Some Thoughts on the TA Situation

[Live4flyng]

Unbelievable!

Just to add to what Diesel said.....

How about those scheduled 20 minute turns when 2 SUVs of bags and people roll up. Pager going off every 5 minutes asking for your ETD?????? No crew food was ordered for the 3rd leg in a row. After meticulously loading 15 bags and 8 pax, release says there is enough fuel to make it 1300NM and have a whole 800#s of fuel remaining after landing at TEB, barring no delays. After serving coffee and drinks to PAX, finally get engines cranked only to have a line guy running across the ramp saying you have an important phone call from the company. Shut down, answer phone and they want to know what time you are taking off and why there is a delay. Gee, I wonder?

The company has actually gone out of it's way to not question crews on mx or fatigue at all.

This is a good one! Hard to argue with maintenance and safety items. Fatigue has been induced by the very flight center you are working in. 14/10 every day causes fatigue, the regs make it very hard for our gracious company to argue with that. These airplanes are getting the crap kicked out of them. When you fly a business jet 1000+ hours per year that was designed to fly a maximum of 400 hours per year, things will break. Are you suggesting that NJA crews fly broken airplanes? Maybe you have forgotten what NETJETS sells.....SAFETY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have always said that Dispatch is the best group of people in the Flight Center. Usually they agree with the pilots, when the company insists on some crazy plan. I can only hope your attitude doesn't bleed over to the rest of the good dispatchers we have. Maybe you should get an ATP and a few thousand hours and come on over to the dark side. I know of one former flight coordinator we have as a line pilot now in the G-200. His perspective of what we do as pilots is dramatically different then when he was watching CNN on those big screens, and checking e-mail in the casino.

Just the view from where I'm sitting. Am I wrong?

Completely Wrong! There is absolutely no work slow down going on. You will know it when/if that time comes.

You're right that there is a section of the pilot group that goes above and beyond.

There used to be a section of about 1800 pilots that would do this. That number has gotten so small and it continues to shrink everyday. This may be the reason you think there is a slow down. The goodwill is gone, most are not willing to bend over forwards or backwards anymore for the company.

And if you think about it the more we vendor trips the worse the company's bottom line will look and the next TA will look even worse than this.

And how would you know this? If NJA has such a flawed business plan that it can't pay its' pilots a descent wage and have enough airplanes to cover all the trips it is selling; then you are correct. There won't be a next T/A, Netjets will be out of business. Stop blaming pilots for all the waste the flight center creates. Your so called "work slow down" may just be a lack of enthusiastic pilots willing to continue fixing all of your mistakes. If you don't know what you are taking about, you should "read the board a little while" longer before chiming in with a bunch of garbabge.

 

[netjetwife]

Njfltcnter, I'd like your opinion please.

One of the wives in our Online Support Group has corporate management experience and has done research for the rest of us. She has broken down the labor costs at NJA --Based on 1800 pilots, those workers are 45% of the 4000 total employees with the other 2200 making up the remaining 55%. Here is how the money is divided between the workers:

PILOTS--45% ARE PAID 25% OF THE MONEY

OTHERS--55% ARE PAID 75% OF THE MONEY


There is no way to justify this, as our corporate expert pointed out. But do feel free to try, Njflcnter.

 

[Lord Wakefield]

Just to add to what Diesel said.....

How about those scheduled 20 minute turns when 2 SUVs of bags and people roll up. Pager going off every 5 minutes asking for your ETD?????? No crew food was ordered for the 3rd leg in a row. After meticulously loading 15 bags and 8 pax, release says there is enough fuel to make it 1300NM and have a whole 800#s of fuel remaining after landing at TEB, barring no delays. After serving coffee and drinks to PAX, finally get engines cranked only to have a line guy running across the ramp saying you have an important phone call from the company. Shut down, answer phone and they want to know what time you are taking off and why there is a delay. Gee, I wonder?

I sitting here reading this an am stunned. I thought I was the only one this had happened to but didn't think people would believe me if I told the story and so I didn't. We need to do something to help those screen readers get the big picture.

 

[njfltcnter]

To All on this post.


I just wanted to say that I went way overboard and made statements that was true. I've been having plenty of problems of my own and I made a serious statement that wasn't true. Griz, I apologize for stepping over the bounderies of good discussion. I really hope that you guys get what you are after with the new agreement. But just to restate I didn't mean to offend anyone and I did. For that I am sorry. I will just sit back and read the discussions and not participate anymore. Again I am sorry.

 

[Publishers]

business

What does the below have to do with absolutely anything???? Please have your person with all that "corporate management experience" come up with something relevant to something. Just one small example, just how to account in that for flying done on behalf of Netjets by others like EJM etc. Is the money paid to those crews in these numbers.

Do something like figure if the allocated crew cost per aircraft is less than or more than crew cost on an owner flown aircraft.


"One of the wives in our Online Support Group has corporate management experience and has done research for the rest of us. She has broken down the labor costs at NJA --Based on 1800 pilots, those workers are 45% of the 4000 total employees with the other 2200 making up the remaining 55%. Here is how the money is divided between the workers:

PILOTS--45% ARE PAID 25% OF THE MONEY

OTHERS--55% ARE PAID 75% OF THE MONEY


There is no way to justify this, as our corporate expert pointed out. But do feel free to try,"

 

[netjetwife]

Publishers, you are taking my post out of context. It was directed at Njfltcnter--one of those in the 55% taking 75% of the compnay's available funds for wages. I asked him to justify that disparity--IF he could. As the NJA pilots are soon to vote on a contract, that piece of info is relevant to them, and may be of interest to pilots of other companies that are also underpaid. Perhaps it will spark a discussion of the distribution of salary money within other frac companies.

In the example you ask about concerning EJM flying, I'd say that that sounds like an operating cost...NOT a salary question. This information is ONLY the breakdown of wages paid to the 4000 NJA employees.
I wonder why Njfltcnter didn't render an opinion on the salary split??

 

[Publishers]

Probably because it is such an inane piece of logic that even I hesitated to comment only made worse by your calling the outsourced flights an expense or even calling it money for distribution available for funds for wages. There is no such thing.

Secondly, there is no disparity. What is it "supposed to be". What ratio is acceptable. How many people should it take to run this kind of operation?

In this thread there has been some good points, but this is totally idiotic. If I have a company with a great many older aircraft, I may have 4 times the number of maintenance personnel than another company. None of this means anything.

What most of these fractionals are doing is hustling like hell to overcome some costs for deadheads and other inefficiencies this approach has. The point I was trying to make on the outsourcing of flights is that the number of people at Netjets is reflective of all the flying, whether it is Netjets, EJM, our Vendor supplied. You need dispatch, customer service, etc.etc. for whatever the total flying is. You need pilots only for what you fly. If your argument made any sense at all-- which it does not-- you would have to figure in all that as well.

 

[netjetwife]

Thanks for backing me up, Griz! Speaking of VPs....what do ya wanna bet that it was one of them that came up with the huge waste of money/ letter and DVD campaign? My what a productive lot they are! NOT!!

 

[Sarka]

What makes this issue doubly sad is that a great amount of the support folks; the flight managers, dispatchers and all the adminstrative folks at Bridgeway and Easton aren't raking in the bucks either.

I don't have the raw numbers to check netjetswife's figures but it wouldn't surprise me. We've got more Vice-Presidents than Carter has little pills. Vice-Presidents don't come cheap.

After this TA gets voted down, neither do pilots.

I can affirm what Griz is saying here. NJ did a study last year that compared NJ employee salaries (non-flying) with industry averages for similar positions and locations. Everyone was given the results that showed the industry averages for those positions and a pay range for their particular position. I, and everyone I have talked with (non-management), were very near the bottom of those pay ranges. The "screen-readers" are definately NOT the ones raking in the big bucks. Three percent pay raises annually for most, if anything.

I will have to say that we have had alot of VP's, but they seem to be cutting some of those postions lately. There still seems to be quite a few VP's running around here though.

 

[netjetwife]

At our Denver Road Show/Con Job, we asked if the MEC, in looking over the company financials, had seen the salaries for management. The answer was NO. Those of us in the room all thought that would have been a helpful piece of financial information to have. Typically, the MEC was not on the same wave length as the rest of us. They didn't get it. Hopefully, they will GET IT later this month when they are voted out of office.