Southeast Airlines

[Avi8er10]

Can anyone give me the gist on southeast airlines? Good, Bad? Any info will do...Thanks!

 

[climbhappy]

info on southeast

worked there in 2003 The company consist of 65 to 70 pilots for 8 jets. 4 dc-9s owned by the pres, 2 md 83s and 2 md 88 all on power by the hour. The president and the vp of marketing , a former flight attendent who looks and dresses like JLO, run the company. they are anti-pilot. the pilots just voted in teamsters in feb/04.

the pilots are mostly furloughed TWA, united, vanguard, midex and a mixed bag of regionals guys like I was. Every Capt i flew with was a consumate pro and i learned alot. One capt is a acitve reserve ,marine aviator who flew in desertstorm. i was honored to just share the cockpit with him. the bases are PIE,FLL,SFB, and ABE. The fo pay was 42.86 to start for 70 hrs. the captain pay has been frozen at 60k.

The planes are mostly full.

My biggest complaint was no direct deposit. I would get my check from the mail usually 10 after payday. secondly, they intentionally make dependent healthcare unaffordable, by charging around 6-7 hundred for it. as a family man it pissed me off. the company i left has the direct deposit and much better healthcare. today that is worth something.

 

[bafanguy]

I could swear there was a post on here yesterday re Southeast Airlines but I can't find it now. It was a newspaper article about a battle between a pilot and mgmnt over his refusal to fly an airplane he considered unsafe. It was NOT a pretty story. Maybe it got deleted and the poster can send it in again.There are always two sides to a story, but this one would give me pause.

 

[D-Bo]

Part 1

[font=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva][size=-1]Southeast Airlines skirted safety, pilots allege
By JEAN HELLER, Times Staff Writer
Published July 4, 2004

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The flight manual told Capt. Richard Hirst one thing, but a Southeast Airlines executive was telling him another.

The book said the Southeast DC-9 scheduled to fly from Orlando to Newark, N.J., had a maximum safe takeoff weight of 105,000 pounds.

But Hirst's plane weighed 108,000 pounds on that day in September 2002. Southeast's director of operations told him to take off anyway.

Hirst wanted proof that the extra weight wouldn't risk a crash. He asked the operations director, Steve Malone, for the documentation.

Malone's angry response was caught on a tape recording the pilot made secretly.

"I can't get you a copy of that," Malone shouted. "It's none of your g--d--- business."

Actually, it was.

The captain of a flight is legally responsible for a plane's safety, according to Federal Aviation Administration regulations. After consulting with Southeast's safety director, Hirst refused to fly.

Hirst says he was fired the next day. Largo-based Southeast disputes that, but this much is clear:

In a labor action Hirst brought in Texas against the airline, and in a second brought in Tampa, testimony from several former Southeast pilots paints a picture of an airline that sometimes chose its schedule over safety.

While the airline insists it is safe, pilots detailed a laundry list of safety infractions, operational shortcuts, sloppy training practices and strong-arm pressure by airline officials trying to stay under the FAA's regulatory radar.

Among the allegations, all made in U.S. Labor Department administrative law proceedings against the 5-year-old airline, which is based at St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport:

Pilots and flight attendants were told to work more hours than FAA regulations permit or to fly while ill.

Southeast was slow to fix mechanical problems, and pilots were told to avoid noting chronic problems in maintenance logs. In one case, a pilot was ordered to fly a plane with a possibly defective landing gear.

Pilots, most of whom had experience elsewhere in the industry, were subjected to threats and ordered not to challenge authority when they questioned Southeast's procedures.

Pilot training occurred in substandard conditions with substandard materials.

Southeast's attorney insists it is one of the most safety-conscious carriers in the industry. He said most of the pilot allegations are a conspiracy of lies.

"They're all friends," Terence Haglund, vice president for administration and legal affairs, said of the pilots. "What's their motivation for perjury? I don't know. . . . They're disgruntled former employees."

Haglund said Southeast has a spotless safety record. It has had no accidents, but it has recorded a number of procedural sanctions from the FAA. While these are not uncommon in the industry, they do represent deviations from required performance.

FAA records show that during Southeast's five years of operation, the agency has initiated 56 investigations of the airline and its employees on a variety of issues, including maintenance questions.

Others involved drug testing, record keeping, training, flight operations and security. Of the 56 investigations, 43 have been closed, at least six with no action, according to the FAA. The rest resulted in letters to the airline requiring correction of problems -- and fines in some cases -- and letters of warning to pilots. The remaining cases are still open.

Kathleen Bergen, FAA spokeswoman for the southern region, said at least some of the open investigations have been moved to Washington for "settlement hearings." Putting pilot complaints about Southeast into an industry perspective is difficult. Because of its status as a large, privately owned charter carrier, there aren't many airline equivalents.

All airlines have their share of labor problems and allegations by pilots, flight attendants and mechanics of company abuses. But the legal proceedings in this case provide a glimpse inside the sometimes rancorous world of commercial aviation.


* * *

James Ford of Valrico flew for 12 years with USAir Express, DHL and USAirways. He was furloughed as airlines cut flights after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

In June 2002, Ford signed on with Southeast, a carrier that emerged in 1999 from the remnants of another airline called SunJet. Southeast is considered a "supplemental carrier," which the FAA defines as a charter airline.

Southeast, with an eight-plane fleet of DC-9s and MD-80s, has regular service to nine U.S. destinations, including Gulfport, Miss., Orlando/Sanford, Fort Lauderdale, Newark and Las Vegas. Its crews and aircraft at one time also flew to the Caribbean and Mexico, but those flights were discontinued.

Southeast has 362 employees and, according to federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics figures, flies about 723,000 passengers a year.

Despite the difficulty finding flying jobs, Ford testified at Hirst's hearing that he stayed with Southeast only five months, "until I had enough, which was Nov. 11, 2002."

One incident that contributed to his decision to leave, he said, occurred during a July 2002 flight from Puerto Rico to Orlando when he was first officer.

"We got a . . . nose-gear-unsafe light that came on, which basically means you don't know the status of that nose gear, whether it's going to drop out of the bay or, upon landing, it might retract," he said.

After a safe landing in Orlando, Capt. Leroy Wunderlich reported the incident to Southeast maintenance and said he would write it up in the aircraft maintenance log so the problem could be fixed before the return flight, Ford testified.

He added: "The mechanic at Southeast over in St. Pete responded, "Do not write it up in the maintenance log . . . Do your (turnaround) in Orlando, pick up the people, fly them down to San Juan (and) the work will be conducted in San Juan. That way, you're keeping the integrity of the schedule.' "

When Wunderlich refused to fly the plane with a possible gear problem, a Delta mechanic was called in and reported that the fix would be complicated. Southeast refused to allow a lengthy repair. Instead, it ordered the crew to have the gear locked in the down position and to return the plane to St. Petersburg. The San Juan trip was canceled.

Ford said Wunderlich called him that evening to tell him he would have a new captain the next day.

Wunderlich, who lives in Texas and works for a charter freight company in Detroit, said Southeast forced him to resign.

"I had a house in Colorado that was being threatened by (forest) fires, rains in Texas had damaged my mother-in-law's roof, and her dementia required us to find a nursing home for her," Wunderlich said. "All this was coming at me at once, and Southeast wouldn't give me any time off."

He said the nose-gear problem, which occurred frequently, was an excuse to get rid of him.

"When we got back to St. Pete, Malone called me and told me to come in and bring my ID," he said. "He handed me the letter of resignation and told me to sign it."

Southeast's attorney said he didn't recall under what circumstances Wunderlich left the company.

"But I can tell you that no one has been or ever will be fired from Southeast Airlines for reporting a safety issue," Haglund said. "The concept is so foreign to me."







[/size][/font]

 

[D-Bo]

Part 2

Ford also testified that on several occasions, he and other crew members were pressured by Southeast to fly more hours than FAA regulations permit and that, once, a Southeast employee changed flight records to show that the crew was legal.

"I was going to quit flying and get out of aviation if my choice was Southeast or nothing," he testified.

Haglund said he was unaware of any situations in which records of crew duty time were altered, adding that no one would get away with it because of the outcry it would generate from flight crews.

Haglund also said pilots, past and present, simply don't understand the FAA regulations.

In the case of Hirst, the pilot who refused to fly without safety documentation, Haglund said the increase in legal aircraft weight from 105,000 to 108,000 pounds was in Hirst's flight manual but that Hirst "just didn't know where to look for it."

But that statement is contradicted by Malone's sworn testimony in the Texas proceeding.

"It is correct today . . ." lawyer Gary Evans asked, "that on Sept. 29, 2002, you were flat wrong about that aircraft being suitable for legal operation above 105,000 pounds, is that not correct?"

"Yes, sir," Malone replied, "that's correct."

Haglund said that of all of the complaints that grew out of the two legal actions heard thus far, none of the pilots who testified had ever brought their concerns to the company or to the FAA.

"That's what's so frustrating to me, because none of these pilots ever brought a safety issue to us," he said.

Hirst challenged Haglund's statement.

"We brought it to their attention all the time," he said.



[size=-1]The legal proceedings against Southeast began when Hirst filed a complaint with the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, charging he had been fired illegally in retaliation for reporting the Sept. 29, 2002, confrontation with Malone to the airline's safety officer and the FAA.

Under a federal whistle-blower protection law, this is protected activity. But Southeast argued that the law did not apply because Hirst was not fired; he quit.

Hirst said that after he refused to fly, Malone ordered him to Southeast's Largo headquarters with all of his company manuals and his airline ID. Several times after the incident, Hirst testified under oath, Malone told him he was "off the payroll."

Later, Southeast's chief pilot gave Hirst a paycheck and told him to leave airline property.

Haglund said Hirst was never told he was off the payroll; rather he was told he was "off the (flight) line," and that when he was called to come back to work several days later, he refused "because he already had another job lined up."

After an investigation, OSHA found that Hirst's complaint had no merit. But Hirst requested a hearing before a Department of Labor administrative law judge who came to a far different conclusion.

"FAA regulations require the pilot in command to ensure rather than assume that all is well with the aircraft . . ." Judge Russell Pulver wrote in his decision May 26. "No other officer or employee of an airline may interfere with that non-delegable duty."

Malone's assertion that Hirst had quit was insupportable, Pulver said, adding, "Capt. Malone lacks all credibility as a witness, and (I) found it painful to watch him contradict himself on the stand."

Pulver awarded Hirst $55,000 in back pay, plus interest. Southeast has appealed the decision.

It was not Pulver's role to pass judgment on the safety complaints aired at the proceeding; the only issue before him was whether Hirst had been fired illegally for reporting issues to the FAA.

Hirst, an experienced pilot without a blemish on his record, has since been hired by JetBlue Airways.


* * *

Nick Rougas of Clearwater, a veteran helicopter pilot and instructor in the Marine Corps and Coast Guard, joined Southeast in April 1999. He testified during whistle-blower action he brought in Tampa that he had never called in sick until Dec. 13, 2002, when he had symptoms of a hard flu.

It was the first of several conversations over the next few days during which Rougas said Southeast employees pressured him to fly sick.

When he tried to beg off a round trip from Fort Lauderdale to Newark, he testified: "Malone got on the phone and said, "Well, we need you to do a flight, and if you don't do the flight, you're fired.' "

Rougas took the flight.

Rougas said he supplied a doctor's note on Dec. 23 that he was fit to fly again, but was not given another flight before being suspended Jan. 2, 2003.

Southeast officials say Rougas, then the senior first officer, was an unprofessional jokester who annoyed fellow pilots with stunts and disrupted flight schedules so he could officiate amateur hockey games. Among his offenses: bringing a rubber duck to a water evacuation training session, wearing bunny ears at Easter and a Santa hat at Christmas.

Haglund said Rougas was fired in February 2003 after being recalled from suspension, because he immediately began trying to change the flight schedule for a hockey game. Rougas believes the real reasons were his complaints to the FAA and a disparaging remark he made about Malone to a co-worker. Word got back to Malone. Rougas was fired the next day.

Haglund said neither had anything to do with Rougas' dismissal. And he says Rougas has a vendetta against Southeast. An FAA official testified that Rougas told him "he was out to take the company down."

Rougas has sued Southeast in Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court alleging that his firing violated Florida's whistle-blower act. That case is pending.

On Wednesday, Administrative Law Judge Larry Price ruled against Rougas in his Tampa case. As in Hirst's case, the judge did not address safety issues raised in testimony. He dismissed the case, he said, because Rougas failed to prove his firing came as a direct result of whistle-blower reports he made to the FAA about flight practices at Southeast.

Rougas reported the pressure to fly while sick to Bruce Haseltine, the principal operations inspector for the FAA with jurisdiction over Southeast.

"I wasn't very pleased with that," Haseltine said. "I violated the airline for it." But later he voided the violation because the captain on the Fort Lauderdale-Newark flights couldn't corroborate that Rougas was ill.

Haseltine, whose job is to make sure Southeast's operations comply with federal regulations, acknowledged the airline has had some problems.

"Do they make mistakes? Sure," he said. "But we're not convinced that Southeast is operating on an unsafe basis regularly -- on a regular basis. If I allowed that, I'd be remiss in my duties."

Haglund declined to make Malone or other employees available for interviews.


* * *

Pilots who testified in the Hirst case complained of deficient teaching materials. Hirst described a day when there were no teaching materials at all.

"We were required to sit in the room for -- for four hours over a certain subject, and they didn't have material to teach on that subject," he said. ". . . They put in 60 Seconds Over Tokyo, an old Metrocolor film, and we sat and watched the full version of 60 Seconds Over Tokyo while in training class."

One frequent pilot complaint during the hearings was Southeast's decision to conduct training exercises, not at St. Petersburg-Clearwater, but at a much smaller airport in Hernando County.

The Hernando County Airport in Brooksville has no control tower, and most of the air traffic consists of small, slow, private airplanes, many carrying student pilots.

Hirst recalled in an interview the experience he and another prospective Southeast pilot had there.

The other pilot "was literally standing in the cockpit trying to see out over the nose to spot little planes we were overtaking," Hirst said. "The (collision alert) was going off, and I kept telling the guys, "This isn't right. This isn't safe.' "

According to Hirst, an airline trainer in the cockpit with them told them everything was fine, that he had all the planes around them in sight.

The trainer "told us they went to Brooksville so they wouldn't have to pay the landing fees at St. Pete and wouldn't have to spend time in the landing pattern burning fuel," Hirst said.

Such operations at Brooksville are legal, and Haglund denies that they are unsafe. He said the pilot trainer denies the collision alarm was sounding.

"The reason we go to Brooksville is that St. Pete-Clearwater asked us not to do maneuvers there to keep down aircraft noise," he said.

But Tom Jewsbury, director of operations at the St. Petersburg airport, said Southeast "never approached us about doing maneuvers at the airport. We're not authorized to prohibit that."

David Lusk, who was Southeast's chief pilot and took over as director of operations in 2003, acknowledged during the Hirst hearing that there were training deficiencies, unrelated to Brooksville, the FAA required Southeast to fix.

"We had been doing training out at the hangar (at St. Petersburg-Clearwater airport) and it was not a good environment," Lusk said. ". . . The FAA requested that we find a better location. . . . The FAA also felt like there needed to be more consistency, more training aids, (that) we needed a training department," said Lusk, who is now an FAA aviation safety inspector in Hawaii.

Lusk acknowledged that many of the reforms ordered by the FAA came about as the result of investigations prompted by Southeast employee complaints to the FAA whistle-blower hotline. Asked how many complaints there had been, Lusk replied:

"I have no clue. Never asked. Was never told. Didn't want to know."

[/size]

 

[klhoard]

One of our S/O's was hired by this outfit directly into the Captain seat. After he got a good look at the operation, he told them "No Thanks" and left after he passed his checkride.

Apparently they have stopped hiring experienced pilots that point out their operation's weaknesses. . .

It's only a matter of time until we read about this airline in the papers. . . .

 

[GogglesPisano]

One of our S/O's was hired by this outfit directly into the Captain seat. After he got a good look at the operation, he told them "No Thanks" and left after he passed his checkride.

Apparently they have stopped hiring experienced pilots that point out their operation's weaknesses. . .

It's only a matter of time until we read about this airline in the papers. . . .

A classic non-union operation.

 

[Snakeplt]

They just had a tire blowout during takeoff out of Ohio but didn't notice it until they landed at their destination...you might guess that it was BALD but the company is to chincy (is that how you spell it ?) to do proper maintenance. Also pressure to fly LONGER THAN ALLOWED days and to fly crappy, UNDER MAINTAINED AIRPLANES is the NORM at Southeast Airlines...just what I am told from a friend/employee on the property right now. The worst of the worst !!!

 

[DonVerita]

Copied straight from AviationInterviews.com:

Interview experience:
Do yourself a huge favor and stay away from here, even if you are on furlough! This place is an affront to the piloting profession. Each day of ground school was filled with more bad news about how we could expect to be treated. Manuals were not complete. We've done numerous revisions already. Ground training is unprofessional. The owner even told us on the first day that if we didn't like non-sched. on demand type flying, we should start looking for another job. It used to be that everyone was based at PIE, so you could live here in the Tampa area which was nice. If you lived somewhere else, they would buy you a ticket to get where the plane was. They deal with Apple Vacations, so the planes are all over the place along the Northeast. Ratty DC-9's and 2 MD80's. But then they decided to squeeze even more blood from a stone by coming up with ghost bases. Overnight, they changed everything. Now the bases will be PIE, CLE, PHL, ABE, FLL, BWI, EWR. You will be responsible for getting yourself there and they can change these at any time. They did away with all the multi-day trips and instead made them into long out and backs so they don't have to pay per diem. That's right, they don't pay per diem unless you stay overnight somewhere, which is non-existent! Still don't know where we'll be based. When asked about parking passes at these bases, they said that we would probably have to pay for those. Somebody asked we he would have to cover PHL if he was based at BWI...answer was "it's only a 3 hour drive". Yeah, well it would be in your personal car too. Plus you'd have to pay for parking at PHL. They hire captains off the street. If you upgrade, you do not carry your seniority into the captain seat...you start at the bottom of the captain list. Nice huh? They do not pay for hotel rooms during training. What we saw of the schedules, they are an abortion. How about flying 6 days in ACY, 1 day off, then another 4. My friend who has been working there for a few months told me that once he had just finished a 4 day trip. You have to call them when the trip completes to see if they have anything else for you. He had the next 5 days off. They told him to go home and get a change of clothes because they were assigning him a 5 day trip on his days off. 2 of those 5 were days spent sitting in a hotel room somewhere (this was before everything went to all out and backs). The company counted those 2 days in the hotel as days off! These people think that reserve means you have to be available 24 hours a day with no designated 8 hour break. One day off within 7 days to them means any 24 hours free of duty. Yet they can split that 24 hours into pieces. They even think they can schedule you to fly 9.5 domestic hours in a day if they put a relief captain on board. This place is a walking violation. No wonder most of the pilots hate it here. This place is Lucifer's realm. So stay away unless you want to plunge yourself into hell.

 

[climbhappy]

Don veritas, old info?

dude,

i was there in late 03 and then left in feb o4.

the apple vacation thing has long since been gone.

they have 2 md 83, 2 md 88, 4 dc-9s

they pay 250 a week in training.

their bases are SFB,PIE,FLL and ABE.

in my time there, i saw some recurring squawks which the capt would write up at the end of the day. they would and did dispatch us with a CSD ( constant speed drive) deferred. it is MEL'able. i was never asked to fly an airplane that was illegally being used. I was only on the line for a 2 months, so that is my disclaimer.

i caution anyone about writing third party info on here without any corroborative facts or first hand accounts. it's biased, it's heresay if you weren't there, and in our courts it's inadmissable.

put the facts out here,it's only fair

the teamsters were voted in FEb 04. The benefits stink! the insurance is so high it is cost prohibitive.

 

[Skater]

"i caution anyone about writing third party info on here without any corroborative facts or first hand accounts. it's biased, it's heresay if you weren't there, and in our courts it's inadmissable"

Dude, it's not a court room. I've never heard of anyone getting sued for "hearsay" on this sight. Take an LSAT or lighten up.

 

[climbhappy]

skater, must we become so upset

skater,

i didn't talk about a suit in any way. but as you can see , the article put forth was about a suit. as one with a first hand insight, i caution people about shooting off their mouth without having been close to the seen. quoting what one's friend said is a bunch of crap. put the facts down i say, or withold your bull$hit laced opinion.

 

[DonVerita]

ClimbHappy--

Are you defending this P.O.S excuse for a substandard airline? By your own post it looks like it didn't take you long to see the light and jump ship. That post was written on the website mentioned in Oct. 2002 by a current pilot who yes...was on the property!. Go check it out for yourself before you shoot your mouth off again.

 

[mach none]

I am going to stir the pot some. The Director of Operations, Steve Malone is listed as an Eastern scab '89.

 

[DonVerita]

You are correct. He is an Eastern scab. He personifies the anti-employee, anti-pilot, anti-union corporate culture that is the hallmark there.

The place is infested with scabs and other back-stabbing scum that are rejects from other supplemental air carriers. In fairness though, there are some decent furloughees from other real airlines who through no fault of their own, have found themselves in the cesspool called Southeast. It is these upstanding individuals with backbone and integrity who alerted the FAA via the whistleblower program and who also started the drive which recently led to the Teamsters being certified as the representing union.

 

[LJDRVR]

What a sad situation when a staff reporter at a small newspaper is able to piece together a credible story that, reading between the lines, any professional pilot will be able to recognize Southeast for what it is: a quintessential "scumbag" operator.

I feel a fair amount of sympathy and empathy for those souls at Southeast whose personal values are at odds with the operating culture of their employer. (I've been their brother.)

One is able to draw quite a few parallels between some of the issues brought up in the article, and those that occurred at Downeast Airlines in the years leading up to the crash of their Twin Otter in Rockland Maine.

I really would hate to see history repeat itself, with another accident occurring that in the aftermath, the warning signs seem so incredibly obvious. Hopefully the increased public awareness caused by this article may jolt our beltless, polyester slack-wearing friends into crossing the line of weak, operator-friendly "surveillance" to one of taking real action. The fact that management is testifying in legal action that the feds are probably becoming aware of certainly helps.

There's no doubt in my mind that the skill, resourcefulness and discipline of the Southeast pilots are the only values holding together the organization. It's sad that in the year 2004 there are still operators out there where just a few weak, un-deserving, lying management and operations people are able to run an operation only because of the qualities and hard work of a few good employees (Pilots & Others.) who carry the airline on their shoulders.

I hope things improve for you folks.

Good Luck!

 

[climbhappy]

don verita, chill dude!

once again, i blew outof there like a florida thunderstorm. i saw what i saw and i listed it. i'm not defending them at all, in fact the CP called me the day i left on the front end of a six day trip and said is everything okay, as if to imply did you see something unsat. i said no, and since you guys gave me three days notice and i lost 700 in vacation pay from my other carrier, i can't help you. plus so understaffed, nobody to trip trade or substitute.

as far as shootin your mouth off, the info re: apple vacation is old and outdated. apple's own airline is called USA3000 and doing quite well.

did you work there? you act as if you have an axe to grind.

 

[klhoard]

The place is infested with scabs and other back-stabbing scum that are rejects from other supplemental air carriers.

Oh, come on. . . don't sugar-coat your opinion, let us know what you're REALLY thinking!!

Climb-happy:

Since when has anyone on flightinfo.com needed direct knowledge or actual proof to make any kind of statement before?? Lighten up. . . .

 

[climbhappy]

klhoard...fair question

no, actually this brand of hangar flying is full of opinions laced with crap. not a matter of lightening up as it is placing a degree of accuracy upon folks who trash,bash and malign anyone or thing without any first hand knowledge.

you've heard the ol grapevine axiom....if we went around a room of ten the story I told the first guy would be vastly different when it got to you.

i know where you're coming from...touchay!

 

[DonVerita]

Climbhappy--

Maybe you should stop whitewashing the situation in an attempt to justify in your own mind why you made such an irrational decision to go to Southeast in the first place, even if it was for only a few months.

The place is the worst of the worst. Not even Mesa can compare.

Since you insist on sources...here they are:

4 friends who were there or are currently there now! 2 have escaped. The other 2 are praying for a way out.

Satisfied?

Yes, SE is no longer with Apple Vacations because Apple dropped them due to their poor service, consistent tardiness, ancient ratty equipment, abhorrant maintenance, and cancelled flights.

Besides a gun to your head type work environment, let's also mention a few things that you conveniently forgot to post:

1. No pay raises of any kind unless you upgrade to Capt. Then it is frozen at 60K. 60K for flying a DC9/MD80!

2. No sick pay.

3. No vacation time or vacation pay.

4. Upgrades done OUT OF SENIORITY.

5. Training so poor even the FAA had to get involved.

6. Pilots pressured not to write up MX items.

7. Reserve days put on everyone's schedules no matter how senior.

8. Being told to cover trips out of base and it's up to the pilot to get there.

9. No per diem unless on multi-day trips which are rare ($1.00 per hour).

10. Health care coverage so poor that you'd be better off calling one of those numbers you see on telephone poles.

There's more but this is enough to paint the sordid picture. Have a nice day.