Mozam

That is what happens when they start building all the lines with under 12 hours of rest . Not to mention the 10 hour, block in to block out has become the normal to force upon the pilots.


Now they want to get visas for foreign pilots , they are starting to realize nobody wants to work at this place. Maybe they are hoping the foreign pilots will not realize the errors in payroll every month.

RckyMtHigh

Honestly don’t know how the guys 60+ are doing it. I used to be able to count on a workout with a decent meal and rest pre-covid. Now it feels like a struggle every day on every trip. I can feel the job killing me. No way I can do this for another 15 years.
One of the major decision points in my coming here was the ability to maintain a relatively normal body clock and healthy habits. I hope we get a return to pre-covid schedules but I’m not holding my breath. And the company complains that sick calls are up. Of course they are!

Lewbronski

Yep and yep.

Yet the pilot group keeps banging on the bongos of “the pilot shortage” argument like a chimpanzee. It’s pretty clear management isn’t terribly fazed, not just at SWA, but across the major airlines.

It’s like an entrepreneur showing up on Shark Tank thinking they have the most compelling product EVER! But there are little to no sales. For some reason, the market isn’t buying what the entrepreneur is trying to sell. The “sharks” usually advise the entrepreneur to pivot or throw in the towel.

No matter how convinced we are that airline management should be buying the pilot shortage as leverage argument, if they aren’t buying it, we need to pivot or throw in the towel.

Alaska threw in the towel.

It looks like United might be pivoting.

We’ll see what happens with American.

What are we going to do?

IMO, we have to respectfully turn to management and reply with:

1. A massive push to achieve an overwhelming SAV, then,
2. Begin to push the mediation process, while negotiating in good faith, toward a conclusion (the railroads accomplished this in June of this year after less than six months in mediation) and,
3. At the same time, step up the frequency of picketing. But instead of describing the pickets as “informational picketing,”change the messaging around them to communicate to the public, our investors, and our managers that they are “road to strike,” or “pre-strike” pickets or something similar.

To accomplish step one, an overwhelming SAV, requires, among other things, a giant effort to get the pilot group up to speed on how the RLA works. We are nowhere near having the level of RLA familiarity among the pilot group to vote in favor of a SAV in the numbers required to communicate the message that we need to communicate, let alone to create the will in the pilot group to push the RLA process as far as it needs to go to have our contractual demands met.

Right now, SWAPA itself doesn’t understand the RLA (see my post here as evidence for that). For example, they believe that the President has the power to “shut us down” by arbitrarily extending the duration of a PEB when, the truth is, the President only has the power to delay a strike by 60 days.

That belief has been used for years to rationalize not using the RLA as leverage because, “What’s the point? The President will just shut us down.”

Why would our own union be trying to educate the pilot group that a myth like this is true when it’s not true? Yet that’s exactly how they’re miseducating the pilot group in the latest RP.

WTFreak??!! What’s the motivation behind that? Is it that they simply don’t understand the RLA themselves? Or is it intentional? Which is worse?

Do you guys want to continue, for the rest of your careers, to deal with long duty days, short overnights, JA’s, reroutes, unplanned tail swaps, pay errors, substandard disability plans, repeated hassles with rejected medical claims, below inflation pay raises, etc? All of this stuff can be contractually addressed. But not without leverage. There’s a reason the courts, labor leaders, world-class economists, and members of the NMB have consistently described the threat of a strike as the most powerful weapon available to labor.

What are we going to do?

WHACKMASTER

Yeah, because doing four legs a day to essentially fly 300 NMs is so damn stimulating 🙄

Recent example. BNA-HOU-MDW-CLE. Yeah…..utterly mind-numbing flying. I’ll take the ocean crossings. Been there. Done that. Beats the **** out of SWA regional airline flying.

Lewbronski

Hear, hear!! I don't know that I could say it better than that.

e6bpilot

There's a lot of guys that have BTDT at SWA who don't ever want to go back to doing that. I started doing it in my late 20s and it was awesome. Then I went back and did it in my late 30s and early 40s and it was god awful. Flipping your clock and flying more than 3 time zones is way worse on your body than what we do. I hope I never have to do it again. I have seen the sun set and sun rise on the same flight more times than I can count.

Say what you will about our schedules, we don't fly traditional red eyes and if you really want to avoid a certain hour of the day, 90 percent of us can bid schedules that avoid it. There are the 10 percent locked into AM or PM reserve against their will, but the way things are going right now, that won't last long.

I do agree that they are really stretching the day out in the name of profits, but if you are really and truly fatigued, the solution is one phone call away. It's only business.

WHACKMASTER

I’m not complaining about our work hours here at SWA as we have essentially “bankers hours” relative to many of our peers.

Rather I’m commenting on how professionally unfulfilling our type of flying is. That’s all. 5th & 20th

nene

IDK, the other night as I was descending to Quito from 18K through icing, then pouring rain, down to mins to breakout just before the M/A point, I was thinking on the ride to the hotel, wow I'd love to be listening to some music on a BNA layover right now.

Also I feel thankful as I give mega props to those who went before us for decades with NO GPS, Moving MAPS, Crappy Radar, ****ty radios, less performing equipment.

The next day watching Condors and a Spectacled bear in their National Park made me forget about the night before.

flyguy81

What kind of fulfilling exotic overseas flying did AirTran do again?

You can walk right into the cockpit of a A330 or 767-400 at Delta as a new hire. Upgrade to do the same flying within a couple months. Or go to FedEx.

There’s absolutely no reason to keep doing the status quo if you’re miserable. Life is too short to be doing something you hate. Seriously….go somewhere else if you’re unhappy. There will never be a better time for a pilot to change employers in your lifetime.

Doing regional schedules isn’t the most thrilling, but it gets me the QOL I want. I could care less about long haul and big jets. I want days off at home to do what I really want.

Crockrocket95

Woah Woah.. the last time I told a former AT guy that Delta was hiring and he could fly the mighty 717 again he unloaded on me saying that I couldn't say that and you cant make a lateral move blah blah blah. But man, he was really unhappy here. But I guess he would rather be REALLY unhappy here... then be unhappy somewhere else.

Good dude, but he should go to Delta.