tomgoodman

A museum in YEG had an exhibit on the early days of bush flying in winter. The procedure after landing was to quickly drain all the engine oil into a bucket while it was still warm. It would solidify during the night, but you would heat it over your campfire the next morning and pour it back into the engine. Then the airplane had better start before the oil congealed inside the engine, or else.....

Check Complete

Nothing sucks quite like SkyWest OAS PBS, it baffles even some of the software engineers that fly here.

I'm very senior and I still get screwed by it, and yes the company manipulates it before your award comes out.

Cruz5350

Maybe I'm partial to CMX because I have a cabin nearby but I think it's one of our best overnights. Ya it cancels a lot and gets tons of snow but it's actually a really nice area and if you take the hotel car copper harbor is a short drive and totally worth it.

rcfd13

I actually like CMX more than a lot of our ORD overnights. The hotel is a bit of a dump and I've gotten stuck there before but you can't beat $2 drafts at Keeweenaw and Jimmy Johns 20 feet away from the hotel. I'd prefer CMX to some of the overnights where you have to walk a mile to the nearest restaurant.

rickair7777

Noobs: Copy and save this and then refer back when you can bid a line. It will make more sense after you've bid and failed miserably. You'll have plenty of airport sits and crappy overnights to spend learning more about PBS!

- If you end up in a small domicile, bid pairings for the first 5-6 layers, then a layer or two of conservative properties to "catch" you so you don't fall out the bottom of layer 7. Make sure your respect legalities and company buffers. Make you sure you bid each pairing on a specific date...if you just select the pairing with no date, you might end up working when you didn't want to.

- At a large domicile it's harder to bid pairings because there are so many you have to choose from. Use the search feature to narrow down the pairing pool for each layer, and gradually open up the search parameters for each layer. If you want, you can bid properties only for your fisrt few months to get a feel for that, and then start doing pairing. Initially do pairings in the first 3-4 layers, and then properties to backstop yourself.

- Be very, very careful about using pairing properties when bidding specific pairings...this will have massive unintended consequence. Try to bid ONLY specific pairings in a pairing layer. Most line properties are OK to mix with specific pairing bids.

- If you want a certain day off real bad, bid for it layers 1-6, but bid to work that day on layer 7...that way if it turns out that it's impossible (due to seniority or coverage) for you to have the day off, at least you won't fall out the bottom and be at the mercy of the company and all the other bidders.

- Need a certain day off real bad? Try to load up your schedule in days prior with six days of work or as close to 28 hours as you can get. Then you won't be legal to work on your target day.

- If you fall out of layer 7, you can be awarded anything at all which will be whatever nobody else wanted to fly, and the company has to get rid of. Reserves will probably have better trips than a guy who falls out of layer 7.

- Read the online manual. Specifically, DO NOT use any line or pairing property bid without reading the directions first. Many have non-intuitive limitations, will conflict with other property bids, or will invalidate your pairing bids. I've seen super-senior peeps decide to "try out" a property they've never used before and get utterly hosed for an entire month. Also the directions are not written well...if it's not clear to you, ask somebody on the help line or the SAPA forums.

If you don't bid pairings, someone junior to you WILL make out like a bandit at your expense...and I was that person (the bandit) for many years. SKW PBS punishes those who are not tech savvy, computer programming experience will help you understand the myriad possible permutations of logic.

turboflyin

That's how we all felt when we were in class. They gave us a couple days of professionalism classes, a full 2 hours on ASAP, yet PBS, the most important thing that controls our lives on line, they spent about an hour on. I'm still on reserve but I've picked the brains of everyone I've flown with, and even had an IOE LCA sit down with me during an overnight and we spent almost 2 hours going over all the little details.

Now I keep reading that there are 2 classes in October? Is this true? Does anyone know how many people are going to be in class, and if they're going to continue running 2 classes per month?

Also, does anyone know aprox how many guys we're losing per month?

elmetal

according to sapapilot.org we lost 71 in the last 3 months and added 74

disillusioned

I've been keeping track just for my own curiosity. Since May 28th we have lost a total of 95 pilots. 51 CA and 44 FO's. Average seniority number for CA's is 22,000 and for FO's is 41,000

New Hire June two CRJ classes 48 and 6 ERJ, July one CRJ class 32 and 8 ERJ, August one CRJ class 27 and 7 ERJ, September one CRJ class 28 for a total of 156 new hires. I also show 131 upgrades since June including the October class for the CRJ. Some upgrades from CRJ to ERJ but most ERJ classes have been transition from CRJ CA.

Again since we don't get regular communication on these things, this is just numbers I have come up with looking at the seniority list and bid award lists. Less attrition in September than the last couple months.

etflies

Thanks for putting those numbers together. Here's to hoping the movement keeps up.

oktex88

Let me guess...the AWOS keeps breaking in CMX stranding you there? It's happened a few times this year.