ALPA Volunteering

"Well good luck with the Runway/Performance Change checklist in ORD" SMH.
So the score on that is:

- SKW pilots can’t tell you what has to be changed for a runway change
- SKW pilots don’t know how to do runway changes
- I didn’t want what they created, but my Mom rides in the back of SKW airplanes (for now, anyway) and I am not sorry that you guys have a checklist for that.

The fact that the actual problems haven’t been fixed (idk what’s takeoff performance) is another issue entirely.

Edit: in the absence of a union, I’ll give you one guess who drove the changes - and it has three letters in its acronym, and you don’t want to rely upon them as the guarantor of safety.
 
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So the score on that is:

- SKW pilots can’t tell you what has to be changed for a runway change
- SKW pilots don’t know how to do runway changes
- I didn’t want what they created, but my Mom rides in the back of SKW airplanes (for now, anyway) and I am not sorry that you guys have a checklist for that.

The fact that the actual problems haven’t been fixed (idk what’s takeoff performance) is another issue entirely.

Edit: in the absence of a union, I’ll give you one guess who drove the changes - and it has three letters in its acronym, and you don’t want to rely upon them as the guarantor of safety.
Working on the union, working on the resistance to safety related changes. Need ice from banging my head against the wall. I know, preaching to the choir.
 
So the score on that is:

- SKW pilots can’t tell you what has to be changed for a runway change
- SKW pilots don’t know how to do runway changes
- I didn’t want what they created, but my Mom rides in the back of SKW airplanes (for now, anyway) and I am not sorry that you guys have a checklist for that.

The fact that the actual problems haven’t been fixed (idk what’s takeoff performance) is another issue entirely.

Edit: in the absence of a union, I’ll give you one guess who drove the changes - and it has three letters in its acronym, and you don’t want to rely upon them as the guarantor of safety.

Lol, do you have PTSD or something? You got out, move on already. You're in a far better place now. Don't be a masochist. You don't see the three women in the Ariel Castro kidnappings returning to the scene of the crime as often as you do!

o_O
 
Lol, do you have PTSD or something? You got out, move on already. You're in a far better place now. Don't be a masochist. You don't see the three women in the Ariel Castro kidnappings returning to the scene of the crime as often as you do!

o_O
Not quite.

The discussion is one on safety systems and culture, and how bloody difficult - if not impossible - it is to have those things in the absence of an independent voice.
 
Not quite.

The discussion is one on safety systems and culture, and how bloody difficult - if not impossible - it is to have those things in the absence of an independent voice.
Mesaba management went who later went to sun country both had a terrible time with keeping safety and discipline separate. Now I dont want to p.o. the pilots from either group, but there was a bit of stupid set in on both pilots from both crews, and management just couldn't abide. One of them was ex pilot so he had empathy for a lot of stupidity but not full on double stupid.

Management needs help sometimes to keep from being stupid because they can't help themselves. Union makes that immeasurably better. You gotta advocate for the pilots, even the stupid ones.
 
Yeah, I've heard..."things" about that over there.

Management needs help sometimes to keep from being stupid because they can't help themselves. Union makes that immeasurably better. You gotta advocate for the pilots, even the stupid ones.
You have to ask "why" about five to seven times to get to the bottom of things. Depending on how saintly your chief pilot is, they might stop at the first why, or might not even bother to ask why at all and simply proceed to whacking you.

Sometimes the answer to the first few whys does contain that they're bad pilots and stupid, but asking why they are bad pilots or stupid (and why they were permitted in your airplanes in such a configuration) is a worthwhile exercise as well.

One must also ensure that a "fix" is not worse than the problem itself. (Or, in other words - A noncompliance problem will NOT be helped by making compliance MORE cumbersome.)

Groupthink, yo.
 
I will say one thing. The quality of your selected committee is dictated by your MEC and the level of company involvement. At my current shop it is pretty good on the safety side but everything else has a pretty hard disconnect that makes it tough to fix some problems. There have been improvements but it is slow.
 
I'm communications chair for my regional. I won't say it's fulfilling, but it is nice to help the union in some small way. I don't know how much more I'd want to be involved. I know that folks seem to get burned out on anything important like MEC chairs, grievance, CASC,etc. But we are a small company, our guys fly and do union stuff, which at some large companies is not the case ( they do more union work than fly)
 
I was on full time union leave for three years. No flying at all. I was still burnt out beyond imagination at the end. It’s an 18 hour a day gig during contract negotiations & mergers.
 
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