Attendance tracking

I worked discipline cases for a long time at my previous airline. Here is what I always would tell people I flew with in regards to wanting to “stay off the radar”

If you even know what the radar is, you are generally so far away from it that it isn’t even funny. The pilots that are “on the radar” are really thumbing their nose at the company. While there is an occasional outlier where someone that really wasn’t up to no good gets caught up in some company hate, it doesn’t happen near as much as the line guys would have you believe. (I heard from a friend of mine that the company __________!!!}

With that being said, they are very IRS like. A lot of following rules they have set out on your own merit. They take your word for it until you get outside of the bell curve, then AUDIT. Much like the IRS, an “audit” in this metaphor is something you do not want because they tend to bring all the hate right to your front door. They get unreasonable real fast and you learn very quickly that, while they don’t have the energy to start pulling iPad, WiFi, nonrev, jumpseat, social media records, they absolutely can and you don’t want that. Ohh, and start noticing those cameras that are at every gate pointing towards the airplanes. They are HD and can be zoomed in.


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RRPower said:
I worked discipline cases for a long time at my previous airline. Here is what I always would tell people I flew with in regards to wanting to “stay off the radar”

If you even know what the radar is, you are generally so far away from it that it isn’t even funny. The pilots that are “on the radar” are really thumbing their nose at the company. While there is an occasional outlier where someone that really wasn’t up to no good gets caught up in some company hate, it doesn’t happen near as much as the line guys would have you believe. (I heard from a friend of mine that the company __________!!!}

With that being said, they are very IRS like. A lot of following rules they have set out on your own merit. They take your word for it until you get outside of the bell curve, then AUDIT. Much like the IRS, an “audit” in this metaphor is something you do not want because they tend to bring all the hate right to your front door. They get unreasonable real fast and you learn very quickly that, while they don’t have the energy to start pulling iPad, WiFi, nonrev, jumpseat, social media records, they absolutely can and you don’t want that. Ohh, and start noticing those cameras that are at every gate pointing towards the airplanes. They are HD and can be zoomed in.


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Click to expand...

What if you've done inexcusable degenerate things to various tugs. Do you think they can zoom that far on the HDs? Asking for a friend
 
RRPower said:
I worked discipline cases for a long time at my previous airline. Here is what I always would tell people I flew with in regards to wanting to “stay off the radar”

If you even know what the radar is, you are generally so far away from it that it isn’t even funny. The pilots that are “on the radar” are really thumbing their nose at the company. While there is an occasional outlier where someone that really wasn’t up to no good gets caught up in some company hate, it doesn’t happen near as much as the line guys would have you believe. (I heard from a friend of mine that the company __________!!!}

With that being said, they are very IRS like. A lot of following rules they have set out on your own merit. They take your word for it until you get outside of the bell curve, then AUDIT. Much like the IRS, an “audit” in this metaphor is something you do not want because they tend to bring all the hate right to your front door. They get unreasonable real fast and you learn very quickly that, while they don’t have the energy to start pulling iPad, WiFi, nonrev, jumpseat, social media records, they absolutely can and you don’t want that. Ohh, and start noticing those cameras that are at every gate pointing towards the airplanes. They are HD and can be zoomed in.


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Click to expand...

It seems like some of my colleagues who find themselves in trouble have perpetually been in trouble and always telling me "I can't believe the company did…" or "the weather is bad at XYZ, why even commute in? that's dumb because they'll probably cancel" and decide to go skiing instead, then get busted or "I didn't pull the c/b for the beacon at the gate to keep the beacon running unnoticed" — on full 4K video.

These are real stories.
 
Toobdrvr said:
What the actual deuce!?
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That was a thing on the 767 fleet in JFK. People would pull into the gate, back in the day, and the gate was nowhere near being ready to open the door. So the captain would say "pull the breaker!" so ramp wouldn't see the beacon running and in order to keep an "IN" time from being recorded until someone got to the gate to open the door.

It was normalized deviance for a while, then some "thou shalt not" memos were produced, but a handful of pilots continued doing it. Then the company started cracking down whilst producing video evidence of crews doing it.

I mean, they could have fixed the problem with gate agents not being available in a timely fashion but it was what it was.
 
Autothrust Blue said:
Why on earth would we do that? It wouldn't save precious Jet A-1 or anything either. ;)
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The only department, oddly, concerned with saving JetA is FLTOPS.

The gate agent couldn’t care less and the difference between OUT and OFF and ON and IN is basically “Hey pilots! Watch out for your gate latency!” as we have little control over that.

Some of the people making the dumbest decisions haven’t either (a) been to the airport for a long time or (b) haven’t smelled jet exhaust for a decade.
 
derg said:
The only department, oddly, concerned with saving JetA is FLTOPS.

The gate agent couldn’t care less and the difference between OUT and OFF and ON and IN is basically “Hey pilots! Watch out for your gate latency!” as we have little control over that.

Some of the people making the dumbest decisions haven’t either (a) been to the airport for a long time or (b) haven’t smelled jet exhaust for a decade.
Click to expand...
Oh, it’s the same everywhere. “Gotta save fuel! Even 1 gallon affects your PBP payout!” and yet still end up waiting on a gate at least half the time in SEA.
 
Roger Roger said:
Oh, it’s the same everywhere. “Gotta save fuel! Even 1 gallon affects your PBP payout!” and yet still end up waiting on a gate at least half the time in SEA.
Click to expand...
“Should we stop one engine?”
…
…
“Yeah. Nah. Besides, who knows where they actually want us to park…”
 
derg said:
That was a thing on the 767 fleet in JFK. People would pull into the gate, back in the day, and the gate was nowhere near being ready to open the door. So the captain would say "pull the breaker!" so ramp wouldn't see the beacon running and in order to keep an "IN" time from being recorded until someone got to the gate to open the door.

It was normalized deviance for a while, then some "thou shalt not" memos were produced, but a handful of pilots continued doing it. Then the company started cracking down whilst producing video evidence of crews doing it.

I mean, they could have fixed the problem with gate agents not being available in a timely fashion but it was what it was.
Click to expand...

Same thing with cycling the start selector on the Airbus fleets prior to push. Works great until you end up not moving off the gate for some reason but still show an out time.
 
Ok finally an update on why I started the thread in the first place. Thanks for all the responses.

I’ll keep it short. Essentially I was investigated for my point total which was the result of the worst cold season I’ve ever had. Son started his first full time year of preschool and I went from never flying airlines to always flying airlines. My total exceeded their threshold for “probable separation.” I thought it would be pretty straight forward since they were supposedly looking for abusers, and I was not one and could prove it with doctors records/notes for every single absence. It resulted in a “verbal warning”.

I appealed if for no other reason than to get them to tell me exactly what they were warning me of. The letter said they were warning me for my point total which I thought was adequately explained.

In the end, the result of the appeal was they removed the verbal warning (pretty much my only request), but I’m still left confused and quite frankly angry at this system they have in place. My view is it impacts safety related decisions we have to make concerning fitness for duty. I’ve used a couple different avenues to try and convey this to the company, but it seems their position won’t change.

Anyway, I’m actually pretty disappointed to find this kind of stuff at a 121. I expect it in 91/135 which is a large reason why I left. I guess regionals are just a half rung above 135.

Long story short, it just confirms that my original half thought of maybe staying here as a viable option isn’t based in reality, and the only option is to move on to bigger and better at some point.

Thanks again for the comments.
 
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