The downward slide of....... crew meals.

[jackbo]

you guys are a bunch of whiners.

for christ's sake, my airline has no food of any kind on board. if they gave us one bag of potato chips i would kiss the god damn ground.

some people will always find a reason to complain. blow it out your ass.

 

[DorkProp]

Jackbo-

Geez, don't get so worked up about it. Crew meals are one of the few plusses in our contract. They are meant to improve productivity. But it defeats the purpose when they are of poor quality or not suitable for the time of day. We have every right to complain when our contract is not being followed.

 

[pipejockey]

Well we have had the concept of crew meals explained to those of us who were not privy to them. But now I must ask ya'll what is this contract thing I have heard about a couple times in the last several posts? It sounds like it's a good thing!

 

[jtf]

What regionals have crew meals? My guess is pretty few. I like that some have the contract stipulation to give either time or food on days without time to eat. I'll suggest that for my companies next contract- should get a good laugh out of management, but maybe it will at least be something to bargain with or for later.

 

[suupah]

Crew Meals??

what crew meals? we don't even get perdiem! 9L

 

[WSurf]

How do you start getting crew meals? First your Pilot group needs to grow some ballz......


The ol' Grey Haired Piedmont Pilots are the reason we have crew meals! Those guys threw there balls into the wind back in the day, and started parking airplanes to go and get food even if it meant delaying the flights more then 45min. After awhile the company realized it was cheaper to just get the crew meals then parking and delaying flights!

 

[suupah]

where can i get a bottle of "growmaiballs?"

 

[OPECJet]

I'll sell you some growmaiballs for market price. Depends on the place of employment and size needed.

I'm with you on the peppers. I hate those dam CLT subs with a passion. LGA has the market cornered on crew meals. Send them out plain, and all the set up off the sandwich so you can outfit it the way you want.

BTW, leave you peppers for Surf. I watched him eat a jar of them the other day. I would imagine his FO had to suit up and communicate a few times that day....

PDT also loves to hand you $5 vouchers in place of a crew meal if it is an unscheduled meal. Used to be $8, but some cheap SOB decided to change it. They taste horrible, but high in fibre.

PSACP, once and for all. What's the value of the vouchers they hand you guys? We keep hearing you all get $10.

 

[Prop Trash]

What regionals have crew meals?

ExpressJet

Breakfast
Served on domestic flights of one to two hours - a blueberry, carrot, or spice muffin and choice of juice, milk, or coffee. Domestic flights more two hours and most international flights - cereal with cold milk, banana, and muffin or bagel, cream cheese, jelly, and fruit bar with choice of coffee, juice, or other beverage.

Lunch
Served on most domestic flights more than 90 minutes and on most international flights from Houston to Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, and the Carribean, Cleveland and Newark flights to the Carribean, and Los Angeles to Mexico flights - choice of turkey, ham, or roast beef sandwich served with fresh baby carrots and chocolate candy and choice of beverage.

Snack
Served on some domestic and most international flights more than 90 minutes during non-meal hours. Consists of salami slices, crackers, garlic or ranch spread, fresh baby carrots or trail mix, chocolate turtle, and choice of beverage.

Dinner
Served on most domestic flights more than 90 minutes and on most international flights from Houston to Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, and the Carribean, Cleveland and Newark flights to the Carribean, and Los Angeles to Mexico flights - choice of large size turkey, ham, or roast beef sandwich served with fresh baby carrots and chocolate candy and choice of beverage.

 

[WSurf]

Yea, I think its funny with the 5 dollar voucher.... What the hell can you buy in CLT for 5 bonez (I think with 5 dollars you can threw some cheeze on your burger). I had a long sit in CLT due to a cx round trip and I would have taken a 8 dollar voucher to sit at the airport. Well they said no can't do the 5 dollar vouchers, so I said send me to a day room. Most of the hotel were booked and they had to send me to a nice place. When I checked in I asked the counter lady what Piedmont (AKA US Airways) was paying for the room that I would occupy for only 2.5 hrs... She showed me a bill for 98.00 dollars. Hmmmmm, 8 dollar voucher... or 98 dollar room. Gotta love it...

 

[OPECJet]

Used to be able to get that cheeseburger from the Speedway grill for $4.95, but they went up about the time our vouchers went down.

I'm gonna have to throw another beer on the owe you list for the day room thing. No wonder we don't have any of those regional airline of the year stickers on our airplanes.

 

[DorkProp]

Our vouchers at PSA in CLT were $10. We recently stopped getting vouchers in lieu of unscheduled crew meals, and now ops keeps a number of extra crew meals on hand to handle the unscheds. The vouchers were a contract violation. Whenever I got them I still delayed the flight in order to take my contractual 1 hours break whenever possible.

 

[OPECJet]

I was hoping you'd tell me that ya'll were down to $5 too. We were told it was airways that made the decision to drop ours to $5. I guess they figure it doesn't take as much food to fly a Dash as it does a CRJ. Cheap bastards..... They aren't in our contract either. It was a way to work with the company to keep the airplanes on schedule. Then they stepped on us again.....

When that $5 thing happened, most of us stopped taking them, but as usual, many guys backed down. Or just took them anyway complaining the whole way to get the cheeseburger. I've had near confrontations about them with a couple of CA's who wanted to take the voucher instead of getting to the overnight a little late. Then it was me backing down to preserve cockpit civility. Always seemed to happen on the last leg of the first day on a 4 or 5 day trip. Also never seemed like something worth disturbing the peace over.

Now if we could just get them to stop putting banana peppers on the subs. Those things are a leading cause of morning mudbutt.

 

[PSAChiefPilots]

The date they went to $5 dollars is probably the same date that PSA's went away.

My argument was you can't eat a piece of paper but a voucher was given to keep the flow of schedules going.

The idea was to Grab food and keep it moving but taking the hour as well was new to me, never heard of anyone doing that...I had heard of Captain USA waiting an hour to get the Voucher.....Dork Pilot, your not Captain USA are you???

Relax it was a joke, Enjoy the "Sick Sack", That's what I heard them called.....Vouchers are gone. Heck, I'd love to get rid of Crew meals as well but that would require Scheduling efficiency which is never going to happen.....

Remember, the first step to fixing a problem is admiting there is a problem.
PSACPSP

I was hoping you'd tell me that ya'll were down to $5 too. We were told it was airways that made the decision to drop ours to $5. I guess they figure it doesn't take as much food to fly a Dash as it does a CRJ. Cheap bastards..... They aren't in our contract either. It was a way to work with the company to keep the airplanes on schedule. Then they stepped on us again.....

When that $5 thing happened, most of us stopped taking them, but as usual, many guys backed down. Or just took them anyway complaining the whole way to get the cheeseburger. I've had near confrontations about them with a couple of CA's who wanted to take the voucher instead of getting to the overnight a little late. Then it was me backing down to preserve cockpit civility. Always seemed to happen on the last leg of the first day on a 4 or 5 day trip. Also never seemed like something worth disturbing the peace over.

Now if we could just get them to stop putting banana peppers on the subs. Those things are a leading cause of morning mudbutt.

 

[Tooslow]

Well at ExpressJet Turkey and/or Ham sub style. Regular meals at meal time.

 

[DorkProp]

We did get rid of crew meals a while back. It was one of our "concessions". As a result the schedules went downhill because of the meal breaks that had to be built in. There were three hour breaks every day on every trip. Personally, I'll take a crew meal every day if it means I don't have to sit for three hours.

I'm not captain USA but I did insist on the hour break a few times when I was given a voucher in LGA and CLT.

 

[BRA]

Working at colgan, this stuff is all pretty interesting to read about. There is absolutely zero crew meals or any kind of food at colgan. There are no breaks to get any food at colgan what so ever. And, unless you are doing an overnight, there is zero per diem. You guys get per diem on top of these crew meals? Our place will never change, all the senior ones have been jumping ship this year. Throw in the outstation basing...and no one ever communicates to form a plan to get things changed. The only hope is at IAH where i think eventually 60 pilots will all be based together. Problem is we have around 400.