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Why do Dispatchers feel a sense of entitlement just because they've 'paid their dues' at regionals or have prior experience? This same thing happens in every industry. It should make you more 'hungry' for your dream job
 
Why do Dispatchers feel a sense of entitlement just because they've 'paid their dues' at regionals or have prior experience?

Same thing happens with pilots. One or two have been let go for attitude issues, and several more will likely never get the call because they're a "known" entity and aviation is a small industry when it comes to who knows who.
 
As much as I hate that Delta hasn't hired externally, I believe in their right to do so. Think about it this way, you can teach dispatching, you can't teach personality. When Delta hires internally, they have know the person and what kind of a worker they are so they know the work ethic, attitude, and abilities of people they are promoting into dispatch. When they do an external search all they know about the candidate are what a couple of sheets of paper say in the resume and the cover letter. Beyond that there are various questions in the applications that can kind of point to how a person would react but those will not always be accurate. After that, assuming a candidate gets an interview, they spend at most a couple of hours in an interview which is not a whole lot of time to gauge how someone will react in a certain situation. What I am trying to get at is that the company already has hundreds of hours with an internal hire and can tell if they have the intelligence and temperament to do the job before training them whereas all they have on an external candidate is what the candidate says about themselves and few meetings (assuming that companies don't share information).

Now for the question about why dispatchers feel a sense of entitlement. All throughout training we are told that you need to "pay your dues" at a regional and eventually be picked up by mainline. We are told that "you will just be at a regional for a couple of years" before moving on. Not only this but the pay scale plays into this also. You don't go to a regional for the money and it somewhat infuriates me that there are people who want the national minimum wage raised to $15 because that is about what regional airlines start dispatchers out at. So, you are told that everyone pays their dues and so you take a job a a regional that isn't the highest paying in the world (and add to the fact you need to be 23 to do it so if you went to college you have already been out for 2 years) and then you see companies who are going against how people have told you the system works to make twice as much as you are and you have been working for 3+ years.
 
Now for the question about why dispatchers feel a sense of entitlement. All throughout training we are told that you need to "pay your dues" at a regional and eventually be picked up by mainline. We are told that "you will just be at a regional for a couple of years" before moving on. Not only this but the pay scale plays into this also. You don't go to a regional for the money and it somewhat infuriates me that there are people who want the national minimum wage raised to $15 because that is about what regional airlines start dispatchers out at. So, you are told that everyone pays their dues and so you take a job a a regional that isn't the highest paying in the world (and add to the fact you need to be 23 to do it so if you went to college you have already been out for 2 years) and then you see companies who are going against how people have told you the system works to make twice as much as you are and you have been working for 3+ years.

Thats exactly what a generation of regional pilots were told, which amounted to bubkis. Y'all were sold a pack of lies. Due diligence and all that. YMMV.
 
There is no regulation that forces Delta to hire externally however, their current hiring scheme is so nefarious that it should be looked at by a different FSDO.

I just see a huge conflict of interest when you operate your own exclusive Part 65 certification course that is only open to your employees, taught and administered by your employees, certified by DADEs who are employees, and overseen by your CMO. You end up with dispatchers who's certificates tow the company line instead of towing the line of the regulations.

They sure do know what they're getting with an internal DDA candidate. A person that drinks Delta kool aid so much they should be sick and is so grateful to management for the opportunity that they're willing to do anything they say, even if they unknowingly put economy over safety. If you were a finance company who operated airplanes, who would you rather hire? A seasoned dispatcher that knows what he or she is doing and will make the terrible decision to add fuel when needed, or some clerk that you've just collected $2000 from and told that airplanes fly on magic and don't need any fuel from day 1 of dispatch certification training?

It's not just externals that have been blackballed by the shift to DDA. There are a ton of internal candidates that got their dispatch licences on their own that are being passed over by DDA graduates. It seems that giving Mother Widget the only thing she cares about, money, is a fast pass to the front of the line as a dispatcher.
 
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Companies can do what they want.
If you want a job at Delta and they only hire internally... Then get a different job at Delta to work your way up. If you don't like this idea go somewhere else.
 
There is no regulation that forces Delta to hire externally however, their current hiring scheme is so nefarious that it should be looked at by a different FSDO.

I just see a huge conflict of interest when you operate your own exclusive Part 65 certification course that is only open to your employees, taught and administered by your employees, certified by DADEs who are employees, and overseen by your CMO. You end up with dispatchers who's certificates tow the company line instead of towing the line of the regulations.

They sure do know what they're getting with an internal DDA candidate. A person that drinks Delta kool aid so much they should be sick and is so grateful to management for the opportunity that they're willing to do anything they say, even if they unknowingly put economy over safety. If you were a finance company who operated airplanes, who would you rather hire? A seasoned dispatcher that knows what he or she is doing and will make the terrible decision to add fuel when needed, or some clerk that you've just collected $2000 from and told that airplanes fly on magic and don't need any fuel from day 1 of dispatch certification training?

It's not just externals that have been blackballed by the shift to DDA. There are a ton of internal candidates that got their dispatch licences on their own that are being passed over by DDA graduates. It seems that giving Mother Widget the only thing she cares about, money, is a fast pass to the front of the line as a dispatcher.

626135
 
Who? Delta's airplanes? That's a hoot! There is no live streaming weather to ANY Delta airplane. That tech costs money.

Your EFBs don't hook up to the wifi to use your company provided radar app? Heck, even lowly AA has that capability. Obvi AA>DL then.
 
Sure. If you feel that a safety concern is just sour grapes then feel free.

Is it a documented safety concern? Please provide references. If it's a true concern, ALPA would like to know about it.
 
There is no regulation that forces Delta to hire externally however, their current hiring scheme is so nefarious that it should be looked at by a different FSDO.

I just see a huge conflict of interest when you operate your own exclusive Part 65 certification course that is only open to your employees, taught and administered by your employees, certified by DADEs who are employees, and overseen by your CMO. You end up with dispatchers who's certificates tow the company line instead of towing the line of the regulations.

They sure do know what they're getting with an internal DDA candidate. A person that drinks Delta kool aid so much they should be sick and is so grateful to management for the opportunity that they're willing to do anything they say, even if they unknowingly put economy over safety. If you were a finance company who operated airplanes, who would you rather hire? A seasoned dispatcher that knows what he or she is doing and will make the terrible decision to add fuel when needed, or some clerk that you've just collected $2000 from and told that airplanes fly on magic and don't need any fuel from day 1 of dispatch certification training?

It's not just externals that have been blackballed by the shift to DDA. There are a ton of internal candidates that got their dispatch licences on their own that are being passed over by DDA graduates. It seems that giving Mother Widget the only thing she cares about, money, is a fast pass to the front of the line as a dispatcher.
Didn't think I'd ever see the day you'd be critical of your employer. All valid points.
 
You don't go to a regional for the money and it somewhat infuriates me that there are people who want the national minimum wage raised to $15 because that is about what regional airlines start dispatchers out at.

"As long as I complain about being underpaid and exploited for my labor under the auspices of paying dues, it will somewhat infuriate me when anyone else dares and aspires not to be."

The same people who complain about how getting paid in experience isn't all they were told it would be are always the same people coming up with some stupid burger-flipper pejorative about how fast food jobs aren't meant to be real jobs. It's uncanny
 
"As long as I complain about being underpaid and exploited for my labor under the auspices of paying dues, it will somewhat infuriate me when anyone else dares and aspires not to be."

The same people who complain about how getting paid in experience isn't all they were told it would be are always the same people coming up with some stupid burger-flipper pejorative about how fast food jobs aren't meant to be real jobs. It's uncanny

I am not trying to say that a job at fast food isn't a real job, but I do believe that what you are paid should be based on the value that you bring to the company. If someone is willing to put in the effort to make customers happy and keep them as loyal customers, they deserve to be paid in accordance to that value. But, I am sure we have all had a time where the person was working and paying us no attention, got our order wrong, and had a "not my problem" attitude when it was brought to their attention. It is for this reason that I do not believe that the national minimum wage should be raised to $15/hr.
 
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