Jet Blue blames WX, pilot rest rules for system meltdown

PhilosopherPilot said:
Negative. Good people do bad things in the wrong environments. That can be replicated in a lab, and has been. Repeatedly.
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Ok, I call it a character flaw. You say it's good people doing bad. Six of one, half dozen the other. I have been in bad situations and buck the trend just like other before and after me have. Those people I trust and call friends. The others are shallow and don't see the forest for the trees.
 
@MikeD, I don't have a problem with a company outlining the difference between Sick Leave and Annual Leave or Vacation time, which is what you are talking about.

The issue comes into play when airlines have policies that you can be disciplined for calling in sick to many times in a rolling period. They are called 'reliability and dependability policies' and are detrimental to safety. Huge difference between the two.
 
Seggy said:
@MikeD, I don't have a problem with a company outlining the difference between Sick Leave and Annual Leave or Vacation time, which is what you are talking about.

The issue comes into play when airlines have policies that you can be disciplined for calling in sick to many times in a rolling period. They are called 'reliability and dependability policies' and are detrimental to safety. Huge difference between the two.
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Remember when the people that made the policies for our last spot threatened to tell the FAA when we called in sick?
 
amorris311 said:
Ok, I call it a character flaw. You say it's good people doing bad. Six of one, half dozen the other. I have been in bad situations and buck the trend just like other before and after me have. Those people I trust and call friends. The others are shallow and don't see the forest for the trees.
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Sigh... Good for you. You're apparently not subject to basic human psychology. Too bad you didn't live in Germany prior to WWII. You could have single handedly stopped the Nazis.
 
PhilosopherPilot said:
Sigh... Good for you. You're apparently not subject to basic human psychology. Too bad you didn't live in Germany prior to WWII. You could have single handedly stopped the Nazis.
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Really? I'm trying to offer a different perspective, and I'm doing it without belittling or name calling. Please don't start with me. Nazi Germany has nothing to do with the sick policy at JB, unless you think JB is nazi Germany.
 
And there you have it. Once again, Godwin's law is proven true.

godwinsLaw.png
 
amorris311 said:
Really? I'm trying to offer a different perspective, and I'm doing it without belittling or name calling. Please don't start with me. Nazi Germany has nothing to do with the sick policy at JB, unless you think JB is nazi Germany.
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I didn't call you any names. I was just making reference to one of the big studies about group dynamics and authority (Milgram experiment). It's really interesting what "good" people without character flaws will do under the right circumstances.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

That being said, the following post about reference to Nazis, that's hilarious...
 
Seggy said:
For pilots, yes, it is rare that they use sick time to go on vacation.
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And this has been the problem with this thread. Disregard those that actually work at the airline in question. We apparently are clueless while people at other airlines know exactly what's up.

PhilosopherPilot is exactly right. Guys couldn't get the days off they needed through the bidding, multiple drop/swap windows or trading trips. So, they called in sick. Not only did I see this a lot in my past year here, I saw it a LOT at Pinnacle. It wasn't rare there at all. It was pretty much the main way to adjust your schedule since everything was "denied due to staffing."

I don't know how prevalent it is at Spirit, United, Colgan, Delta, GoJets or anywhere else. And I won pretend to. But I can tell you it wasn't "rare" at either airline I've worked for.....
 
If I may only add... I know pilots at my current shop will call out sick when they are sick. The problem is when they have that third one in about 7 months, and they get a "warning" from the Company because they are approaching potential further discipline if they call out sick again within a rolling twelve month period.

Which - then - makes that crew member decide if they will stay home and get healthy the next time they are under the weather or if they will go and spread their germs to fellow crew members and passengers.

I am not a huge fan of reliability or dependability policies as a matter of public health and operational safety. That said, the benefit of "sick leave" should also not be a tool that management teams can use to pigeon hole their frontline employees into protecting the integrity of the operation due to poor staffing models.

Fix the bidding system to allow for increased crew member flexibility if you see folks who are unhappy with their schedules.
 
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Kellwolf, Seggy doesn't let little things like "facts" change his mind.

I'm not saying our sick policy is great, and it certainly wasn't implemented well, but I absolutely understand why the company felt the need to put an end to the bleeding.

I flew with a chief pilot, and his exact words were, "We know who the abusers are, but because we have no attendance policy we can't do anything about it."
 
So far what I've experienced...it is a crazy scheduling system to work under...especially if your not relatively senior.

Your schedule changes every month...and you don't know it until a week and a half before the following month.
 
Rocketman99 said:
All right, explain this to me. There's no union/contract at jb. How does the lack of an attendance policy have anything to do with being able to discipline people who abuse the system?
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Because there is a "working agreement" that includes the discipline process. If the company were to not follow the the process they would be violating the working agreement (which they may or may not get away with legally) and risk increasing the noise for a union drive.
 
So it sounds like there is really nothing keeping the company from going after the pilots who they know to be abusing the system. So you (the company you) can institute a punitive sick policy outside of the "agreement" that affects all the pilots. Or you can just go after the people you already know are in the wrong and the policy was allegedly created for. One of these will theoretically cause less grief among the pilot group and less fodder for a union drive, yet be much worse for everyone than the alternative. Makes sense.
 
Rocketman99 said:
All right, explain this to me. There's no union/contract at jb. How does the lack of an attendance policy have anything to do with being able to discipline people who abuse the system?

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk
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Like Bob said...

Plus, lacking a union doesn't mean the company can do whatever it wants. It has to follow policy. It can change the policy without consulting the pilots, but the company can be sued if it is found to be disciplining people with no written policy. How can you say my attendance is a problem if there's no company policy stating what the limits are?

Many companies don't have unions, but that doesn't mean that it's the Wild West there.
 
PhilosopherPilot said:
How can you say my attendance is a problem if there's no company policy stating what the limits are?
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Actually, that's not true at all. They can do lots of things to "prove" that an employee is out of the (unpublished) limits. I've seen places take the average and go after anybody who is more than 1 standard deviation outside of it. I've seen places go after the top 3. I've seen places go after anybody who uses more than X% of their previous rolling average. That's all legal as long as they follow the discipline process they have laid out in their policy manual. Of course some places don't actually have a discipline process in their manual, which allows them to do whatever they want.
 
kellwolf said:
And this has been the problem with this thread. Disregard those that actually work at the airline in question. We apparently are clueless while people at other airlines know exactly what's up.

PhilosopherPilot is exactly right. Guys couldn't get the days off they needed through the bidding, multiple drop/swap windows or trading trips. So, they called in sick. Not only did I see this a lot in my past year here, I saw it a LOT at Pinnacle. It wasn't rare there at all. It was pretty much the main way to adjust your schedule since everything was "denied due to staffing."

I don't know how prevalent it is at Spirit, United, Colgan, Delta, GoJets or anywhere else. And I won pretend to. But I can tell you it wasn't "rare" at either airline I've worked for.....
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Once again, you shouldn't make policy for a handful of guys.
 
PhilosopherPilot said:
Kellwolf, Seggy doesn't let little things like "facts" change his mind.

I'm not saying our sick policy is great, and it certainly wasn't implemented well, but I absolutely understand why the company felt the need to put an end to the bleeding.

I flew with a chief pilot, and his exact words were, "We know who the abusers are, but because we have no attendance policy we can't do anything about it."
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I would have responded to that Chief Pilot then that policies shouldn't be made for a few folks. Then I would have asked him how he feels about the liability for your place if that a pilot doesn't call in sick who was sick, has an incident/accident and it comes back that the policy intimidated the pilot, how he thinks that would go in front of the NTSB and/or lawyers.
 
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