Mr. Grinch's resume

Mr. Grinch                                                  Contact info:  The mountain by Whoville

                                                       Allyourpresentsarebelongtome@bahhumbug.net

 _______________________________________________________________________

 

Application for Reindeer co-pilot position

 

Total Flight Time: Less than 1 hour (slid off the mountain once)

Night Experience: Every Christmas Eve for 50 years.

Multi-engine: Once strapped two rockets to myself.

 

Education:

Educated by Dr. Seuss himself in the art of Grinchery. Equivalent to A.S. degree

 

Previous experience:

 

-       More than fifty years of Grinchery.

-       Crawling through chimneys

-       Can dodge 39 and ½ ft poles like you wouldn’t believe

-       Mastered ornament thievery.

 

References:

-       Dr. Seuss

-       The entire town of Whoville

-       My dog Max

 

Additional skills

 

Mountain climbing, nauseating people, stealing cookies in under 2 seconds, snow sledding, engineering, being a “nasty wasty skunk,” de-termiting my smile, being a three decker sauerkraut and toadstool sandwich with arsenic sauce.

                                                                                               

Nuts!

Southwest airlines is seeking approval from the Dept of transportation for authority to operate internationally with Canada. As of now, this approval is only a preamble to fully implementing a code share that SWA has with Canadian West Jet but will also allow SWA to operate its own jets into Canadian destinations in the future.

There is an excellent corporate bio on SWA entitled Nuts! by Kevin and Jackie Frieberg. I read this book and absolutly could not put it down. It outlines many of the reasons why SWA had enjoyed uninterrupted profitability for over thirty years. Among those reasons are Herb Kelleher, and SWA's insisting on remaining in its niche- the domestic market.

On May 21, 2008, beloved chairman and co-founder Herb Kelleher stepped down as chairman of the board at Southwest. When he and Colleen Barrett (People department director, PR, budget manager, etc.) left, I had a feeling that despite their legacy at SWA, things were bound to change in their absence.  Herb Kelleher kept the company on the same course since its creation on a cocktail napkin at a bar in San Antonio. He is to Southwest what Walt Disney is to Disney. 

This action by the new CEO bodes ill for SWA's future because it opened the doorway into the international market. Granted, Southwest has not announced any plans to send Shamu across the border as of yet but unless great care is taken to protect the company's original domestic business model, current CEO Gary Kelly may end up doing just that. This is not the kind of operation that SWA was built for. This is not the kind of operation that has made SWA profitable for more than 30 consecutive years (including the post-9/11 drop in air travel). The new management is exploring the pathway to peril... I hope that they don't venture down it.

A House Divided

A very wise man once said: "A house divided against itself cannot stand."

I've been reading some hot-tempered forum threads about TSA pilots "crossing the hall" to go work for GoJet. For anyone reading this that does not know what's going on over there, here's the basic scoop. Trans States Holdings owns and operates Trans States Airlines. TSA is going under, so TSH started a second airline, GoJet. TSH has this bright idea that its perfectly alright to furlough pilots from TSA while hiring like mad into GoJet, which vitrually shares the same bank account as TSA. TSA pilots are mad at their co-workers for playing into TSH's game and seeking work at GoJet- thereby undermining their colleagues who are waiting to return to work at TSA. Those pilots who have elected to work for GoJet say that their actions are justified because ALPA actually advised furloughed pilots from TSA to apply to GoJet- not to mention the need to feed their families.

This is just one of a long line of examples of pilots turning against pilots in an effort to preserve their hard-earned seniority spot. I understand both sides of this particular scenario, but it pains me that pilots would feel any animosity towards a fellow aviator for reasons such as these. Let's keep the two simple truths of life in sight here:

Is your career more important to you than your family? I have never met a pilot that answers no to this question. Here is the simple reason why pilots left TSA to go to GoJet- they're in a job to pay the mortgage and put food on the table. Period. Now, the angry TSA pilot that may read this is most likely boiling over how insensitive I am because I am defending the secession of their colleagues over to GoJet, but for all such readers the next question is for you.

Is your co-worker's career more important to you than your own family? This seems to be the single greatest issue that brings pilots to so freely pin the word scab to so many others. GoJet pilots (even those who join GoJet as their first 121 job) are being considered scabs, whether they are aware of the family feud with TSA or not. What responsible adult, seeing that the money just isn't flowing, would stick with their job while their family suffers instead of seeking employment elsewhere simply because they want to protect their co-worker's seniority? Yes, yes, I know what you're thinking... people like me are the ones who undermine everybody else in order to "advance my own career over the bodies of others." But do you really feel that the objective of pilots like those going to GoJet is to steal your seniority and put you out of business? Do you really believe that they merit the same label (libel, if you ask me) as those who literally cross a picket line? Priority number one is family, and when you find yourself in their situation to chose between your co-workers and your family, you'll do exactly the same thing.

The anger here should be directed at those responsible for your hardship in the first place- your management. It is their fault that the company is going under, not yours, not your co-workers, theirs. Their decisions busted the company and forced your friends in the industry to make some tough choices for the good of their families and they don't like it any more than you do.

I've listened to people rant and rave about ousting all the unions and starting one industry wide pilot's union, but it seems to me that we have already built up such an entity by creating an unspoken demand of greater loyalty to our colleagues than to our own spouses and children. Pilots are human beings, not drones in a hive-mind collective of an ethereal co-dependent network of equals moving as one great whole. That's the way sheep move to the slaughter.

Respect your colleagues. Give them a jumpseat. Invite them over for the bar-b-que. Our fight for greater respect and pay from our management is already hard enough without turning on our own. Let uncontitional respect and understanding rule your dealings with your fellows.

Diseased

One of my fellow aviators once said something very profound to me.

"JB, as pilots we all suffer from an aviation disease"

Oh my, how true that is. To show you what he means, I want to show you the stages of typical pilot's career:

Stage one- Dreamer

During this stage, the future pilot yearns to get out of the office and into the sky. On airline flights, he admires the uniformed pilots marching confidently to their sleek, shiny jets about to zip off to who knows where on who knows what adventure. During stage one, our pilot-in-embryo may frequently refer to himself as 'Goose,' or 'Iceman.' He looks up every time an airplane flies overhead and says "I wish I were him!" He subscribes to AOPA, maybe gets the Sportys and King Schools catalogs. At some point, he'll buy the study at home DVD courses to learn the ground knowledge needed for his pilot certificate. The more he learns about aviation, the more his excitement builds, and he begins to search for flight schools.

Stage two- Student Pilot

Our future pilot finds a flight school, makes a plan, takes out a loan, and gets started with an instructor. He absolutely loves his first flight. He feels the aviation drug kick in and he's absolutely hooked. He accomplishes all of his homework assignments and eagerly awaits the next flight lesson. He makes some friends down at the local FBO and quickly becomes an airport junkie. He tells all his friends about how he soloed an airplane on his own. The student pilot stage continues well after he earns his private pilot certificate, which fuels his passion for aviation, and through his instrument rating.

Stage three-Commercial Naivete

This is about the time when the pilot begins to search the internet for pilot job listings. He looks at the corporate jobs, unfortunately they all require thousands of hours of multi-engine turbine time as pilot-in-command before they'll even look at his resume. The regional airlines, however, require a modest 1,000 total hours with about 100 multi-engine hours. No problem! He thinks, I'll get those hours by getting my commercial single and multi engine certificates, and all my CFI certificates. Then I'll hour build until I can send in my resume. He also begins to read forum threads from disgruntled airline pilots complaining of such things that he has never heard of before during his pilot training like furlough, scab, union dues, and upgrade time. The blinders slowly begin to come off his eyes and for the first time he gets exposed to some of the real-life hardships that airline pilots face on a daily basis. 'Gosh', he thinks, 'airline pilots are all so negative! Nothing could ever get me to not want to fly. These guys are all just a bunch of whiners, I'll never be like them.' 

Stage four- Indentured Servitude

The pilot is now a fully rated CFI working on that thousand-hour mark. He's filled up his first logbook and purchased a thick professional pilot logbook with his name in gold letters on the cover. He's over fifty thousand dollars in debt to some woman he's never met named Sallie Mae, and after burning through all that cash, he's landed himself a not so lucrative job at the FBO earning $15 an hour. His wife works part time to make ends meet and now she's beginning to wonder why she agreed to support his plans to get into this business in the first place. The "get hired" date that they set as a goal has come and gone, and he's still working at the local airport. At this point, he's spent so much time and money getting his ratings, that there is no honorable way out but forward. In a sense, he's reached the point of no return. How could he justify quitting and going back to school for a different field when so much has been invested into what was once his dream? At this point in their careers, some pilots throw in the towel while others press on into the muck and hope for their lucky break.

Stage five- Hired

He sweated through the interviews, the sim rides, the written exams, and he's finally made it- he's a first officer. His paychecks are about the same or less than they were as a CFI back at the FBO, but hes so dazzled by the glint of the sunlight streaking off his jet that he doesn't care. Back home, his wife who celebrated his graduation to the big boys with him only months before, now realizes that not only are they making less, but they see eachother less as well. 

Stage six- Furloughed

Things didn't go too well for the economy and management had to make some cuts. He's back on the street looking for another CFI gig to keep the bread coming while he waits for an undetermined period of time, akin to limbo, to go back to work at his airline. 

Stage seven- Upgrade

He's flying left seat now and enjoying the pay raise that only seniority can offer. At this point, he's just happy to bring in a paycheck- the majesty of the clouds racing by the cockpit doesn't capture his awe like it used to. It's just a job now, nothing more. His thoughts turn mostly to the poor decisions of the MBA's at corporate that will most likely cost him his job again if they can't get things together soon. It seems to him that the executives feel around in the dark. If only they saw things with the same clarity as the rank and file line holders below them. He chuckles to himself- they must have encountered some IMC on top. 

Stage eight- The Majors

Commanding tens of thousands of hours worth of experience, the lives of about a thousand passengers per day, and a highly experienced crew, our captain has finally earned some respect for himself in the aviation industry. He leads his airline's chapter of ALPA and fights to preserve his pay and benefits. Forty five years old, he finally gets to spend the holidays at home, but his kids are all grown up and gone. He wonders why he spent all those hours as a young man practicing chandelles, s-turns, and lazy-eights when he doesn't touch the controls but to taxi, and take off. 

Stage nine- Retirement

Tough times again. To avoid destruction, his company reduced pay, benefits, and cancelled retirement pensions across the board. If he is prudent, our pilot started a separate IRA with a reputable bank back when he was a freshly minted CFI and has been making regular contributions. If not, he's living on social security and whatever money he had in the bank when he turned 65. 

Stage ten- Retrospection

Hind sight is 20/20. If he could do it all over again, he would have gone into a field where the pay was better, the job hours more regular, and the family life less non-existent. He would have insisted on a career that allowed him to see all those little league sporting events, piano recitals, and school functions. He would have avoided the disease altogether.

In short, he would have gone corporate!

On Furlough

I never thought that a CFI could be furloughed, but three weeks ago I got quite an education.

It was Friday, Nov 22nd, the last payday of the month before rent was due. Most of the CFIs, including myself, are on direct deposit. I woke up that morning expecting to find my paycheck in my account, but it wasn't there. I wasn't too surprised by it becasue the same thing had happened two weeks before when the company decided to change payroll companies and they ended up giving us paper checks around midnight that day (only about 7 hours late...) I went to work expecting to find my paycheck at the dispatch office. Arriving at work, I found many of my co-workers pacing the hallways... the paychecks hadn't arrived. Needless to say, the atmosphere amongst all the employees that day was less than positive. In order for you to understand the rest of this story, you'll need a little run-down of the weeks prior.

We were advised that there would be pay cuts, but we weren't told how much, or when they would go into effect. The fully rated CFIs were earning $20 an hour, the CFIIs were earning $17, and the CFIs were getting $16. When the next pay period began, we recieved no notification that our reduced pay rate was in effect and we all continued working under the understanding that we were earning our normal wages. No one knew that the reduced rates were $15, $14, and $12 for MEI/CFIIs, CFIIs, and CFIs respectively until we were a week into the pay period where they had already taken effect. The mechanics' wages had been similarly reduced- some of them cut up to 33%... all without noticifation. One of the employees went into the VPs office and voiced her opinion, albeit unprofessionally, and was fired on the spot... she got a lawyer and is suing the school for a half million, last I heard.

Naturally, slashing wages has ill effects on the enthusiasm of your employees. The maintenance department immediately slowed down because A&Ps left the company in droves. Airplanes started to drop off-line because they reached their scheduled inspections and could not be serviced quickly enough to keep them flying. Soon, all of the multi-engine airplanes were offline, all of the Cessna 172s went down, and only a handful of Cessna 152s remained for private pilot instruction. I frantically tried to find ways to keep my students progressing, but with no airplanes, I was helpless. I had to cancel numerous flights, as did most of my colleagues. No flights=no pay. 

By the time november 22nd rolled around, our fleet of 50+ airplanes was non-existent, they were all uselessly tied town to the ramp awaiting 50- and 100-hour inspections that would never come. By 2pm the paychecks still were no where in sight. The crowd of anxious, perturbed CFIs, mechanics, and office clerks gradually grew as more and more came into the building seeking their wages only to meet disappointment. The dispatchers said that they had been taking calls all morning from creditors across the nation seeking dues that we never knew that our school owed. Around 3pm, the airport management came into our wing of the terminal building and changed out all the locks on the academy's doors. Talk about a big red flag! A call came from corporate. They called an emergency meeting for 5pm and requested the presence of all employees. This was it, we all thought. We are all out of a job. 

During the tense hours that passed as 5pm crept nearer, we passed the time exchanging phone numbers, filling out applications to other flight schools, talking about what went wrong, what we were going to do if who said what during the meeting, etc. Five oclock came and went. If they were going to lay us all off, they could at least do it on time. 

Finally, the VP and the CFO walked into the building carrying a large stack of envelopes and paper. The VP stood before us with the CFO at his side, asked for our attention, and began reading from a prepared statement. In the statement, he explained that our school was $800,000 in debt and that we could not continue operations until we recieved the next payment from our chinese clients expected on December 1st. He declared the flight school closed until then, with a disclaimer that our return-to-work date could be even later than that. After finishing, he opened up for questions. The first question: What about our paychecks? He explained that we would leave the meeting with paychecks, but they would be for a greatly reduced rate. With that, the CFO began calling out our names one by one to come forward and take our pay. This was when things got really ugly. We opened up our checks and found that for our last pay period, our pay had been adjusted to roughly minimum wage. I was expecting around $1,000, but opened the envelope and found a sickly $348 check inside.  The room exploded with protests and profanities. People demanded to know why the CEO was absent to tell us this for himself, whether we would be paid the remainder at a later date, and so on. No satisfactory answer was given for any of our questions. We were already into the middle of the next pay period, and that week would go completely unpaid.

I suddenly found myself without the money to pay for next month's rent. I had to call the folks for help just to make it through. My wife and I decided to try to make the best of it and just call it an extended vacation for thanksgiving. We drove up to her family's house where we are still to this day, Dec 16th awaiting the date that I can return to work. I never thought that I would be furloughed as a CFI... I always thought that situations like these were for airline pilots. I filed for unemployment, but great was my surprise when I discovered that the academy had never payed into our unemployment benefits. 

A word from experience for all you CFIs out there. Build up a healthy savings account. Store up some food. Keep some "get out of dodge" cash tucked away at home to prepare for times like these. 

"Be a Hero, Save a Blog" with Bloggled

Have you ever had this experience? You are posting to your blog, click the publish button, and the very next thing you know the screen is blank. So, you click back to your drafts and nothing is there, then you click your published posts and nothing is there. At this point you are starting to think to yourself…oh no, what just happened? As you continue searching your blog admin for information you see that all your uploaded images, videos, files, and everything is gone.

Living through this situation would be enough to devastate any blogger. Knowing that years of data about your person, family, or business is gone can be difficult to overcome emotionally, but even more difficult of a problem to solve. If you haven’t backed up your blog recently, or ever, chances are your posts and everything else are gone for good.

This is the kind of situation that led Brent Ramey to the idea of creating Bloggled.com, “and to honestly save anyone in that situation the act of going insane.” Bloggled.com is a blog backup company that is allowing bloggers to backup their blog for free as an introductory product to celebrate their official launch out of beta and as a holiday gift this season. Bloggled is also offering multiple prizes to those who participate in their “Be a Hero, Save a Blog Contest” that is running through the day on Monday, December 15, 2008. Winners can choose from either a 16GB iPod Touch, or a Cricut Personal Electronic Cutter Machine and it’s quite simple to enter. All you have to do is one of the items below, but if you do more you get entered more times into the drawing…but you have to enter on Monday 12/15 to qualify so act fast, or should I say slow so I have a better chance of winning.

1. Join Bloggled. Register and sign up for a Bloggled account (http://www.bloggled.com/).
2. Friend or follow Bloggled on one of the following social network profiles:
1. Twitter: http://twitter.com/bloggled
2. Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Brent-Ramey/1002883214
3. Subscribe to Bloggled’s RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/bloggled.
4. Blog about the Blogger Contest on another blog then notify Bloggled about the new blog post by commenting on their blog.

Pro Bono - Case in Point

On Tuesday morning, I recieved the following email from work.

To All Flight Instructors:

Because of instructor abuses regarding pre and post flight briefing charges,
effective immediately only 0.5 pre and 0.5  post flight briefing will be
allowed once per mission.  This applies for all regular training missions
unless previously approved by the Director of Training, Chief Flight
Instructor or Program Manager.  

-Director of Training

Remember the post about Pro Bono that I made last week? Well, here's a real world example from my own life. This company deleted our salaries and switched us to an hourly wage pay scale because they said that we werent working enough. Now that we are hourly, people have been working eighty to one hundred hour work weeks getting lots of overtime while complying with the boss's directive to get our hours up. Well, they're up. Now the managers upstairs are actually limiting our hours by not paying for the time that we are out preflighting with our students. I sent this reply- the names of the persons involved and of the flight school have been replaced.

[Sir],

I am confident that I can freely speak my mind about this new policy without the risk of retribution from my superiors.

I don't feel that I have abused the ground briefing times- to the contrary, I always put exactly the time that I was with my students from first sitting down with them until the prop starts turning. This time includes preflight briefing and the preflight itself (which includes waiting for fuel, dealing with maintenance delays, etc) I want it to be clear that all this time is spent doing something useful for the students. I always spend the down time waiting for the fuel truck or the A&Ps by teaching my students about non-instrument related little extras like wing washout, cowl flaps, dihedral, vortex generators, the discontinuous leading edge wings on the SR20, the different forms of landing gear struts... anything I can do to make that time valuable to their education. This time typically exceeds the .5 limitation placed by our management. Am I to believe my extra efforts to teach beyond the syllabus are worth nothing to my company?

As one having managerial experience, I could understand [the president's] decision to move to a wage system. A company cannot survive paying for work that goes undone. I'll admit that I was a little upset at first, but after that meeting last month I put myself in [the president's] shoes and I had to agree that the hourly system was a necessity. That being said, this decision to limit how much the company is willing to pay for the valuable ground training that I give my students strikes me as nothing less than atrocious (while in the interest of fairness, I must concur that a CFI who teaches his student nothing for an hour and bills for it is equally so) and the message that it sends to the rank and file CFI's like myself is that my efforts to prepare the student for the flight are of little worth to my superiors. When I was hired, I was told that we were expected to arrive no less than half an hour early for each flight to get the ground content done for that lesson. Every single day, my students and I arrive thirty minutes early to cover the ground lesson content in detail and to get the preflight weight and balance completed to that we can start the engine as closely as possible to the beginning of our block time. This time from first meeting the students for the ground portion to engine start is typically as long as 45 minutes to an hour and a half in some extreme cases where maintenance or aircraft tardiness are involved. Shall I arrive at work only fifteen minutes prior to the block time so that I do not exceed the .5 cap? Shall I only briefly skim over the items to be covered in the syllabus before each flight in lieu of teaching in detail from my Jeppesen manual? Shall I sit inside while my students perform the preflight instead of being with them like I have been? I find myself shifting priorities here- I was trying to comply with [the director of training's] directive to find ways to keep our billable hours up, but now I feel that I need to find ways to scale back the billable hours and stick to the bare minimums. I'm sure that you understand my confusion.

Another issue. How can we call ourselves a 24/7 operation if the students' ability to get to and from the airport is not likewise 24/7? Since the company schedules me to fly at 1am, I have had to pick my students up and drop them off at home again for their lessons. Since this takes my time and gas and their transportation to the airport is a critical business necessity for [the academy], I bill for it. I will no longer give my students rides neither to nor from the airport unless I am free to bill each student in my car for this time.

May I propose an alternative. Instead of limiting our hours, let's start holding CFI's accountable for the work that they bill for. Include a portion in the small invoice sheets at dispatch for the CFI to write down the ground lesson content that he administered during the hour and a half that he is billing for. Let's teach the students to take responsibility for their training and to only sign off on material that was actually covered during their ground lesson.

My students have given me great feedback on my ground lessons and I assure you that I am wasting no one's time or money.

Respectfully,
[JB]

The flight academy where I work has a bus transit system to transport students from home, to the airport, then back again during normal business hours. However, since the company took over our schedules last month, we have been getting slated to fly at all hours of the night. Nobody on top put any thought into extending the bus system's hours of operation to cover the new need for 24/7 transportation. It is not uncommon for a CFI to begin at 10pm and end at 6am one day, then begin at 6am and end at 2:30pm the next day. That's not so much of a problem- what is is the transportation of the students who depend on the school's shuttle to get them to the airport. Since they have no ride in the middle of the night, the CFIs have had to pick them up from home and drop them back off again, which we always billed for... until now. The company forbade us to bill for that time. So naturally, most of the CFIs at work are leaving their students stranded at the airport until the morning shuttle picks them up some hours later. 

Pro Bono

Work for free.

Actually the term stems from the Latin meaning "for the good," which means that you give of your skills free of charge for someone else's benefit. For attorneys, pro bono services are optional and are seen as a charitable donation to a party in need, but not so for airmen.

For decades now, airlines have paid their pilots hourly wages instead of the salaries that they deserve. Wages begin from around $16 to $24 an hour for entry-level positions at the regional airlines. Don't let these wages fool you, my educated reader. $24 dollars per hour may sound very lucrative for any line of work, but we're not talking about just any line of work, are we? I'm going to teach you a little bit about "duty hours" and how they differ from "billable hours." I hope you're sitting down for this.

Before becoming a CFI, I worked full time at a telephone call center in Salt Lake City. My department specialized in giving support and guidance to the elderly about their health care coverage and how to benefit from Medicare. I was in my early twenties, single, and making $9 an hour. Working 40 hours a week, that means I was living on $720 per two-week pay period before taxes. Not bad for a college kid. The job was pretty challenging, so we had a six week training course on everything medicare/medicaid before we were allowed onto the call floor to assist the customers. The only pre-requisite for the job was a high-school diploma. We got two fifteen minute paid breaks and one thirty minute unpaid lunch. On the busier days, we had hundreds of callers in queue so there was no dead time between callers- as soon as one call ended, another began. On the slower days, there was time between calls to chat with the co-workers, read books, do homework and so on. Regardless of the call volume, we all still got paid a flat $9 an hour from the time we logged into our stations till the time we logged off to go home with the exception of our lunch break. Just the way its supposed to be.

Now imagine that same call center job, but with the pay program of an airline:

I walk into work an hour and a half early for my daily employee safety briefing which even includes a meteorological briefing on the office temperature. After the briefing ends, I get dispatched to my computer terminal, which I carefully inspect to insure that they will perform to the highest standard during the day's business. Afterwards, I take my seat and go through the boot-up checklists. By the time I am due to take my first caller, I am all set. The time clock starts when the phone rings. I assist the customer, providing the highest standard of service, accuracy, and timeliness until the end of the call. Unfortunately, today is a slow day, so there aren't any more callers waiting in the queue. As soon as the call ends, the time clock stops. During the lull of activity, I disposition the notes of the previous caller, and wait for the next one. Finally, the phone rings.
I answer, and then the time clock starts ticking again.

The time passes. Despite being at work for four hours, the time clock only shows two and a half. Those fifteen minute breaks I took, the unplanned trips to the bathroom, even that time that I spent in the boss' office getting my performance evaluation all went unpaid because those hours were not spent in direct contact with the customers. Would you want to work at an office like that?

"Oh, but wait!" stammers my boss, "don't quit so soon, I'll make you a deal. I'll pay you your hourly $9.00 while you're on the phone, and to sweeten the deal, I'll pay you five and a half cents an hour for all the time spent in between calls! How does that sound?"

Pause. Let's revisit our word of the day, pro bono. Does this situation sound like you are giving freely of your skills for the benefit of another person? I think so. But in this scenario, that other person is hardly in need of your charity, quite the contrary. At the end of the day, you drive home in your station wagon while the boss takes off in his jag.

One of my CFI co-workers, whom i will refer to as Andy, put the pay system this way:

"JB, we're slaves." He told me one afternoon. I thought he was just trying to make a joke, so I agreed with a chuckle. "No," he continued "you, me, all of us CFI's are slaves, now ask me how I know."
"Okay, how do you know, Andy?"
"Tell me what the definition of a slave is," he said.
"Okay," I thought for a moment. "A slave is someone who is owned by another person and works at the behest of his master for no compensation."
"Wrong." Andy said, shaking his head. "A slave is someone who works for another person for no compensation, other than for food and shelter."
I had to admit, he had me there. From the plantations of the south to the ghoulags of Siberia, slave labor forces had always been provided with these two necessities of life.
Andy continued. "JB, I'm at work twelve hours a day and I only get paid for a fraction of those hours that I spend here. My paychecks total up to just barely enough to pay for my groceries and my rent. All those little extras, I pay for with my second job and my wife's income. The only compensation I get is literally food and shelter. Therefore, I am a slave."

I realized that he was right. My meager paychecks amounted to just barely enough to pay for our tiny apartment and the groceries. This particular employer charged my students $35 an hour for the time that I was instructing them, but only paid me $14 an hour. That means that I only took home forty percent of what my students were actually paying for my services. Slavery meets sharecropping, perhaps? On top of all this, the company refused to pay overtime because then it would be forced to recognize us as full-time employees- meaning benefits, sick-time, vacation time, etc., so we were always reprimanded for exceeding 38 hours per pay period and even threatened with immediate termination should we exceed that cap.

Most airline pilots are paid from the time that the cockpit door closes to the time that it opens at the destination. That means that the preflight, safety briefing, weather briefing, flight data entry into the FMS, and assisting passengers to their seats (the cabin crew's responsibility) all goes unpaid. Think about that next time you hold up the line to cram your bags into the overhead bins.

In preparation for this post, I spoke about this issue with a friend of mine who works at SkyWest Airlines. He said "...in a recent message from UAL management, which was passed on to us SKYW low-lifes, we were told that UAL was over-paying SKYW millions of dollars a quarter due to a violation of our contract with them (can you say B.S.?) that stated we get paid from the time the aircraft moves either by its own power or for pushback, until the aircraft comes to rest at its destination. Uh, did I miss something here? So now, ALL SKYW flights are paid from brakes released to brakes set, also known as block times. Hmmm. Not what I signed up for." SkyWest pays its pilots $1.65 an hour for all duty hours spent away from home, this is known as "per diem" pay... meant to fill in the gaps during layovers and between flights.

What this all boils down to is that my friend, whose contract says he gets paid $19.50 an hour, actually gets paid about $10.00 an hour after you adjust his income to match his duty time. Also worth mentioning is this notion of "premium pay" where many airlines will pay you one hour for every two hours (50%) spent on duty after you complete twelve or so hours of duty time. So if you work really really hard, management will do you the dignity of recognizing you as only half a man.

You reap what you sow

Meet Glenn Tilton. 

Mr. Tilton is the CEO of the UAL corporation which operates United Airlines, Ted, and numerous other subsidiaries both in and out of the aviation industry. With a handsome compensation of $10.3 million per year, he ranks among the highest paid CEO's in the business. Tilton went to UAL in September 2002 in an effort by the board of directors to spring the airline from financial ruin. Shortly after he took office, the airline filed chapter 11 and Tilton made reductions in the employee payroll (remember subparagraph E of section 1113?), started TED, and made other changes that got the airline back out of bankruptcy in February 2006. As a bonus for "saving" the company, the board granted him over $39 million in stock options and other compensations. 

Now that you know a little of his background, have a look at this UAL press release from back in July of 2008:

United Takes Action to Protect Customers, Employees

July 30, 2008

United Seeks Injunction to Stop Unlawful Job Actions of ALPA and Certain Pilots

Chicago, July 30, 2008 - United Airlines today filed a lawsuit asking a federal court to stop the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) and certain pilots from continuing to engage in deliberate, organized and unlawful job actions that resulted in hundreds of flights being canceled and impacted thousands of customers and employees.

 The lawsuit seeks a preliminary injunction against ALPA and four named pilots for organized sick leave abuse in opposition to the company’s plan to reduce its fleet size and furlough pilots and to pressure United into renegotiating terms of a collective bargaining agreement that remains in effect through 2009. The lawsuit also seeks an end to a public campaign of intimidation that discourages pilots from picking up additional flying, effectively engaging in a slowdown.

 "It is absolutely irresponsible for ALPA to promote unlawful behavior, particularly in this environment, when the industry is taking unprecedented actions to offset record fuel costs," said Pete McDonald, executive vice president and chief administrative officer. "Our employees are working hard to make our company successful. We are going to ensure the integrity of our operation and will not allow the actions of ALPA and certain pilots to continue to harm our customers, our employees and our company."

 McDonald said the company pursued every other possible resolution—at significant financial cost—before pursuing litigation. These included increasing reserve pilot staffing and negotiating with ALPA to modify some of the work rules in the current agreement.

 United also noted that the rate of first officer sick leave in certain fleets is up 103 percent this summer. Further, driven by ALPA directives and intimidation, picking up additional flying, as is standard practice throughout the industry, has dropped precipitously compared to that of previous years. In 2006, pilots were five times more likely to fly additional trips compared to today.

 "The job actions have escalated, and the impact on our customers and employees is unacceptable, and must stop," McDonald said.

UAL would have the public believe that it is being victimized. How dare ALPA demand good pay for its pilots? How dare they do such an awful thing when the company is taking "unprecedented actions to offset record fuel costs," and "every other possible resolution" to "ensure the integrity of [their] operation." Here's the paradox: The same man who claims to be acting in the best interest of his employees is the one pushing for them to be laid off. 

Did the board even once consider reducing their own multi-million dollar paychecks before deciding to kick Joe F.O. and his family back onto the street to save $20 an hour by not having him on the payroll anymore? Go and ask any small business owner how much money he pays himself- and why so little, and he'll talk to you about re-investing profits back into the company and living within your means so that the company can grow to be healthy and strong. Airlines have lost sight of this principle. They handsomly reward the CEOs for doing a bad job, and fire the pilots even when they're doing a good job. 

ALPA responded today, and here's what they had to say-

United Pilots: Glenn Tilton’s Excessive Pay Package Must Go

Chicago, Ill., September 29, 2008 – Pilots for United Airlines (Nasdaq: UAUA) today demanded that the UAL Board of Directors cut the pay for its CEO, Glenn Tilton, as a reflection of concern and solidarity with passengers and employees who are being forced to tighten their belts.

At $10.3 million a year, Tilton’s compensation package—including salary, stock grants, options, and other added extras—is the highest in the airline industry. The CEO of American Airlines is paid $4.6 million a year, the CEO of Southwest Airlines makes $1.3 million, and the CEO of JetBlue gets $514,000. United’s pilots believe that there is no justifiable reason for the worst airline executive to be compensated the most. United Airlines has lost more money this year than nearly all other U.S. competitors combined.

“United Airlines is losing money, cutting back on service, and asking passengers to pay more for less,” said Captain Steve Wallach, Chairman of the United Chapter of the Air Line Pilots Association. “It’s time for the Board to tie Tilton’s pay to his performance.”

Captain Wallach said that Tilton’s level of compensation is another example of excessive pay to chief executive officers. “His pay is not an entitlement; he should have to earn his money, just like everyone else does,” said the union leader. Captain Wallach noted United’s stock price has fallen from over $50 a share to the current price of about $10 a share.

“It’s an insult to the loyal passengers and hard-working employees of United to see the CEO pull down this kind of money when the airline is facing such deep challenges,” added Captain Wallach. “This pay package must go.”

Tilton’s excessive pay package is only one of a series of bad decisions by the management of United, which orchestrated fat bonuses for its top executives when the company came out of bankruptcy two years ago. Tilton and his team of executives have continually looked after themselves, to the detriment of the rank-and-file employees of the airline.

“The pilots want to do everything possible to make United the airline that passengers choose first,” said Captain Wallach. “A commitment to responsible service and fairness is part of that.”

You reap what you sow, Glenn.

The Expendable New-hire

One of my friends from work got "tentatively" hired on as an FO at PSA about five months ago. He had about four hundred hours total with around 85 multiengine hours, but he had some glass cockpit experience which his interviewer found desireable. At that time, PSA's published hiring minimums were 600 total time and 100 multi, so it was a pretty big deal when they even gave him a second look, much more so when they offered him a deal. His interviewer told him that PSA would hire him if he passed a jet transition course from ATP, a Jacksonville, FL based flight school renowned for its accelerated pilot training.

having returned from this interview, he asked me what I recommended that he should do. I told him that I thought that it would be a better idea to use that 6k for getting his initial CFI and thereby earning a permanent license that he could use for the rest of his life as a safety net, should he need it later to earn a living. "Besides," I told him, "you will get the jet training for free when you get hired on at the regionals."

"Yeah, but time is money. If I can get into a regional now, I'll be better off later on by being higher up on the seniority list," said he.

"Well, its your money. I just think that its an awfully large gamble for some training that you will eventually get while on someone else's payroll. You really should get your CFI for those furloughs that you will ineviably face at some time in your career."

He didn't take my advice. I dont blame him for it, either. PSA had a carrot infront of him and he had a wife and some student loans to take care of, and he wasn't going to make ends meet scrubbing down dirty airplanes for the next year. He got a loan and was off the jacksonville for the following week.

He came back with a plethora of knowledge about the CRJ (canadair regional jet) and its systems. If you had a question about anything jet related, he was the go-to guy. ATP certainly did its job, and I thought that he was going to be sitting right seat in a jet within a month. He faxed his certificate of course completion to PSA's recruiting office and got no reply. He emailed his interviewer, made phone calls, did everything but send smoke signals... but got no answer from his PSA contact. Finally, some weeks after his graduation from ATP, he got a call from recruiting telling him that they had suspended hiring. The call ended with the standard, but always cordial: "Thank you for your interest in PSA."

And that was that. He didn't get the job even though he had upheld his end of their deal. He started off as a commercial pilot with multiengine and instrument ratings and ended up right back where he started, but now with an additional $6000 dollars in debt and nothing to show for it but a turbine transition course diploma that was worth no more to him than the paper it was printed on. I havent heard back from him about where he went from there, but I don't think that he landed a job at an airline any time soon, considering the current state of the economy, the extension of the mandatory retirement age to 65, and oil prices on the rise.

I've never seen an industry so bereft of respect towards human beings as the airline industry. Another friend of mine was hired by a different airline, maybe TSA or Express Jet, and spend thousands relocating his family to attend ground school. During the first week of training, the director of recruiting walked into the classroom and told them all that their class had been cancelled due to "unforseen financial reasons." He told the new hires that their resumes were still on file and that they would be contacted to join a future class at an unknown time in the future.

Put youself in these people's shoes for a moment. You just quit your job, moved out of your apartment, dragged your family across the country, and moved into a town where you didnt know a single soul so that you could take the next step in your aviation career. You footed the bill for the deposit on a new apartment or the down payment on a new home, not to mention the travel expenses and lost time at your previous job. All of these new-fires were now out of work, no plan b, and maybe with no way to get back home without help from family or personal loans. This friend of mine returned broke and defeated to his cubicle next to mine in the CFI office a few days later.

Believe it or not, I actually have other examples of good pilots hired and then let go for poor reasons, or for no reasons at all. To keep it simple, another CFI friend of mine was fired from training just for being in the room when his sim-partner failed a checkride... he never got a chance to take his own checkride.

It seems that when airlines forsee a need for new pilots, they are quick to hire them in droves with no real thought to whether they will actually need so many of them once they finish their training- leading them to terminate some if not all of them before they even finish ground school.

Airline Pilot Blacklisting

For any of you who didn't believe what I said about blacklisting in the airline industry, here's some proof.

http://www.box.net/shared/ay9un0uo0w

This link actually mentions a man named Frank Lorenzo. This man was notorious for driving airlines into bankruptcy exactly for the purpose of absolving the labor contracts and making his own. He was the CEO of Continental Airlines in the early eighties after taking it over with his holding company, Texas Air. Prior to 1984, companies had the right to permanently remove labor contracts while in chapter 11 and create brand new ones without much that the pilots union could do to stop it. The union at Continental went on strike, but Frank Lorenzo hired new pilots and simply replaced the striking pilots with "scabs." The individuals who crossed the picket line to go to work endured vandalism of their private property, death threats, beatings, and even parcel bombs. Every pilot that worked for Lorenzo during this time period was permanently labeled a scab and their names were recorded in a little black book that airline pilots carried for years to come. Stories exist of pilots asking the captain of a departing flight if they could catch a ride in the jumpseat, only to have the captain ask their name, search his little black book of scabs, and tell them to take a cab after he spots it on the list.

A little closer to home

Last week, I was sitting in a meeting at work here in Phoenix. Prior to arriving at the meeting, i had heard rumors about some drastic changes taking place within the company, but nothing as big as the one that I was about to be struck with. Here's some background:

I moved my little family out to Phoenix, AZ in July of 2008 to work at a promising flight training academy. I learned about the job online on one of those "so you're still eating ramen noodles.com" websites for pilots looking for greener pastures. I was working at a prominent flight school in Utah as a CFI where I was on duty about six hours a day and only got paid for 3. For those of you who are or who were CFIs you know how this works. You show up twenty minutes before your first student arrives to ensure that your lesson is ready and that the airplane that you had scheduled wasn't down for maintenance. Then your phone rings, its your student, he's sick... again and cant make the lesson. A funny thing typically happens during flight training- a friendship develops between the CFI and his student. I was one of those soft instructors who just couldn't bear the thought of telling my friend/student/college buddy that I just charged him the full $60 for my time and the $300 no-show for the airplane time for his failure to give 24 hours cancellation notice. So I lost money. I lost time. I sat around at the airport studying my Jeppesen Airway Manual and finger-flying approaches. I had to get a second job as a lineman fueling airplanes, sweeping, mopping, answering phones, invoicing flights, and being a general company lackey that did whatever the boss needed, even construction work at the airport, whatever I could to fill in the gaps caused by an array of unreliable students, maintenance, and weather cancellations. I earned more working for $9 an hour as a lineman than I did as a part time CFI.

Let me say that another way, just to make sure this is clear. I earned more at the job where the only requirement was to be warm-blooded, than I did working as a CFI which cost me over $50,000 in tuition and training to become certified.

So naturally, I was constantly screening the internet looking for jobs that paid more and offered a steady stream of students. I thought I had found what I was looking for in Phoenix, so I agreed to an interview. The voice on the phone promised a large multi-engine fleet, state-of-the-art Cirrus airplanes as their primary single engine trainer, and to top it off, a large starting salary! At the interview, I asked my interviewer, who would later be my boss, if I could make my own schedule. He said yes, as long as your students progress, you can work whatever hours you like. That was excellent news, I'd finally work for a company that evaluated me not based on the hours at work, but on the progress of my students. I agreed to take the job.

I'm not sure how it came up during the first week of orientation, but one of the other new hires asked our instructor when we would get paid. Training was two weeks long and we had rent coming due. The instructor looked surprised, saying "Oh, didn't they tell you in your interviews that training was not paid?" we all shook our heads. It would be a month until we would get our first paychecks, meanwhile, I had to withdraw money from a retirement fund just to eat and fill up my tank. Towards the end of the 2-week orientation, the instructors told us where we could get our uniforms, and how much they would cost. Another hand went up "Wait a second, isnt the company going to pay for our uniforms?" "No," the instructor said "the company only lends you your epaulets and the company insignia, both of which must be returned when you terminate your employment with us." Luckily, I still had my pilot shirt from my prior CFI job and avoided the brunt of those costs, but I did have to buy the tie. "When are we going to get our standardization flights in the Cirrus?" I asked. The instructor shook his head and said we haven't flown the Cirruses in months. We train all our private pilot students in the '152s and the instrument students fly the '172s." Someone else asked when we declare what days off we wanted, the instructor said that our days off were decided by a seniority bid. So much for making our own schedule. We were flabbergasted at this information that had somehow lost its way to us during the hiring process, but no matter, we still had the promise of a handsome salary, and that was enough to make us shrug off the disillusionment.

It wasnt long after I started that the company began further restricting our ability to make our own schedules. As a CFII, I was training only instrument students, and word came down from the top that in order to get maximum utilization out of the fleet, we were no longer able to fly in the mornings, and had to begin all our flights at 1pm. Have you ever been in Phoenix, AZ in august at 2pm? The soles of your shoes melt to the tarmac, and thats no joke. Later, they restricted our launch times to after 3pm, putting me home anywhere between 9pm and sometimes midnight. I never got to see my wife because hers was a daytime schedule. We only saw each other when we were walking in or out the door, or when one of us was already in bed asleep. We moved down here because of the prospect of me making my schedule to match hers so that we could balance it all out and still get to spend time together. So we made the best of it and I found little ways to work my schedule to get me home at semi-decent times while still ensuring that the students progressed in a timely manner.

Then came last week's meeting... I found a spot in the back with another CFI who had come down with me from Utah and took a seat next to him. The meeting started off with the good news... CFI of the month, company news, etc. Then came the whopper. The Chief of Training stood and spoke for about ten minutes about how the company would never sabotage us, nor would he ever want to be in a position to take anything away from us. After buttering us up for a bit, he let it loose: "Effective Monday, we are canceling all your salaries and moving to an hourly wage system, furthermore, management is taking control of your schedules, so you will not be able to schedule yourselves. Scheduling will be on a seniority bid system and you will be slated to fly according to the company's need... day or night.... 24 hours a day."

You could have cut the tension in the room with a knife as he detailed the rest of the changes. Here were sixty CFI's who had moved from all over the country, spending thousands on their moving expenses in response to this company's promises of everything that a CFI could ever want, only to be told that they should have just stayed home. Hands went up, angry comments were made, afterwards CFIs quit on the spot. Malicious emails were disseminated throughout the company's email. Worse yet, I had to go home and tell my wife that our hopes of synchronizing our schedules were lost. And that I had no guarantee that I would get to see her much at all. I can't move back to Utah, because the move is too expensive, plus I'd have to reimburse this company for the $500 moving allowance it gave me to come down, and I have a year lease on my apartment that I cant get out of without paying huge severance fees. Looks like we're staying here and riding it out, it's the best chance we've got.

That was the only company meeting that I had been to where the owner of the academy failed to be present.

The Delta Scam

Recently, Delta airlines was under chapter 11 bankruptcy protection while it re-organized the company to return to profitability. Perhaps the most intriguing section of chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy code is section 1113, which sets the rules regarding an employer's rejection of a collective bargaining agreement, specifically in subparagraphs c, d, and e. Its important to have a basic understanding of the kind of leverage that these paragraphs give the employer during the bankruptcy restructuring process.

Subparagraph e provides for those notorious little interim contract changes that the employers are allowed to make during the negotiation process. To put it simply, 'e' allows the employer to go through the current labor contract with a red pen and white-out and slash wages, benefits, and any other allowances that it previously agreed upon with the employee union. I know what you're asking now- What would the bankruptcy judge have to say about that?? Here's the answer: if the cuts proposed by the employer (referred to here as the "trustee/debtor") are "[1] essential to the continuation of the debtor's business, OR [2] in order to avoid irreparable damage to the estate, the court, after notice and a hearing, may authorize the trustee to implement interim changes in the terms, conditions, wages, benefits, or work rules provided by a collective bargaining agreement. Any hearing under this paragraph shall be scheduled in accordance with the needs of the trustee." -quoted from US Bankruptcy code 1113(e), emphasis added. So there you have it folks. All your company has to do to keep afloat while under their bankruptcy umbrella is prove to the court that YOUR wage cuts, not theirs, will save the company from floundering. I think that the most important word in this subparagraph is the word "or," which I have bolded, italicized, and all-capsed for your viewing clarity. Lawyers call this a disjunctive test, meaning that only one criterion must be met in order to get approval from the judge to make the changes, not both.

An article by ALPA clearly illustrates the point:

On Thursday, June 5, [2008] ALPA Managing Attorney Marcus Migliore and AFL-CIO representatives testified before the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary’s Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee to urge Congress to swiftly reform Section 1113 of the Bankruptcy Code. Migliore underscored the urgent need to prevent airline and other management from exploiting the law to gut employee labor contracts and deny workers their most powerful leverage in bargaining—the right to strike—while corporate executives pay themselves millions in bonuses.

“Employers, including airlines, have successfully hijacked the 1113 process from Congress’ original intent to protect workers and their families and now use it as a 51-day countdown to unilaterally terminate employees’ hard-won contracts,” said Migliore. “Skyrocketing fuel costs and a sluggish economy mean that bankruptcy continues to loom as a threat to airline employees--the time is now for Congress to act decisively to protect U.S. workers.”

“Management uses current bankruptcy law to rubberstamp multi-million dollar rewards for the very corporate executives and stakeholders who made the business decisions that led to the airlines’ bankruptcies in the first place,” said ALPA’s President, Capt. John Prater, when commenting on Migliore’s testimony. “Meanwhile, pilots and workers are locked into long-term, deeply concessionary contracts."

This is like ordering all the second and third class passengers on a sinking ship to toss their belongings overboard while the first class passengers keep their thousands of pounds of junk that are ultimately causing the ship to sink in the first place. Our bankruptcy code actually protects a similar practice that is happening today in airline management. Which is exactly what happened to the employees of Delta Airlines. Delta executives pushed for a reduction of salaries, pensions, benefits, and so forth from its employees in order to stave off destruction. Now, why on earth would a pilot with a mortgage, a wife, and kids agree to a pay cut? Because if the company goes under, he's back on the street and has to start over at a new airline at the bottom of the seniority list, with the worst schedule and the worst pay that his next company has to offer. So its understandable that the pilots union accepted their pay cuts in order to help Delta airlines, and their livelihoods, remain afloat. Where did their millions of dollars go? Into the pockets of the delta executives who used the money to pad their severance packages and to give themselves bonuses.

A dose of reality.

I know why you want to be a pilot. You’re what I call a dreamer- head in the clouds, ambitious, thinking that you’ve got the whole world at your feet. It’s a convenient cloak of pride that you can wrap around yourself, confident that you can rise quickly through the system and claim a seat in the cockpit of a triple-seven working for a major airline flying three times a week and bringing home six figures. You’ll have a nice house, cars, a great wife who broods over your successes, maybe a few kids. It’s a simple zero-to-hero plan that you’ve worked out in your mind that makes perfect sense to you: climb the ladder, work the politics, fly the big stuff, and come home to your American dream.

Being a professional pilot takes a small fortune and some major sacrifices. To understand it best, lets look at the pros and cons:

Pros:
1. You get to fly!
2. You get to fly multi-million dollar jets surrounded by a high tech cockpit.
3. The right to wear aviator sunglasses.
4. The uniform.
5. Travel to exotic places and not have to pay for hotels.
6. Great pay... as a senior pilot.
7. No working at home on special projects- no deadlines while you're off the clock.
8. Buddy passes and travel perks for you and your family.
9. You're the easiest guy to shop for on holidays and birthdays. Just refer them to the pilot shop.
10. You get schmoozed by FBOs with free coffee, soft drinks, cookies, pilot lounges with satellite TV, huge couches, dozing rooms, Internet access, and even concierge services.
11. The conversation always turns to you when you mention that you're a professional pilot. People always want to hear about what goes on on the other side of the cockpit door.
12. Camaraderie. Nobody understands a pilot like another pilot.
13. Can anybody say mach meter?
14. It doesnt matter what you say after beginning a sentence with "So I was a flight level 350..." It instantly sounds cool.
15. Unlimited sick days.
16. You're the only guy at the airport who enjoys being there.
17. You get to be in command of over 30 million dollars' worth of airplane, people, and cargo at a time.
18. If you fly corporate, you get to mix and mingle with the corporate elite, even sharing in their adventures like golfing with them in the Bahamas, or going skiing in Aspen.
19. If you're charismatic enough to develop an extensive network, you could get that plush job that wasnt published on find-a-pilot.com. Its who you know, not what.
20. You have a little computer that does everything for you from just after takeoff and all the way to touchdown called the autopilot. You just sit back, sip your soda, and talk about the wife and kids with the cockpit crew.


Cons:
1. Poor job security
2. Work holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, soccer games, nights, days, weekends, etc.
3. If you commute, you'll spend your days off on a plane heading to and from work.
4. Forced loyalties to a union- if they go on strike, YOU go on strike.
5. Forced retirement if you lose your medical.
6. Horrible starting pay, sometimes as low as $16 per hour.
7. Duty time is different from billable time. When you're preflighting the airplane, greeting passengers, etc, you don't get paid! You only get paid your full wage when the cabin door shuts for the flight.
8. Each company has its own seniority list. If you switch to another airline, your seniority gets reset to zero. If your airline of even 20 years goes bankrupt, you start all over again from the bottom.
9. Some airlines do not pay for training (in fact, some require YOU to pay for it).
10. Your job depends on numerous stimuli- primarily oil prices, global and domestic economic swings, and terrorist actions. If any one of these things twitches, you could be on the street.
11. Blacklisting. If you turn your back on your union, you'll wind up on a blacklist that labels you a 'scab' for the rest of your career. Good luck trying to get a new job, new pilot friends, jumpseats, etc. after this happens. Its the airline pilot's equivalent of the guillotine.
12. Top-heavy management. You can rest assured that the wigs on top will happily cancel your pension, reduce your pay, or furlough you to resolve the very financial burdens of the company that their million-dollar salaries and golden parachutes (severance packages) have caused. See my posting on the recent Delta Airlines deal for a great example.
13. You will spend a fortune on flight training (sometimes $50k-$90k) only to squabble over the entry-level First Officer positions, rarely more than $25 an hour.
14. Imbalanced family life. You spend so much time away from home that it creates an enormous burden on your spouse, who is left at home to wonder who you love more- your family, or your jet. I guarantee you, when you're lying on your death bed surrounded by your children and grandchildren, you won't be thinking about how you should have gotten more overtime.
15. You don't get the respect you deserve as a highly skilled professional. Hundreds of lives are in your hands every time you light the engines, yet you are regarded as expendable by your company management who has, in some cases, thousands of resumes on their desks of pilots who are ready to take your job if you ever foul up.
16. Your alarm clocks (note the plural) had better work, because most companies will fire you for no more than two no-shows. That may sound normal to those non-pilots reading this, but consider that all airlines are required by law to perform background checks including criminal, residential, employment, and unemployment histories going back ten years. Interviewers with this information will not hire an applicant with an attendance-related termination on his record. There are no second chances. This pilot's career is over and he has to find a new field. Thats a huge investment of time and money up in smoke for an honest mistake.
17. If the pilot screws up, the pilot dies. If maintenance screws up, the pilot dies. If air traffic control screws up, the pilot dies. If the airplane manufacturer screws up, the pilot dies... Would you be willing to die for a lousy 20k/year?
18. There are always some rich-kids who are willing to pay airlines to hire and train them. You heard me, they pay to work. This may seem harmless to the rest of us with families to feed, but this practice only worsens the entry-level salaries and lifestyles of low-time pilots trying to establish a foothold in the industry. As pilots, we are sending the message to our employers that we will put up with anything that they wish to impose upon us just to get a shot at flying their jets. Ive heard many of my pilot colleagues say that they don't care what the salary is- they just want to fly. While I respect their love of flight, which I share with them, I cannot help but feel like they just torpedoed me and my family by being so unrealistically tolerant to the pay/lifestyle pilots are currently forced to endure. We are only as strong as our lowest bidding colleague.
19. The airline pilot has a bad stereotype of infidelity to his wife. While this stereotype stems from actual events, and is probably well deserved by the actions of our predecessors in the field, sexual encounters between crew members is not as prevalent now as it was in the past. Regardless, the stereotype lingers and demands enormous amounts of trust between pilots and their spouses. Those marriages unable to yield this trust will fail. One of my professors in college once said that you aren't a true pilot until you're married to your third wife.
20. Chapter 11. Any time an airline declares bankruptcy, its labor contracts with pilots are dissolved while it makes the pay/benefit/job cuts to get back into the black. This sends me the message that even the federal government is willing to protect the airline management while they stick it to their pilots.