Pilots, Us Airways Remain At Odds

[mweiss]

The hours worked a month by a pilot or flight attendant is only block time (I.E. Door open door closed)...

Yes, of course. That wasn't my point. Of course there are safety issues. I just hate hearing the rhetoric of "every minute I'm not inside my house is a working minute," because it doesn't garner any sympathy from road warriors who do the same thing.

When doing a proper apples to apples comparison, how about sticking with the hours between showing up at the airport for the start of the day and leaving the airport at the end of the day? It's still a lot of hours, but it doesn't smack of unnecessary inflation.

 

[PITbull]

mweiss,

"Smack of unnecessary inflation, you say??????


You really, really, really are clueless on your point above.

Again, flight crews are paid when they are in the air. If you take in consideration ground time, up and including boarding and deplaning and ALL the duties just associated with that....we're talking 12-14 hours duty day with 5 hours guarantee of pay per day. For example... a 4 day trip may only be worth 20-21 hours for the entire 4 day trip, however, your duty day maybe upward in the 12-14 hours per day each of those 4 days to obtain that 20 hours of flight pay.

 

[USFlyer]

"Smack of unnecessary inflation, you say??????

If I include time spent in hotels, I'm paid about $5/hour. Trust me, the rest of the working population considers "hotel time" outside of "work time". Regardless, this discussion is pointless ... the discussion was debating 95 vs. 90 hours, not whether each of us is away 1 hour or 600 hours a month. I understand flight crews are away from home a lot, just like I'm away from home a lot as part of my job (having spent approx. 100 nights so far in 2004 in a hotel room).

 

[mweiss]

"Smack of unnecessary inflation, you say??????

You really, really, really are clueless on your point above.

No, you just really, really, really have proven yet again that you read about two words and then reply.

 

[PITbull]

If I include time spent in hotels, I'm paid about $5/hour. Trust me, the rest of the working population considers "hotel time" outside of "work time". Regardless, this discussion is pointless ... the discussion was debating 95 vs. 90 hours, not whether each of us is away 1 hour or 600 hours a month. I understand flight crews are away from home a lot, just like I'm away from home a lot as part of my job (having spent approx. 100 nights so far in 2004 in a hotel room).

Hey genius,

Who said anything about INCLUDING hotel over nights...

You keep repeating yourself in this thread. We are NOT including hotel overnights.

 

[PITbull]

No, you just really, really, really have proven yet again that you read about two words and then reply.

And why would we need to PROVE anything to you, pray tell?

You come on here pompously expressing to others that YOU are the only one with reading skills.


You still haven't responded to my post

 

[mweiss]

And why would we need to PROVE anything to you, pray tell?

You don't need to. Yet somehow you manage to do it, just the same. Go figure.

You come on here pompously expressing to others that YOU are the only one with reading skills.

Not at all. Saying that you and delldude don't read doesn't mean that I'm saying everyone else doesn't either. Most of the participants in the discussions around here seem to have little trouble with it.

You still haven't responded to my post

Well, that's only because I responded to it before you posted it. But, I'll give it one more shot, since you asked so nicely.

If you take in consideration ground time, up and including boarding and deplaning and ALL the duties just associated with that....we're talking 12-14 hours duty day with 5 hours guarantee of pay per day.

Uh huh. That's exactly what I said.

how about sticking with the hours between showing up at the airport for the start of the day and leaving the airport at the end of the day? It's still a lot of hours

Count those hours. Don't give us the crap about hours in the hotel room being part of the duty hours.

In other words, if you had read what I wrote, you would have noticed that we were in agreement. Instead, you called me clueless and argued precisely the same point I had just argued.

 

[PITbull]

Well, that's only because I responded to it before you posted it. But, I'll give it one more shot, since you asked so nicely.
Count those hours. Don't give us the crap about hours in the hotel room being part of the duty hours.

We were not in agreement.

My point is that you were saying...

"Don't give us the crap about hours in the hotel room being part of the duty hours.


The POINT IS, we are not giving you, or any one, crap about hotel room times. You and USFlyer keep repeating that. Its not part of our "duty time" presentation postings on these boards. So, why do you keep bringing it up or implying that we are tring to exaggerate or over inflate our duty time?

Oh, I read you fine. You like to throw junk in your postings to elicit arguments. Some posters pick that up; others don't bother responding to your "blow by blow" responding quotes.

Too much energy needed.

 

[hp_fa]

Michael:

My duty days are statistically about twice what my credit hours work out to be.

At HP we get paid the greater of the following per trip:

1) Our block time per day;

2) Our duty day divided by 2; or

3) Total time away from base divided by 4.

Usually, absent irregular operations, all three work out to be very close together.

 

[mweiss]

The POINT IS, we are not giving you, or any one, crap about hotel room times. You and USFlyer keep repeating that. Its not part of our "duty time" presentation postings on these boards. So, why do you keep bringing it up or implying that we are tring to exaggerate or over inflate our duty time?

Implying? I didn't say this:

That 95 hours is FLIGHT TIME only, doesn't include preflight time, time between legs, time spent in hotels, time spent on "productivity breaks", etc. Pilots now are on the road at least 4 days a week to fly the 85 hours they fly now (note: thats 4 x 24 hours, or up to 96 hours a week NOW). OK, now how many folks here work AT LEAST 96 hours a week. I thought not!

I don't make this stuff up. I don't have to.

 

[oldiebutgoody]

Hey Michael,
Just shows ignorance to get involved in a conversation that you KNOW NOTHING ABOUT! But, that's NEVER stopped you before, why should it now. The point I was trying to make, was that there are NOT MANY professionals that would even accept a job which dictated that they are away from from MORE THAN HALF of every month, required working on weekends and holidays for MOST of your career, and then get crappy management continuously try to profit off the backs of you and your family. That was the point. YOU'VE NEVER LIVED IT, SO YOU CAN'T EVEN HAVE A CLUE ABOUT WHAT IT'S LIKE. I can't wait to see what kind of folks this career attracts in the future, because I, for one, would greatly discourage anyone I know with any abilities to get into it on any level. By the way, did you GET A JOB YET?

 

[mwereplanes]

Any time I am away from my home in connection with the airline then I am at work. And that INCLUDES time spent in hotels. If you don't think that is work, then you have never experienced it.

mr

 

[casyjones]

Hey Michael,
Just shows ignorance to get involved in a conversation that you KNOW NOTHING ABOUT! But, that's NEVER stopped you before, why should it now. The point I was trying to make, was that there are NOT MANY professionals that would even accept a job which dictated that they are away from from MORE THAN HALF of every month, required working on weekends and holidays for MOST of your career, and then get crappy management continuously try to profit off the backs of you and your family. That was the point. YOU'VE NEVER LIVED IT, SO YOU CAN'T EVEN HAVE A CLUE ABOUT WHAT IT'S LIKE. I can't wait to see what kind of folks this career attracts in the future, because I, for one, would greatly discourage anyone I know with any abilities to get into it on any level. By the way, did you GET A JOB YET?

I have been lurking for some time now as I too am involved in the airline life. Reading some of these posts clearly shows that they are some very frustrated people out there that hate their jobs and it seems their very life the way some write.

I feel that if things were that bad for me personally I would be moving on instead of posting hateful thoughts and accusations. I see a few posters seem to live to post nothing but extremely negative and down right nasty posts aimed at management.

I have a little, not qualified as a professional mind you, just a little background in psychology. I think the airlines employees are where it’s at if a good doctor of psychology wants to make a small fortune trying to figure out the airline employees state of mind and then setting a course for healing that troubled mind.


Life doesn’t begin and end in the airline business so ease up some you posters, stop and smell the roses, live your life a few days without the nastiness and see if it makes your outlook seem a little different. Never hurt to try.

The airline doesn’t stand a change if the people who make it work hate everything around them including themselves.

 

[BoeingBoy]

mweiss,

Some number of posts back in this thread, you mentioned that you didn't see how the cost of recalling furloughed pilots to fly the extra time was "negligible". Here's the rough math - exact numbers would depend on which airplanes fly how much more, what type of flying (long vs short haul), etc.

Assume the extra flying is accomplished by a mix of 320 series and 737, with 737's doing a little more than half of the extra flying. (the 737 has lowest utilization now and 320 series Caribbean/transcon flying is pretty high utilization)

Including the cost of the airplane and crew, the incremental cost of flying a 737 is about 6.5 cents per ASM, the 320 series about 4.8 cents per ASM. So use an average of 5.7 cents per ASM (weighted slightly toward the 737 cost). Note that this includes the cost of the plane (which is already paid so really needs to come out) and cost of pilots.

Take 15% of 1st quarter mainline ASM's (since it's mainline pilots and flying we're talking about) X 5.7 cents. Add 1st quarter mainline ASM's X 1st quarter CASM (11.7 cents). This gives the total cost of flying all the ASM's. Divide total cost by total ASM's and you have the CASM for flying 15% more using recalled pilots.

Now repeat with the cost of the pilots taken out of the additional flying (about 0.4 cent per ASM, leaving the incremental cost at 5.3 cents per ASM). Note that the 0.4 cents per ASM pilot cost is strictly a guess at how much of the total pilot cost per ASM is pay (would be paid to whoever flys the additional time vs how much is benefits (additional cost of using recalled pilots).

About a month ago I did the math using the numbers above. I'm not going to look up the numbers and do it again, but anyone interested can. IIRC, the difference in mainline CASM is approximately 0.1 cent per ASM. In other words, flying 15% more ASM's using recalled pilots would result in an overall mainline CASM that was 0.1 cent higher than doing the extra flying without recalling pilots. Put another way, our CASM would be less than 1% higher if we recalled pilots to do the extra flying than if we used current pilots by flying them more per month.

In my book, 1% is pretty negligible.

Jim

 

[BoeingBoy]

mweiss,

I should have added that our overall mainline CASM would go down about 1 cent if the 15% extra flying was done using recalled pilots vs about 1.1 cent using only current pilots flying more.

Jim