docav8tor

No Sho BoJo is fantastic

calmemployment

“Will we follow JCPenney, Sears, and Blockbuster and fail into obscurity or will true leadership emerge and halt our decline? I fear the moments are ticking away.“ - Southwest Airlines Union President, Case Murray on 2/17/23

symbian simian

True. But I tried talking relevant experience, and there is plenty of different ways to get experience, and some are more relevant than others. I think flying a heavy, turbine, multi crew, IFR helo would count more than a piston single doing VFR pipeline for a 121 job. For a helo job obviously helo experience, because that is pretty specific to that job.

flyguy81

Know many piston single pilots getting hired at the big 6? I don't. Maybe they are and I've never met them....

I'm sure a regional would take a Helo guy with minimal fixed wing time....at which point they could be there for a few months and likely get a job anywhere else.

symbian simian

Not sure how close you are following. The original point I answered was about counting ANY heli time towards the 1500 ATP requirement. My POV is that if you can count VFR in a 152, maybe counting any time in a heavier than air flying object should be considered, especially something like a black hawk..... (and, no balloons don't qualify)

In related news, at NK have flown with a few guys that had less than 2K TT, and less than 200 Multi/turbine. Coming soon to a Big 6 near you!

flyguy81

Guess that's up to the FAA on how many hours of rotor time they will allow for a helo jockey. Airlines allow some but not all helo time....prob because the operating characteristics are so different they want to make sure you know what you're doing. Any monkey can fly a ILS with command bars....

Pinchacabron

Is there a way to push up the SAV vote??? The company is playing chicken, which is obvious by their negotiating tactics. My uneducated and somewhat ignorant speculation is that a TA will be presented just prior to the SAV vote skewing the vote in their favor. It won’t be a good TA, just a distraction. I think it would be better to just drop it now without letting the company play anymore games. I’m not a smart man…..

Lewbronski

The SWAPA BOD would have to approve the sending of any TA to the membership. Even I, a SWAPA skeptic, don’t think the SWAPA BOD would be dumb enough to do that before the SAV.

Remember, FH is advising all of the airlines on their negotiations. They were advising both Alaska and Delta how to proceed in the face of their respective pilot groups’ SAV’s. My guess is that FH will advise SWA management to proceed similarly in response to our SAV because the strategy worked at both Alaska and Delta.

If the pattern is repeated, we can expect to see a TA sometime during the summer or early fall. At Alaska, their TA arrived approximately 3.5 months after their SAV. At Delta, their TA came about 2.5 months after their SAV.

SWA will likely leverage our pilot group’s lack of understanding of how much leverage a SAV gives us (thinking we have more leverage than we do as a result of the SAV) by offering a TA with what appears to be some significant wins (but lacking many items which our pilot group is entirely capable of achieving if we’re patient).

Because we don’t understand the process well at all, we will feel like we’ve got the company on the run with our SAV. We won’t. Not yet. That time will come but not as a result of the SAV (though the SAV is necessary).

Think of a TA offered during this time as a trap. The short-term money attached to it will serve as the cheese that lures us in with its promise of a (very temporary) alleviation of the hunger of our inflation woes and our negotiation fatigue. But if we take the bait, it will inevitably fail to satisfy us.

We will truly have the company on the run when the credible threat of a strike becomes very real to management. That does not begin to become truly feasible (though not impossible) until we realistically might get released from mediation. And that does not happen until we have surpassed the average amount of time in mediation of all mediation cases currently before the NMB. This is why it is and was so critical to file for mediation earlier rather than later and why it was a pretty colossal ******* up on the part of SWAPA to wait so long to file for mediation.

But we can’t change the past. The RLA is a purposely long and drawn out process. The more patient and informed party has the advantage. It sucks that we waited about a year too long to file for mediation. But we can still get to a release. However, we can’t get there if we fall into FH’s and the company’s trap before our leverage begins to accelerate off the charts.

symbian simian

So you agree with me!

Unless you want to suggest that the operating characteristics of a heavy A330 avoiding thunderstorms over the Atlantic flying to Paris at night are the same as flying a 172 day VMC over Lake Pahokee. And yes, being a good pilot is more than following the command bars (or not knowing what to do if they don't give you the correct info.... see previous sentence), but that has absolutely mothing to do with this discussion.

And you couldn't pay me enough to spend a minute in a helo, just don't agree with not counting that flight time as flight time.

Hobbit64

I can't speak to other airlines *now*, but there was a time not very long ago where most airlines would not even consider RW time. I was told when I was pestering SWA recruiters that I 'was only a 4,000 hour pilot'. My resume had over 7,000 hours of which 3,000 hours were rotorcraft time. Eh... ok. Wrong headed IMHO, but I won't ever be King.

I don't see the RW restriction on our current FO job posting. Maybe there's been a change in the hiring department's attitude. And hopefully, the first stop on their scan of resumes is at the FW column to make sure the applicant has a requisite amount/quality of FW turbine time in high performance aircraft. I am a firm believer that a good amount of high performance, turbine FW experience is absolutely necessary. And, I don't mean C-310 time.

To Symbian's point, yes. Multi Crew, large aircraft, down low (really low) with restricted visual cues/input in a stressful & high workload mission, making Pew-Pew decisions was much more demanding than teaching someone in C-152. Both were scary at times, but the Cessna only had one person desperately trying to kill me. (maybe I *am* an a--h0le, people were trying to kill me a lot in my youth) But it did nothing for developing an understanding or appreciation for FW high altitude, swept wing aerodynamics. Throw in a finicky (beta version) VNAV with a slick plane that has much more mass and can either 'Go down' or 'Slow Down' (but not both) with a 130kt tailwind. The Captains have enough on their plate.

My question, and I am most definitely under-qualified to determine this, is what constitutes the "requisite amount/quality of FW turbine time in high performance aircraft"?

A stop at the regionals for 121 initiation for all that entails, and high performance FW experience is a good thing. Not fun per se, but good long term for both the individual and the folks coming behind with RW on their resume.
I can't tell you how angry I was to sit through SWA indoc small group training session with a tool instructor that went on a diatribe wasting about 10+ minutes speaking to how poor he thought RW pilot were. Biggest D.B. I've met at SWA. The experience only added pressure to never give the SoB or his ilk the satisfaction again.
/Rant Switch Cold