Fletch727

Paxhauler and Sniper - I have worked in Crew Planning, Crew Scheduling and in management before coming over to the other side of the fence. Granted, it has been a few years ago, but I am relatively privy to the inner workings of staffing and what is looked at.

This will be my last post regarding this issue, but kudos to you if you can live the way you do and drop below guarantee as an FO. I know I would struggle doing that if I didn't have a second income, and I live on my own. It can be argued that it's a purely black and white issue, however, I would beg to differ. Just my opinion.

ToiletDuck

You've only pointed out one variable of the equation. Alone it means nothing. If they owe $70mil in bonds coming due how great is that $50mil looking?

SpiraMirabilis

Unless I'm mistaken all the bonds were settled. It wasn't bonds being due that was an issue it was bonds due in 2023 (or sometime) that had a clause that allowed the bondholders to force Mesa to buy them back in 2009 given certain circumstances.

In any event, there was lease payments due to Bombardier but I dunno how that is going.

Luv2Rotate

Has anyone heard anything about the Delta/Mesa verdict? I'd hate to see additional Brothers/Sisters on the street. It's a shame 100 more of Mesa's pilots will soon be looking for work. I hope this industry turns soon.

SpiraMirabilis

Haven't heard anything yet. In my opinion this furlough may be based partly on the belief that the verdict will be in Mesa's favor and Delta will choose to settle out of court for payoff $ and maybe help with Embraer to return the ERJs prior to lease date, if so the need for pilots would be decreased.

But that is just a guess.

Luv2Rotate

Sounds like an educated guess to me.

Airfix

Sniper,

I generally agree with your opinions but here I must disagree.

1) Picking up opentime to increase your flying or pay with guys on furlough hurts the furloughees due to less reserve coverage needed by the company. No argument from me there
2) Swapping a trip (in one transaction) to make it more commutable for another trip within +0 / -2-3 hours hardly affects the reserve coverage as your original trip goes back to the reserve pot. Hence I can't see how it affects reserve coverage and therefore barely affects furloughees.
3) Dropping a trip completely (good luck with that) and then picking up another trip within +0 /-2-3 hours on different days in a separate transaction again hardly affects reserve coverage for the same reasons and therefore barely affects furloughees.

Actually points 2 and 3 add more time to the reserve pot and therefore will require the company to have more reserve coverage. Please correct me in my logic if you have another way of looking at it.

I'm not sure if you are aware that the company is not permitting any pilot at the moment to pick up open time. We can swap trips for an equal or lower value but not for a greater value than our original trip. The logic is that our reserves are being under utlized. Why pay a line guy to fly 76 hours when we have reserves only flying 50 hours but getting paid 70 hours. They want to redistribute more flying to the reserves.

The whole flica 'insufficient reserve coverage' note is bull and prevents the pilots from having a fully flexible schedule. The company will always run a bare bones reserve coverage to maximise profits. Our problem is the union didn't negotiate any minimum reserve coverage or even reserve visibility in the new contract to support the 'Schedule Adjustment Period' . As a result the Schedule Adjustment Period is useless and I will say it to our ALPA negotiation committee - I TOLD YOU SO!

SpiraMirabilis

With regards to the flica thing -- it's a combination of Mesa setting the parameters too high and other factors. The company uses historic absence data to determine reserve coverage, and I'm sure you remember what it was like last year. Because Mesa couldn't staff properly it became common place to use sick calls as a way just to get a day or two off to see the family. Well, now when they look back on this day last year they see they had 9 sick calls/unvails/etc, so they set the min reserve coverage to 9 even though maybe 4 of those were just people who couldn't get the day off.

Also, flica is first come first served. If you were denied, other people may not have been. I wish there was a way to see how many reserves the company wanted, how many they had and how many previous flica requests were approved that day(s).