n757st
It's always sunny in JFK
- Joined
- Sep 2, 2003
- Posts
- 888
True statement. It's also true that it's cheaper to keep line holders' lines reduced 5-10 a piece with artificially low bid divisors, put the remainder on "reserves", and keep reserve coverage at the minimum or the red. It's also better for the company to reduce average daily productivity to the minimum allowed, which turns everyone flying a pairing into ready made "reserves" since the reserves are already taken. This is "necessary" because when there's a system disruption, the company literally has no idea where crews are unless they're actively flying at the time. They still haven't gotten the hang of keeping track of reserves, so they schedule them to fly leftover open time and use low productivity line holders to fill in gaps. All this reduces quality of life for line holders by keeping line values down and making it very difficult to trade for something better.
There's the problem, not over-hiring: misuse of reserves, driven almost entirely by the artificial lowering of line values and pairing productivity.
I remember the company taughting the line that they want our reserves to fly 60 hrs/ month to keep pilot productivity up. I just talked to a fo that was on a trip bought from a line holder because he's flown 50 hrs in 3 months and needed his 100..... And this was over the holidays. Simply put, premium pay is cheaper then paying benefits and salary to a bunch of pilots who aren't even flying. I have heard personally from trey, who lets all admit is the biggest straight shooter in management, that the company wants us to be flying 85 hrs and reserves 60. The company does have a problem paying certain guys 140 hrs credit, but by guys flying close to 75-100 hrs a month we have to have less pilots, they pay less benefits , and we have less guys sitting around.