Skywest pilot antics in IAH

I was talking to jtrain609 about this yesterday. About 2 years ago we had a guy go get a wheelchair to take a passenger off the plane because the gate agent had her hands full dealing with a passenger who couldn't find their carry on bag. Anyhow, this guy pushed the empty wheelchair down the jetway and when he went set the brake on the wheel he slipped and managed to cut his arm open on the metal lever of the wheel brake. It was a pretty nasty cut and required a bunch of staples to close it up. It also did some damage to the tendon in his arm and he wasn't able to close his hand for about 6 months.

The company initially pushed the workers comp claim through, but the insurance company denied it as they deemed that moving a wheel chair was not part of his job. The union fought this in the court system and after about a year the State court (I think it was in PA) sided with the insurance company the the claim was denied. The pilot was out of work for about 8 months. Thankfully he had loss of license insurance from ALPA so he had a little bit of an income stream, but otherwise he would have been screwed.
 
USMCmech said:
For the record, this is what a brotherhood looks like,
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Not to knock the military guys for anything, but personally I don't plan on doing any bleeding just to be brothers with somebody.

I'm all for helping out and making the world/company a better place for my fellow pilots, but I think the whole Band of Brothers analogy is kind of a little extreme when you are talking about unions.
 
USMCmech said:
Yes I did.

However I see the union as equally culpable as management in creating a system where employees are only allowed to work within a very narrow set of job duties.
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Well you are wrong. I'm not trained to properly load or unload the aircraft I fly, I'm not trained to operate the jetway, rebook passengers, or a plethora of other duties that are essential for me getting our passengers from point A to point B. Do I provide exceptional customer service? I think so, but do so with what I am trained to do and will look for help from other coworkers if I can't accomplish what needs to be done.

I don't care if they are unionized or not, I would never call for a fellow pilot to be disciplined for any matter other than safety.
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It's clear you don't understand what prostands does. This guys makes us all look like jackasses climbing the belt loader, prostands would explain this to him and keep him possibly out of the chief pilots office. However, Skywest isn't unionized so all bets are off.

To requote ATN,

Clearly you don't know what a brotherhood looks like if you are making or defending such comments.

For the record, this is what a brotherhood looks like,
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That's not his job, but it doesn't matter.
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Really? You are going to compare flying from city A in to city B in the USA safely and on time to combat?
 
BobDDuck said:
Do you know why they aren't doing their job? You are just assuming that they are all inside playing Candy Crush on their phones. I suppose that is possible but it's also possible that they are short staffed so half of the ramp crew is stuck working in the bag room, and the half that are out side are working double the number of gates. I wouldn't want them to run over from what they were doing either. People get hurt on the ramp when they run.
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Having been a ramper I kind of know what's going on, and can tell when they're actually busy or just slacking. IAD for instance, you have 6 rampers standing in a comm point out by the ramp. Nobody is out preparing the ramp for their next arrival. Then an aircraft shows up, and the air stairs have to be brought around the plane, they have to go find a GPU and a belt loader etc. We weren't allowed to run on the ramp, and frankly we didn't need to. And we were short staffed ALL the time.. All we had to do was take a few minutes in between flights and stage the area for the next inbound. That crap drives me nuts and happens more than legitimately being too busy.
 
Seggy said:
It's clear you don't understand what prostands does. This guys makes us all look like jackasses climbing the belt loader, prostands would explain this to him and keep him possibly out of the chief pilots office.
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I agree completely, especially when management can be kept out of it. For example, in the picture I posted it's the medic's job to treat the wounded, and the shooters need to ignore them and win the gunfight.

I was referring to ATNs statements, not yours. His animosity to anyone who does not agree with his point of view is embarrassing.
 
I'm having problems figuring out what a union has to do with anything when it comes to job scope.

I wasn't in a union my first year at Skyway and my work ethic hasn't changed after 15 years at unionized Southernjets.

I love to help and solve problems and I do some things that are outside of the scope of my job, but the decision to do that is solely mine and I ask myself "Is this worth the risk?"

When I'm flying relief and I'm doing nothing but sitting on my ass because all of my preflight duties are done, I'll sometimes help set up business class (ENC headphones, water bottles, amenity kits, blankets, pillows) or since I have a rudimentary working knowledge in a few languages, I'll greet passengers and make sure they get down the correct aisle. All outside of my job scope, but good customer service.

Now if the captain wants me to do downstairs and pull the ground conditioned air off the airplane, umm, no. I don't know how the system works, wasn't taught that and if I screw it up and break something, the union isn't going to have my back when the company wants me to payroll deduct $15,000 for a broken linkage (I don't know).

I'll help bring up strollers, mark gate-checked bags, work on passenger issues and push the occasional wheelchair without a problem. But I don't lift immobile passengers onto "straight backs", help with overloaded carryons into overhead bins, handle anything with known organic matter or touch any ground equipment.

That guy riding the belt up to the stairs was a flat-out idiot. I'm sorry if he's any of your friends, but if he had gotten hurt, Skywest may have had his back, but Skywest's Workmen's Comp Insurer will not and any financial help from his injury would have to come from the companys "Good Will", but it's a publicly-held corporation so the shareholders would demand heads if they were (in the grand scheme) spending money where it (a) wasn't increasing shareholder value and (b) where they didn't have to and potentially opened up the corporation to legal liability by accepting some sort of responsibility for the injured employee. (I guess, I dunno).

A union can only (a) your contract and (b)act as pre-paid legal, of sorts, to defend your rights as a worker.

If you work outside of your contract, they can't do anything for you.
If you volunteered yourself to perform a task, outside of the scope of your job, and became injured, a union can't do much for you nor can a labor attorney.

Do your job, folks. Have a good time doing it and provide good customer service, but use your noggin and we're not dropping bombs on target at 0135 because if we're 30 seconds late, the Huns will overrun the Ypres Salient and all will be lost.
 
As a corporate/charter/freight guy you can't compare my job to the job of Derg,Seggy, or ATN_Pilot. It IS within our job scope to load bags and empty trash after a flight or throwing boxes off the freighter. It's not going the extra mile, it's part of the job. It's expected of us and there is no one else there to do it.
An airline pilot is employed to safely get his/her passengers from point a to point b. They aren't a bunch of lazy union thugs, they are just doing their job. If as a pilot you see a ramper being lazy and you get out of the cockpit and do their job for them what is that going to fix? Yes you and your passengers on that particular flight MAY get to the destination quicker but you are masking the problem of the ramper which won't get noticed or fixed. If the company is too cheap to pay for good help on the ground that is their business. If your management team fails to take action and you think it is eventually going to hurt business to the point of you putting food on your table is in jeopardy, leave.
Does that mean I work harder at my job then Dough or the Wookie, possibly. But the kid flying freight in a 210 is working harder than me. And neither of them can have their wife fly on a private jet to Cabo. ALL JOBS AREN'T EQUAL.
 
Seggy said:
Did you not read Doug's post above? Or do you have blinders to the points, ATN, myself, and others have made in how incredibly foolish it is to do things that may not be covered with OJI?



If you do other people's jobs, things don't get fixed. We had a huge issue in IAH at Colgan as management depended on the pilots for a long time to do aircraft repositions. By doing so and not having a mechanic do it, they were needlessly delaying flights as the pilots would be doing them on short turns, and couldn't get it done in time. One day I refused to do a reposition due to the fact we weren't required to per our contract that was just implemented and the aircraft was sitting out there in 100 degree heat all day without any cooling provided. It caused a HUGE stink, but the very next day, mechanics and supertugs were repoing airplanes to the gate, helping out the operation be more efficient.

Once again, you can provide good customer service in other ways rather than doing someone else's job.



Real professional there...
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This times a billion. And I understand it from a ramp perspective too, especially at a hub. If they somehow manage to figure out how to turn a plane in half the amount of time, they aren't going to be rewarded. They're going to have to turn two planes in the same amount of time from now on. Pay will remain the same.
 
mikecweb said:
As a corporate/charter/freight guy you can't compare my job to the job of Derg,Seggy, or ATN_Pilot. It IS within our job scope to load bags and empty trash after a flight or throwing boxes off the freighter. It's not going the extra mile, it's part of the job. It's expected of us and there is no one else there to do it.
An airline pilot is employed to safely get his/her passengers from point a to point b. They aren't a bunch of lazy union thugs, they are just doing their job. If as a pilot you see a ramper being lazy and you get out of the cockpit and do their job for them what is that going to fix? Yes you and your passengers on that particular flight MAY get to the destination quicker but you are masking the problem of the ramper which won't get noticed or fixed. If the company is too cheap to pay for good help on the ground that is their business. If your management team fails to take action and you think it is eventually going to hurt business to the point of you putting food on your table is in jeopardy, leave.
Does that mean I work harder at my job then Dough or the Wookie, possibly. But the kid flying freight in a 210 is working harder than me. And neither of them can have their wife fly on a private jet to Cabo. ALL JOBS AREN'T EQUAL.
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Post o' the day.
 
DE727UPS said:
With the talk about the wheelchairs. I see SWA pilots all the time helping out with wheelchairs during the boarding process. They are union as are the rampers. Perhaps they get initial and recurrent in wheelchair ops?
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Give me the training.

When a nice old vet with a Martin B-26 hat (who also had interesting things to say about the Murderer, erm, Marauder during the wait) is stuck on the airplane, because there's nobody around at the bottom of the ramp, I feel compelled.
 
DE727UPS said:
With the talk about the wheelchairs. I see SWA pilots all the time helping out with wheelchairs during the boarding process. They are union as are the rampers. Perhaps they get initial and recurrent in wheelchair ops?
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Or maybe their workers comp covers that if they blow out their backs doing so....
 
Aviator1988 said:
quick.. somebody get skywest some more flying!!
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Your airline's routes will be added to our own.

Resistance is futile.

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This is why I love pilots. People keep saying "it's not my job, I'm not trained to do it, there are people whose job it is to do it." I can understand and respect that position.

However....

What will that same pilot say when he drags his tired butt into the hotel lobby after a long weather day and the person behind the counter says "Sorry, checking in guests isn't my job, I just do phone reservations." My guess is the pilot isn't as understanding with the "oh, I understand"
 
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