Swedish Blender

I would say 95% of the line pilots have a letter in their file for something.

CheyDogFlies

IE refusing to operate an aircraft against the FARs?

CE750

I'm willing to go on a limb and say more likely refusing to wipe their arse with the CBA.. This country is so anti-union that I've found that the general culture now-a-days at all airlines (and this is largely the fault of weak pilots who are afraid to say no) is to "Fly it and grieve it" .. then 90% of the time, the grievance has 0 benefit to the poor sap having to fly it... and the company gets the benefit of getting what they want..

We have weak labor laws here, and the current congress would love to weaken them even further... it's time to send BOTH parties a message that unions aren't going anywhere.. not as long as managements like UAL, AMR, and UPS continue to play their kind of games..

SaltyDog

Alfaro,
In a nutshell, we have some really exceptional Flight Qualified managers and supervisors.
However, UPS management model has little faith in any union "hourly" employees. ATL and airline non flight qualified management treat some of the more respected flight managers little better.
Labor management or Maintenenance is in charge, not the Flight Managers/Supervisors. It is all cost, management, and any leadership from any pilot is often ignored.

Result: UPS Flight Qualified supervisors and even a few of the managers can rarely make a meaningful change that actually enhances the business and our profitability. There input is rarely acted upon with any consistency. Bad for business, our shareholders, our customers and our pilot group. Management not leadership.

The management model is stovepiped and all pilots ("hourly" or supervisor) are not really valued by the groundside handlers throughout the airline. Add to this that UPS is hiring non union pilots while leaving present pilot employees on the street. Yes, this stilts the relationship of the 'airline within an airline'
We live with these contradictions daily. It is like no other in the industry.

fdx727pilot

You do know that Pinnacle is almost like a farm club for us. Purple likes RJ pilots.

Freightpuppy

It's a bunch of bs!

To Stay or Go

Best prep for an MD-11 is the RJ.

CE750

having flown both, I find some truth in that statement.. "some"

Fast ref speeds .... check
glass cockpit .... check
FMS layout/features .... no
rotation rate ..... no
automation ..... no


putting aside the obvious (717), for smaller planes, I'd argue the Airbus 320 has far more in common with an MD11 than an RJ.. down to the large/tall cockpit which lends to a much bigger airplane feel.

It's almost as if the engineers at Airbus stole 90% of the systems and avionics implementation from Douglas.

bifff15

I flew the A319/320 at UAL and the word they spread was MD had laid off quite a few engineers at the time Airbus was designing the A320 series. Hence the MD similarities. Engineers are just like the rest of us, don't want to reinvent the wheel if they don't have to.

CE750

that makes perfect sense...thx