PDT and ALG work rules?

[cheezpilot]

Air Wisconsin

 

[Andy Neill]

cheezpilot,

I'd like to fine tune your information on SkyWest upgrade requirements a bit. SkyWest requires, among other things, "1000 hours of Company flight time or equivalent". The equivalent includes time that was Part 121 and crew and multi and turbine. So if someone had 1000 hours at another Part 121 carrier flying flying multi-engine turboprops or jets, that requirement would be met the day they set foot on the property.

 

[cheezpilot]

SkyWest Andy

Sorry about not getting my facts totally straight. I have a friend at Skywest and he told me that, but he had no previous crew or turbine 121 time, so he needs 1000 hours. Air Wisc requires only that you have the seniority to hold it. That is why we previously had such high time requirements (two and a half years ago it was 2500tt, 1000multi, 500 turbine). We have in the past (about three years ago) had new hires go into a CA position.

 

[ALGFLYR]

While many of our work rules are now becoming standard, the main thing that still sets our contract apart is the ability to get soft credits -- or premium pay. A simlified explanation is that if you are aked to be extended beyond your original trip, they must pay you premium pay for all duty hours beyond two hours past the original end of the trip. Premium pay is based on duty time and is paid at 1/2 your hourly rate on top of any flying you actually do. You are not obligated to take the trip if it goes beyond four hours of your original trip. While this premium pay is rare these days because of the Airways situation, it was not uncommon for two year FO's toping 40K per year and Capt. making over 100K. We have had guys in the past making well over 200 hours of flight pay in one month, while actually flying approx 95 hrs. That is hard to do, but 150-160 is more common for a month. Some don't like the extra work and are happy with their 80-90 hrs each month. But if you wanted to make some serious cash -- it WAS there.

Like I mentioned earlier, we now have guys on furlough and the overtime is beginning to dry up. As it should, we should not accept a trip they are unable to cover when we have guys on the street and so many downgraded FO's. If we are somehow able to survive this whole RJ thing happening now, ALG could once again be a great place to work. We are being asked to give concessions now and you can bet they would love to gut our contract. Most concessions given up will be pay and not work rules, such as premium pay. We have fought very hard in the past to obtain a cutting edge contract and right now it kinda hurts us in these negotiations. We will no doubt have a fight on our hands to keep our contract intact, but I think it's worth fighting for. I just hope we will be around in the future to benefit from it. Time will tell.

 

[skyward80]

ALG and PDT

I've been hearing so much from the ALG and PDT guys (and gals) about how things are falling apart over there. Is there anything coming up in the near future which may signal a resolve to the current situation? Is this something which could eventually spiral into companies scrambling for Chapter 11 protection? I assume a large part of this is due to the whole LOA 81 thing. I'm just curious. My thoughts are with all of you folks. Flying is great... it's just too bad we have all that management BS to deal with.

Skyward80

 

[FR8mastr]

We as WO can't go into bankruptcy ourselves (we are not really companies, we are cost centers for ML) So if ML goes so will we. The current problems are a result of poor management and the completely unexplainable refusal of ML pilots to allow their fellow group pilots ie WO pilots to operate ANY rj's. What loa 81 basically says is that IF the WO ever get rj's, half of the pilots required to fly them would be furloughed ML pilots. What that means to ALG as of now is if we replaced all of our 47 Dashes with RJ's we would have to furlough 200 additional pilots and downgrade another 100 pilots (to make room for the ML guys). All this is out of an alg pilot group with just over 400 pilots on the list. Also ML guys would have super senionrity over ALG guys and get paid Cpt. rates in both seats. And after all this mgmt and the ML pilots actually say "they don't understand why we won't agree to LOA 81"
PS we are also required to give up furlough protection as well. Yea it's a great deal!