Part Time Airline Pilots

hindsight2020 said:
my post didnt profer what youre suggesting, hobby pilots did. if you read the second paragraph of my post you'd realize my position on the matter is the same as yours.
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I will accept your explanation, although I read your second paragraph as a bit more nuteral.
 
weilke said:
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the work is just distributed in a rather bizarre and unpredictable manner making it seem more work than it actually is.

If your flying hours were organized along a 9-5 or shift schedule, you would be done with 60 hrs of flying two weeks into the month.
Airline work schedules are the way they are because 'this is how it has always been done' and 'there is no possible other way of doing it'.
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The problem with your theory is it doesn’t work from a scheduling standpoint. It’s impossible to get that 0530 flight out of Austin Texas without an overnight layover. The only way to do it would be to put crew bases in every city, and that wouldn’t be remotely efficient.

Also please remember part 117.
 
Kritchlow said:
One doesn’t “play airline pilot.”
You make this sound like a hobby that anyone can do half assed. Professional pilots have often worked many years to get where they are, and countless training & checking events.
I’m not saying it’s rocket science, but it is not the weekend warrior scenario that your post made it sound like.
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I read his post saying that hobby pilots could turn professional airline flying as their hobby which could be detrimental to us and the industry.
 
weilke said:
If the regionals continue to have recuitment issues they may have to come up with schedule models that work for a broader spectrum of the hiring pool. Airline flying is already a part time job, the work is just distributed in a rather bizarre and unpredictable manner making it seem more work than it actually is.
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Tell that to someone who is junior.
 
weilke said:
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the work is just distributed in a rather bizarre and unpredictable manner making it seem more work than it actually is.

If your flying hours were organized along a 9-5 or shift schedule, you would be done with 60 hrs of flying two weeks into the month.
Airline work schedules are the way they are because 'this is how it has always been done' and 'there is no possible other way of doing it'.
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Yeah, except flight time and duty time are not the same thing. For domestic flying, duty time can be as much as flight time. Maybe more on inefficient schedules.
 
Kritchlow said:
The problem with your theory is it doesn’t work from a scheduling standpoint. It’s impossible to get that 0530 flight out of Austin Texas without an overnight layover. The only way to do it would be to put crew bases in every city, and that wouldn’t be remotely efficient.
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It's not like you have desk and an office at your base. Pilots can be based anywhere. At least on the pilot side, an airline is a virtual office.

Those schedules are highly predictable. It's not like the airline flies to different places every day, there is a schedule and it changes in a predictable manner. That 5:40 departure out of Fargo exists for the 10+ years I have been using it. For the entire time, the airline has been paying three hotel rooms every night. 5:30 to midnight is a 19hr work day. Thats two 9hr shifts with a lunch break each.

It can't be done because it can't possibly be done.
 
weilke said:
It's not like you have desk and an office at your base. Pilots can be based anywhere. At least on the pilot side, an airline is a virtual office.

Those schedules are highly predictable. It's not like the airline flies to different places every day, there is a schedule and it changes in a predictable manner. That 5:40 departure out of Fargo exists for the 10+ years I have been using it. For the entire time, the airline has been paying three hotel rooms every night. 5:30 to midnight is a 19hr work day. Thats two 9hr shifts with a lunch break each.

It can't be done because it can't possibly be done.
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Well, what’s your point? I’m not sure I understand.
My point is we must be on the road, away from home in order to make those flights happen.

Pilots CANNOT be *based* anywhere. You can live anywhere and commute to your base.
The airline figures out the crew base locations based on several factors. I suspect number of hotel rooms per night at that locale being a biggie.
 
Kritchlow said:
Well, what’s your point? I’m not sure I understand.
My point is we must be on the road, away from home in order to make those flights happen.
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Not if you hire your staff where you need it. The entire concept of commuting to a base is absurd to start with. If GE needs you to build turbine blades at their plant in upstate, they hire you locally. They don't hire a guy in Huntsville,AL and fly him in for 3 day stints.
 
weilke said:
Not if you hire your staff where you need it. The entire concept of commuting to a base is absurd to start with. If GE needs you to build turbine blades at their plant in upstate, they hire you locally. They don't hire a guy in Huntsville,AL and fly him in for 3 day stints.
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You’re missing the big picture. GE employers main duties is not to travel around the globe.

Crew leaves Austin for Vegas. Now the flight goes to Nashville. The crew is timed out and must sleep in Nashville. Crew doesn’t get back to Austin that day.
Why doesn’t the flight go back to Austin..???
That would require an individual airplane for ever city pair. It would also mean either a bunch of downtime on the airplane or 6 flights a day between Austin and Vegas. Neither is a good plan.

Also don’t forget other inefficiencies of too many crew bases. Too few pilots at a base make things very inefficient.

The option of commuting is not absurd. Crew bases change size and locales all the time. This saves lots of money with constant forced moves by the airline.
 
weilke said:
It's not like you have desk and an office at your base. Pilots can be based anywhere. At least on the pilot side, an airline is a virtual office.

Those schedules are highly predictable. It's not like the airline flies to different places every day, there is a schedule and it changes in a predictable manner. That 5:40 departure out of Fargo exists for the 10+ years I have been using it. For the entire time, the airline has been paying three hotel rooms every night. 5:30 to midnight is a 19hr work day. Thats two 9hr shifts with a lunch break each.

It can't be done because it can't possibly be done.
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So if I understand what you’re saying, you think they should staff Fargo with 2 crews to operate 19 hours of duty worth of flying. Of course by law you have to have at least 1 day off in 7 so that’s going to require another crew. Then there is that pesky vacation time that pilots want and people do tend to get sick occasionally so there’s that.

You’re looking at a minimum of 4 crews to operate flights just for Fargo by your system. That will buy a lot of hotel rooms.
 
Kritchlow said:
You’re missing the big picture. GE employers main duties is not to travel around the globe.
.
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The CRJ200 goes to Fargo and Wausau, not around the world.
The railroad goes from Dilworth to New Rockford and back every day. Maybe a trip to St Paul with the occasional overnight. They don't send their engineer to Texas one day and to California the next. It's a regional business on a predictable schedule.
 
weilke said:
The CRJ200 goes to Fargo and Wausau, not around the world.
The railroad goes from Dilworth to New Rockford and back every day. Maybe a trip to St Paul with the occasional overnight. They don't send their engineer to Texas one day and to California the next. It's a regional business on a predictable schedule.
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I still don’t see your point. Same rules apply.

Trust me on this... these airline CEO’s are complete cut throat sharks. If there was anyway to do this more efficiently, they will find it.
The current system is a true & tried system that so far has proven to be the best.
 
Tarheelpilot said:
I haven’t verified this info but a good friend is a sim p at American. He said the American guys are averaging around 90 hours a month. Hell I didn’t fly that much at republic when I was regional trash. Times have changed.
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I have a feeling there might have been a misconnect between what the sim p was talking about and reserves flying all the time. Reserve usage varies by equipment, seat, and base, but reserves averaging 90 hours isn't happening anywhere I can see. Guys can choose to *credit* 90 hours by picking up open time while on reserve, which many do because open time pickup goes above guarantee, but even then you're only flying a portion of the month. It's also not uncommon for a line-holder to credit 90+ hours per month (some well into the 100s if they're premium whores) - perhaps that's what the sim p was talking about? ::shrug::

Just as an example, I'm on a workhorse airplane in a busy base, and just looking at today's reserve list we have a pretty linear distribution of guys working anywhere from 5 to 50 hours so far in December. So nobody is even close to min guarantee. On the widebody airplanes, many guys haven't even worked at all.
 
Busflyer said:
So if I understand what you’re saying, you think they should staff Fargo with 2 crews to operate 19 hours of duty worth of flying. Of course by law you have to have at least 1 day off in 7 so that’s going to require another crew. Then there is that pesky vacation time that pilots want and people do tend to get sick occasionally so there’s that.

You’re looking at a minimum of 4 crews to operate flights just for Fargo by your system. That will buy a lot of hotel rooms.
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In the current system the airline pays between 6 and 8 crews per plane. 4 would be a steal.
 
weilke said:
In the current system the airline pays between 6 and 8 crews per plane. 4 would be a steal.
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Not really. How much utilization do you think you can get out of an airplane solely serving Fargo ND? Idle airplanes are bad for business.

Plus you would need more than four crews.
 
kayoh190 said:
I have a feeling there might have been a misconnect between what the sim p was talking about and reserves flying all the time. Reserve usage varies by equipment, seat, and base, but reserves averaging 90 hours isn't happening anywhere I can see. Guys can choose to *credit* 90 hours by picking up open time while on reserve, which many do because open time pickup goes above guarantee, but even then you're only flying a portion of the month. It's also not uncommon for a line-holder to credit 90+ hours per month (some well into the 100s if they're premium whores) - perhaps that's what the sim p was talking about? ::shrug::

Just as an example, I'm on a workhorse airplane in a busy base, and just looking at today's reserve list we have a pretty linear distribution of guys working anywhere from 5 to 50 hours so far in December. So nobody is even close to min guarantee. On the widebody airplanes, many guys haven't even worked at all.
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That’s why I posted my doubts about the accuracy. I’ve seen a disconnect between the instructors and line pilots in my own experience so I was not dismissive but didn’t assume it to be accurate either. Glad to hear his perceptions were not quite right.
 
weilke said:
If the regionals continue to have recuitment issues they may have to come up with schedule models that work for a broader spectrum of the hiring pool.
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They’d be a lot better off coming up with pay models that work for a broader spectrum of the hiring pool. :)

They really haven’t hit real “shortages” yet. Nobody is having any real trouble filling their new hire classes that I’ve seen.

It’s a rough business. Profit margins are razor thin at some regionals. Paying better isn’t on the table for them.

Adding in some sort of part-timer system raises total costs, it doesn’t lower them. More training time for less profit making work produced.

They’d have to be really desperate to do that. None are currently that desperate. Not by a long shot.

What there’s been some limited rumors of is one or two hiring “street Captains” on one-time Pass/Fail basis. Candidate has a bejillion hours on jets elsewhere and agrees to a one time horrendous checkride without knowing the company’s flows and call outs, business, culture, or any of it that their upgrading FO peers have in their heads already.

Big risk for the applicant, but helps if the airline is growing rapidly and can’t upgrade FOs yet. Makes the FO pool very angry sometimes. Rarely done. Almost never. Stirs up the online forums pretty good even as just a rumor.
 
denverpilot said:
They’d be a lot better off coming up with pay models that work for a broader spectrum of the hiring pool. :)

They really haven’t hit real “shortages” yet. Nobody is having any real trouble filling their new hire classes that I’ve seen.

It’s a rough business. Profit margins are razor thin at some regionals. Paying better isn’t on the table for them.

Adding in some sort of part-timer system raises total costs, it doesn’t lower them. More training time for less profit making work produced.

They’d have to be really desperate to do that. None are currently that desperate. Not by a long shot.

What there’s been some limited rumors of is one or two hiring “street Captains” on one-time Pass/Fail basis. Candidate has a bejillion hours on jets elsewhere and agrees to a one time horrendous checkride without knowing the company’s flows and call outs, business, culture, or any of it that their upgrading FO peers have in their heads already.

Big risk for the applicant, but helps if the airline is growing rapidly and can’t upgrade FOs yet. Makes the FO pool very angry sometimes. Rarely done. Almost never. Stirs up the online forums pretty good even as just a rumor.
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At my airline we have enough qualified FOs to upgrade but none of them want to upgrade in NYC or are waiting until they can hold a line. On our last vacancy we upgraded a new hire. As soon as he finishes new hire OE, he’s going right back to the schoolhouse. We are fat on FOs. Not so much on Captains. Our reserve captains get abused. Some of our reserve FOs are begging for flying.
 
The notion that you can staff an airline á la carte by treating pilots as a local hiring pool of townies, really spells a lot of ignorance about the concept of productivity and utilization of an asset whose very definition is to move around well into the hours where society sleeps. It also spells ignorance of the degree to which airline market share planning is a lot more change-prone than is being portrayed as. All things that make "virtual basing", what is essentially being proffered here without knowing there's an actual term for it already, a non-starter for the vast majority of airlines.

The G4 model is about the closest you can get to the idea of treating pilot hiring as the equivalent of pedestrians/bank tellers. Lord save you if you attempt to commute at that airline. And Lord save you again when (not if) their market schedules change and your domicile disappears, AGAIN.
 
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jordane93 said:
At my airline we have enough qualified FOs to upgrade but none of them want to upgrade in NYC or are waiting until they can hold a line. On our last vacancy we upgraded a new hire. As soon as he finishes new hire OE, he’s going right back to the schoolhouse. We are fat on FOs. Not so much on Captains. Our reserve captains get abused. Some of our reserve FOs are begging for flying.
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Fascinating. To clear that logjam they’re going to have to come up with some incentive to get people to upgrade. Usually that’s the pay, but sounds like it’s quality-of-life issues trumping the bigger paycheck there. The worse it gets the more the reserves get abused, and the cycle continues. Wild.
 
Tarheelpilot said:
That’s why I posted my doubts about the accuracy. I’ve seen a disconnect between the instructors and line pilots in my own experience so I was not dismissive but didn’t assume it to be accurate either. Glad to hear his perceptions were not quite right.
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It's funny, I wrote 'misconnect' when I meant 'disconnect'. Clearly I'm working waaaaay too much. :)
 
jordane93 said:
At my airline we have enough qualified FOs to upgrade but none of them want to upgrade in NYC or are waiting until they can hold a line. On our last vacancy we upgraded a new hire. As soon as he finishes new hire OE, he’s going right back to the schoolhouse. We are fat on FOs. Not so much on Captains. Our reserve captains get abused. Some of our reserve FOs are begging for flying.
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Yup, perverse incentives that occur when you de-couple "pay" from "schedules". Most civilian occupations are "winner take all" in that regard, though many "floater" middle managers and supervisors who don't get paid extra (like charge nurses on a hospital floor shift for example, or yours truly as flight commander while everybody gets to fly and go home for the same pay) may disagree on that of course.

The solution is simple: Up or Out. AA used to have that policy back in the day from my understanding. If that were still in place, you'd high-tail it to the training center for upgrade so quick you'd get hat burn from that Soviet sub commander hat they make you wear around indoors like an extra at central casting. :D

Seriously though, they've had people park it on the senior FO land for so long, even SWA had to address that whole "Lance Capt" thing because it was creating enough friction among the rank and file to make note of it. I'm no management sympathizer, but if I was the company and I had 3/4 of the demographic trying to park it on the top FO schedules, I'd force flush that issue on the next CBA. Seniors won't care, and we know they'll vote their daughters into the escort section on backpage, if it means even a $1 raise in the 12-year CA payrate.
 
hindsight2020 said:
Seniors won't care, and we know they'll vote their daughters into the escort section on backpage, if it means even a $1 raise in the 12-year CA payrate.
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Ain't that the effing truth!
 
kayoh190 said:
I have a feeling there might have been a misconnect between what the sim p was talking about and reserves flying all the time. Reserve usage varies by equipment, seat, and base, but reserves averaging 90 hours isn't happening anywhere I can see. Guys can choose to *credit* 90 hours by picking up open time while on reserve, which many do because open time pickup goes above guarantee, but even then you're only flying a portion of the month. It's also not uncommon for a line-holder to credit 90+ hours per month (some well into the 100s if they're premium whores) - perhaps that's what the sim p was talking about? ::shrug::

Just as an example, I'm on a workhorse airplane in a busy base, and just looking at today's reserve list we have a pretty linear distribution of guys working anywhere from 5 to 50 hours so far in December. So nobody is even close to min guarantee. On the widebody airplanes, many guys haven't even worked at all.
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You all get paid based on duty day or flying hours?
 
Velocity173 said:
You all get paid based on duty day or flying hours?
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They get paid on credit hours, which is defined as the larger of duty or TAFB (as defined by their rig rules), or flying(aka block), or guarantee, whichever of the three categories is larger.

Sad I know all that as a non-airline pilot. Having to work all these dirty bastid mofos into the mil side monthly schedule has forced me to learn the pay and scheduling systems for DL,UA AA and SW. Happy to oblige don't get me wrong, but it's amazing the amount of nuance you can pick up when you listen to them sport kvetch at the squadron for 5 days at a time.
 
Velocity173 said:
You all get paid based on duty day or flying hours?
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Flying hours, but we have duty and trip rigs that provide a baseline in pay for a given trip, regardless of how little we fly. The reserve guys get a guarantee. If we fly more than that baseline during the trip (or guarantee for the month in the case of reserve), we get paid based on our actual flying hours.
 
hindsight2020 said:
They get paid on credit hours, which is defined as the larger of duty or TAFB (as defined by their rig rules), or flying(aka block), or guarantee, whichever of the three categories is larger.

Sad I know all that as a non-airline pilot. Having to work all these dirty bastid mofos into the mil side monthly schedule has forced me to learn the pay and scheduling systems for DL,UA AA and SW. Happy to oblige don't get me wrong, but it's amazing the amount of nuance you can pick up when you listen to them sport kvetch at the squadron for 5 days at a time.
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No larger of flight ir TAFB here. We may have a trip rig (minimum per day) and get per diem for TAFB, but it’s DEFINITELY NOT the larger of flight or TAFB. Don’t I wish....
 
denverpilot said:
Fascinating. To clear that logjam they’re going to have to come up with some incentive to get people to upgrade. Usually that’s the pay, but sounds like it’s quality-of-life issues trumping the bigger paycheck there. The worse it gets the more the reserves get abused, and the cycle continues. Wild.
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They aren’t really do anything except for throwing money at the problem and it’s not working. The airline is great for me because they are growing NYC all the time and no one wants to be based there. We haven’t had to hire street captains but I can see it coming soon.
 
jordane93 said:
They aren’t really do anything except for throwing money at the problem and it’s not working. The airline is great for me because they are growing NYC all the time and no one wants to be based there. We haven’t had to hire street captains but I can see it coming soon.
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LOL. That reminds me of my job.
"Hey hindsight, what do you like about your job?"
"Yeah man, it's great job security brah. My family sucks hind teet on the 'qwol 'and nobody wants to live here, so yeah it's great man". :D
 
hindsight2020 said:
LOL. That reminds me of my job.
"Hey hindsight, what do you like about your job?"
"Yeah man, it's great job security brah. My family sucks hind teet on the 'qwol 'and nobody wants to live here, so yeah it's great man". :D
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And NYC May work for you now, but at some point you may meet some senorita in Miami, and.......
 
hindsight2020 said:
LOL. That reminds me of my job.
"Hey hindsight, what do you like about your job?"
"Yeah man, it's great job security brah. My family sucks hind teet on the 'qwol 'and nobody wants to live here, so yeah it's great man". :D
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I’ll pick up what no one else wants!
 
Kritchlow said:
And NYC May work for you now, but at some point you may meet some senorita in Miami, and.......
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yea right kritchlow, you know the "senoir" part of senorita is correct for MIA. i remember when MIA was a junior base for FA's and Pilots......
 
unsafervguy said:
yea right kritchlow, you know the "senoir" part of senorita is correct for MIA. i remember when MIA was a junior base for FA's and Pilots......
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Hey.... I’m just thinking señoritas and their good friend Richard!!
 
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