Honestly, I'm not getting my hope up. If we have a contract done by the time I move on to greener pastures, great. If not....well, as long as I'm out and don't have to deal with this management group anymore, whatever. I've got enough holes in my back from our own pilots, guys dying to fly a shiny jet and guys at other regionals hoping we die so they can get our shiny jets. Our management team seems content to ignore reality until it's far too late to do anything about it. They can't POSSIBLY be the ones that miscalculated, so it must be those lazy pilots and flight attendants causing all the problems because they get sick a couple of days a year or can't function on 5 hours of sleep during a 13 hour day.
I've given up hope on getting this pilot group all on the same page, too. Even with the new sick policy, we've still got plenty of guys that will pick up the open time at 200% and cash their pay check. If it were the junior FOs, that's one thing. They can use the cash. However, those guys can't pick up any open time because they're maxed out on flying right from the start. It's normally the super senior guys (mostly CAs) that will get scheduling to convert their high speed into a legal rest overnight so they can pick up an extra turn or two. Then when those of us that don't WANT to fly any more get tossed in the same situation, scheduling will change our high speed to an overnight and extend us in the morning when we get back thinking we WANT to fly. It's enough to make a guy start throwing punches in the crew room.
Something good has come of the new sick/200% open time policy, though. I actually had two days of home reserve where I didn't get called.....in a row. That hasn't happened since....well, when I was a new FO in 2006.
