying in the right seat for captain wages...

Perhaps you'd rather have a $20/hour FO in there instead?
 
Freight Dog said:
Nothing wrong with captains flying in the right seat for captain wages...

Perhaps you'd rather have a $20/hour FO in there instead?
Click to expand...
It looks bad when you are threatening to furlough. You have to look out for ALL pilots, not just those making captain wages.
 
I think this is JR league and should be avoided at all costs at the major level.

And if people are on the street while this is going on ....... unacceptable.
 
My point is I'm all for companies paying top $$$$ for a guy in the right seat.

It wouldn't make any financial sense whatsoever to furlough a guy making $20/hour and pay someone else to occupy that seat for $120/hour.... though, we ARE talking about the airlines.

True, we do have to look out for everyone.
 
At XJT CA's can fly as F/O's. I'm typed in the darn thing, I think I can fly it from the F/O's seat. It might not be pretty though.
 
Thanks for the few PM's guys... starting to compile a good list.

Some of you have said that you can fly right seat even though you are a Captain. But are you doing 3 take offs and landing in the sims from that seat also?
Or are you just doing a regular left seat check ride?

The issue of Captains back filling FO's is an issue on 2 front, IMO.

1) as someone said earlier.. "I'm typed in the thing but it won't be pretty"
I can tell you from a legal standpoint an airline would be paying out on the civil side if anything ever happened. I really do think it's a safety issue.
2) It gives the company an out to have less pilots on the property. Yes, it might only mean a couple of percantages points less.. but if it saves the company from hiring 5-10 FO's then they win/are happy and we (as a work force) lose.

Keep it coming guys.. and thanks
 
Your current no matter what seat your 3 bumps are in! Is it safe? Maybe yes, maybe no. Is it fair during furloughs? Definitely not. But from a legality standpoint I think it does not matter. I mean, my ticket does not say PIC privileges only!
 

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