Flight Attendant Gets Fired For Saying She Qualifies For Foo

Re: Flight Attendant Gets Fired For Saying She Qualifies For

Heck I know S5 pilots that were on public assistance while holding a line.

No airline geek talk, just spell out the airline.


...says the guy hoping for the Colgan call.

images
 
Re: Flight Attendant Gets Fired For Saying She Qualifies For

Hey everyone, I'm totally for the flight attendant on this case. I'm on her side because she did in fact state a fact that is available to the public. However just to play devil's advocate. I know that just recently (within the last 2 years) Pinnacle and Mesaba, I believe posted a memo for some type of gag order for crew members and the media. This was due to this exposé done with a Saab highspeed from MSP-MCW-FOD where a crew hid their cameras and informally interviewed pilots and a flight attendant about rest and what not.

Similarly a buddy of mine from another regional that I used to work for (hint: his name is Hulas and he now owns Compass) got fired (while on probation) for talking crap about our company while in uniform/deadheading. Unfornately the lady he was talking to was the wife of someone from the training dept. oops...
 
Re: Flight Attendant Gets Fired For Saying She Qualifies For

...says the guy hoping for the Colgan call.


Since you never made it past "the Captains gear swinger" (I wish I coined that one, but sadly it belongs to someone else) I'll explain an aspect of a pilot's career:
It's generally a good idea to attend an interview if your invited. You don't have to accept the job if offered, but generally a good idea.

Is there any other tidbits you care for me to explain?



And with giant crocodile tears I regret to inform you, I never did attend a Colgan interview.
 
Re: Flight Attendant Gets Fired For Saying She Qualifies For

Sorry to say, but she got fired not for going on TV and talking about food stamps but for calling her employer out by name.

Even if it had been a "Delta Connection" she would have survived. But once she said "Compass Airlines (Airways? Airholes? IDK.) she was toast. Every FOM/FAM/GOM/whatever your company calls it is very clear: you do not talk to the press about the company without permission.

Rude, certainly. But entirely a predictable outcome. This isn't Queen of the Sky cleavage on an obscure blog--this was the evening news and a story designed to make her employer look bad.

Which of course they are.
 
Re: Flight Attendant Gets Fired For Saying She Qualifies For

Such a snide comment only incites anger, maybe contribution instead of instigation would helpful. If you think you have an answer, please share it. I'm sure a lot of people would love to hear how to progress their careers while not sacrificing some quality of life.

It's not the fault of the public, it's a byproduct of years of rising costs and dropping profits. You can say it's 'our' fault of accepting low wages, but low wages are better than no wages. I don't feel like I'm on the poverty line, however I make a lot less than I did as a CFI. It sucks, but again, if you have a better idea I'd love to hear it.

I disagree 100% with the bold...

Sure there is a way, supply/demand. If you owned a company and knew there were people lined up to work for you for next to nothing would you pay them any higher than that? No, it's simple business economics.

I started this path of career pilot in 2007 thinking I would be going to the airlines. But I have been working as a contract pilot for years now making more than double what I would make in the airlines and I sleep in my own bed 95% of the time. I refuse to take a 50% paycut to spend 21 days away from home and have to pay for a crashpad on top of that. The day the airlines start paying a fair wage is the day I willl think about it....

I have lost two right seat contract jobs (both of which are required positions) in the last year, one in a Merlin, the other in a Citation 5 because they had so many people coming to them wanting to fly for free that they decided paying me $300 a day was too much. So now these guys are getting there "turbine" time which is absolutly worthless and taking the opportunity away for me to make the money. And I give every one of those guys I see doing it a piece of my mind.

Is this all because of "rising cost and reduced profits"? Hell no, it's dumbass people working for free taking away my way of life. It's the exact same at the airlines, as long as there are piles of resumes to fly a big shiny plane for 20k a year, why on earth would they raise the pay??? Let flights start getting cancelled because they can't be manned and guess what will happen... Pay will increase to lure pilots in. But of course this would take EVERYBODY not accepting low wages and I know that is a pipe dream. But I have put me foot down and I am not going to do it...
 
Re: Flight Attendant Gets Fired For Saying She Qualifies For

OK, next time I'm laid off and driving a Dump Truck 65 hours week @ $13/hr, I'll make sure I turn down any flying jobs that pay less than $300/day.
 
Re: Flight Attendant Gets Fired For Saying She Qualifies For

I disagree 100% with the bold...

Sure there is a way, supply/demand. If you owned a company and knew there were people lined up to work for you for next to nothing would you pay them any higher than that? No, it's simple business economics.

I started this path of career pilot in 2007 thinking I would be going to the airlines. But I have been working as a contract pilot for years now making more than double what I would make in the airlines and I sleep in my own bed 95% of the time. I refuse to take a 50% paycut to spend 21 days away from home and have to pay for a crashpad on top of that. The day the airlines start paying a fair wage is the day I willl think about it....

I have lost two right seat contract jobs (both of which are required positions) in the last year, one in a Merlin, the other in a Citation 5 because they had so many people coming to them wanting to fly for free that they decided paying me $300 a day was too much. So now these guys are getting there "turbine" time which is absolutly worthless and taking the opportunity away for me to make the money. And I give every one of those guys I see doing it a piece of my mind.

Is this all because of "rising cost and reduced profits"? Hell no, it's dumbass people working for free taking away my way of life. It's the exact same at the airlines, as long as there are piles of resumes to fly a big shiny plane for 20k a year, why on earth would they raise the pay??? Let flights start getting cancelled because they can't be manned and guess what will happen... Pay will increase to lure pilots in. But of course this would take EVERYBODY not accepting low wages and I know that is a pipe dream. But I have put me foot down and I am not going to do it...

Never going to happen.
 
Re: Flight Attendant Gets Fired For Saying She Qualifies For

It happened in 2007-2008. Pay didn't go up though, minimums just went down. Now minimums can't go down. Those no-crew cancellations were at the root of Mesa Air Group's downfall, as they led to Delta cancelling our CPA, which led to Mesa filing bankruptcy. To think it could have all been avoided if JO paid his pilots slightly more.

ALPA, or somebody, should give a class on this chain of events because it is really remarkable. Mesa/JO doesn't want to spend the small amount of money to pay industry standard wages and benefits so he ends up spending many times more than that just on training costs (50% pilot attrition in 2007, ~20,000 sim hours) and since there is a max out point in the training bottleneck he can't even get the replacements trained in time, loses on time and completion metrics and runs the entire airline with no backup anything just to get by and this ends up, months later, causing us to fall below performance metrics and having the Delta CPA cancelled.

For want of a competitive paycheck a pilot is lost,
For want of a pilot, a flight is lost
For want of a flight, a capacity purchase agreement is lost
For want of a CPA, the airline is lost!
 
Re: Flight Attendant Gets Fired For Saying She Qualifies For

It happened in 2007-2008. Pay didn't go up though, minimums just went down. Now minimums can't go down. Those no-crew cancellations were at the root of Mesa Air Group's downfall, as they led to Delta cancelling our CPA, which led to Mesa filing bankruptcy. To think it could have all been avoided if JO paid his pilots slightly more.

ALPA, or somebody, should give a class on this chain of events because it is really remarkable. Mesa/JO doesn't want to spend the small amount of money to pay industry standard wages and benefits so he ends up spending many times more than that just on training costs (50% pilot attrition in 2007, ~20,000 sim hours) and since there is a max out point in the training bottleneck he can't even get the replacements trained in time, loses on time and completion metrics and runs the entire airline with no backup anything just to get by and this ends up, months later, causing us to fall below performance metrics and having the Delta CPA cancelled.

For want of a competitive paycheck a pilot is lost,
For want of a pilot, a flight is lost
For want of a flight, a capacity purchase agreement is lost
For want of a CPA, the airline is lost!

I'd say a pretty spot on analysis. The entire issue for the airlines, is that virtually every single one of those companies have created absolutely toxic environments between management and the unions. You can't get anywhere close to running an efficient company when people are at each other's throats.

Southwest gets it- they treat the customer AND the employee well, and guess what, they have an efficient company AND they make money.

With the exception of SWA, and maybe Jet Blue, the entire industry needs an overhaul from the ground up, but hell if I know how or if that's ever going to happen.

In the meantime, I'm not about to go work 23 days a month for 15 hours a day for $20k a year. For those who haven't done the math, that's $4.83 per duty hour. Why anyone would spend upwards of $50k on training to get a job that pays less than min wage is completely beyond me, but people do it, and as long as they will, pay will not go up.

I, too, have lost contract work to kids willing to fly "in exchange for the flight time," and I can't even begin to express how much this infuriates me. It should be a required part of ground school for a Commercial ticket to understand this basic point.
 
Re: Flight Attendant Gets Fired For Saying She Qualifies For

I lost a ferry contract because someone said he would do it for the free flight time, and ended up having an extremely hard landing and breaking something in the nosewheel strut. I wasn't quite Nelson, but I wanted to say Ha Ha.
 
Re: Flight Attendant Gets Fired For Saying She Qualifies For

To give you an idea how bad it was for Mesa's CRJ pipeline there was someone I knew who got hired, went through systems and then waited almost 6 months for his sim time. He loved it since it was like a paid vacation, though.
 
Re: Flight Attendant Gets Fired For Saying She Qualifies For

OK, next time I'm laid off and driving a Dump Truck 65 hours week @ $13/hr, I'll make sure I turn down any flying jobs that pay less than $300/day.


Here's an idea, why don't you do the rest of us pilots a favor, and just stick to driving dumptrucks. With an attitude like your's, your not going to make many friends. Flying for free is going to do you no good, and in the long run will probably hurt you.
 
Re: Flight Attendant Gets Fired For Saying She Qualifies For

Now really... is it the fault of the regional drivers of the current day or the guys who first accepted to fly for these feeder airlines for lower wages to move up more quickly? What higher wage is there to accept in this day and age if these substandard wages were determined by guys who are flying 747s and A330's now? It just seems like a Ponzi scheme to me.. The first few guys got their huge payout by moving through the pipeline really quickly and now there is this huge traffic jam which leads to an extended period of an unacceptable QOL that might have been okay if you knew it was only going to last for 3 years.
 
Re: Flight Attendant Gets Fired For Saying She Qualifies For

Now really... is it the fault of the regional drivers of the current day or the guys who first accepted to fly for these feeder airlines for lower wages to move up more quickly? What higher wage is there to accept in this day and age if these substandard wages were determined by guys who are flying 747s and A330's now? It just seems like a Ponzi scheme to me.. The first few guys got their huge payout by moving through the pipeline really quickly and now there is this huge traffic jam which leads to an extended period of an unacceptable QOL that might have been okay if you knew it was only going to last for 3 years.

This is an interesting point. It WAS a different picture 20 years ago, heck, even 10 years ago. The regional (well, commuter back then) airlines used to be a stepping stone to bigger and better things, so it was a completely different proposition to slave away for peanuts for a couple years if it meant moving on to a mainline carrier in a few years. That, to me, is "paying your dues" in the simplest sense. The picture is drastically different now that there are so fewer jobs to move up into.

There are plenty of pilots who will spend their entire career at a regional (and on that note, I'm sorry, but flying a 76 seat aircraft 1000nm is not "regional' flying, but that's an entirely separate topic) now, and if that was the case "way back when" it's somewhat plausible to think that those in decision making capacity may have felt differently about agreeing to work for peanuts, had they known it would not be a stepping stone, but instead a career job.

At the end of the day, it's simple business economics. If someone will do the job for less, it only makes sense in the interests of the company to allow that to happen. Airlines are public companies, and those that run them have a duty to the shareholders to attempt to turn a profit. Contrary to what some would like to think, the company you work for is likely not looking out for YOUR best interests.
 
Re: Flight Attendant Gets Fired For Saying She Qualifies For

Such a snide comment only incites anger, maybe contribution instead of instigation would helpful. If you think you have an answer, please share it. I'm sure a lot of people would love to hear how to progress their careers while not sacrificing some quality of life.

It's not the fault of the public, it's a byproduct of years of rising costs and dropping profits. You can say it's 'our' fault of accepting low wages, but low wages are better than no wages. I don't feel like I'm on the poverty line, however I make a lot less than I did as a CFI. It sucks, but again, if you have a better idea I'd love to hear it.

+1 :clap:
 
Re: Flight Attendant Gets Fired For Saying She Qualifies For

No matter how many times this has happened people still don't get that it's not okay to say bad things about the company you work for on television no matter how true they are.
It is ok. This is America.....

Shame on Compass.
 
Re: Flight Attendant Gets Fired For Saying She Qualifies For

OK, next time I'm laid off and driving a Dump Truck 65 hours week @ $13/hr, I'll make sure I turn down any flying jobs that pay less than $300/day.

What would be even better is if you were laid off from your dumptruck cause a new guy will do it for free, or 1/4 your pay for the "experience". When that happens come talk to me, then maybe you will understand what is happening in my part of the industry. Undercutting does not help you, because one day you will decide you want to make a living as a pilot and flying for free or dirt cheap doesn't pay the mortgage.
 
Re: Flight Attendant Gets Fired For Saying She Qualifies For

Example for you why we all get paid squat. My roommate (Yes I'm a college grad who can't afford my own place) tried pursuing a king air job where they were paying the captains $350 a day, and the sic $225 a day. He offered to pay for his initial training and to fly for free. When he told me that, I wanted to knock him out! Case and point why no one can make a living in this industry.
 
Re: Flight Attendant Gets Fired For Saying She Qualifies For

Unhappy workers generally are.
eh, maybe not:)

Best flight attendent I ever worked with this month just resigned. She has a MA, and worked a long time at Emirates and took a job at a regional 'cause she married a sailor and came back with him. She is the hardest worker, best crewmate possible, but really doesn't like being treated like a child by inflight, crew sked all for peanuts. She has been fed up for a long time. A lot of people in this field have a passion for the industry, and work a lot harder than they are paid.
 
Back
Top