Pinnacle Status?

jynxyjoe said:
Well have a good vacation man. The XJ side is the same old same old. Overstaffed and everyone just shrugs. Only good side is management has no desire to cut down staffing levels at this time. After the summer it might be interesting (but i'll have a great schedule as an FO).
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Thanks. I think I'm just gonna chill, decompress and play Xbox. My son's birthday is that week, but we don't really have the finances in place to do a full on vacation. We'll do that when my other week rolls around in October.

Right now, we actually still have some semblance of attrition. It's not as insane as it was a year ago, but I steadily move up the seniority list 3-5 spots a month. Just none of them are in MEM. :)

Delta is still gonna keep the Saab around for you guys, though, right?
 
kellwolf said:
Thanks. I think I'm just gonna chill, decompress and play Xbox. My son's birthday is that week, but we don't really have the finances in place to do a full on vacation. We'll do that when my other week rolls around in October.

Right now, we actually still have some semblance of attrition. It's not as insane as it was a year ago, but I steadily move up the seniority list 3-5 spots a month. Just none of them are in MEM. :)

Delta is still gonna keep the Saab around for you guys, though, right?
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It looks like it. I don't know how they couldn't park the Saabs honestly; too many routes need them from what I've seen.

It would be a big hit on moral if we didn't get knocked down, MSP guys are all smiles and MEM and DTW is biz as usual. It is nice not being in the tunnel waiting to see what the light at the end turns into.
 
I'm sure it does but mgmt won't admit it, we will just be blamed for being sick or fatigued and make promises to us that they are trying to make this a better place. Where's my fresh fruit and message I was promised a year ago?
 
higney85 said:
I'm sure it does but mgmt won't admit it, we will just be blamed for being sick or fatigued and make promises to us that they are trying to make this a better place. Where's my fresh fruit and message I was promised a year ago?
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Ah, yes. The "unplanned absences" card. If they'd use RSVs for sick calls rather than relying on them to cover open time, it wouldn't result in CXld flights as often. That and actually USE THE AIRPORT RESERVE. "Sorry, you're waiting on an FO. He'll be there in an hour and a half." "Look, there's a guy in ops right now ready to fly." "We can't use him. Then we won't have a ready reserve." <facepalm>

It's also possible WX had a lot to do with the delays. Sometimes, NWA (or now the New Delta) tells us "You're canceling this flight" and there's nothing we can do about it. It goes down as a 9E CX instead of a NWA since we're the ones operating it, even though we didn't make the call to cancel it. Slot restriction into LGA has made many a flight it's victim. WX in DTW and MSP are also pretty heavy culprits. Now, that's not to say all 5.someodd% of the CX were NWA or Delta's call. I'd wager that several were due to no crew (I know for a FACT some of the late flights outta DTW last weekend were CXld for not enough crews) and some were b/c the plane was broken and we either couldn't fix it in a timely manner or didn't have the part. That last one happens more than I'd like. I get the "Well, we CAN fix this, but we don't have the part" from MX all the time. The last time I got told that was on two deferrals on one plane: the APU and the FMS. I told him to disable the AP and punch me in the face, and it'd be the perfect day.
 
Gotta love the letter i got today that says no hiring for the remainder of '09.

Ah well......sounds like you guys have plenty of people anyhow.

God bless management. :sarcasm:
 
dvtpilot said:
Gotta love the letter i got today that says no hiring for the remainder of '09.
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Either they think we're gonna be losing airframes or a HUGE amount of block hours, or the lives of RSV CAs and all FOs are straight up gonna suck balls for the rest of the year.....
 
kellwolf said:
Either they think we're gonna be losing airframes or a HUGE amount of block hours, or the lives of RSV CAs and all FOs are straight up gonna suck balls for the rest of the year.....
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$20 Per Diem earned this month. 3 airport reserve sits. Miraculously, the third is only around 4 hours since it's a 2030 to 0000 shift.
 
kellwolf said:
Ah, yes. The "unplanned absences" card. If they'd use RSVs for sick calls rather than relying on them to cover open time, it wouldn't result in CXld flights as often. That and actually USE THE AIRPORT RESERVE. "Sorry, you're waiting on an FO. He'll be there in an hour and a half." "Look, there's a guy in ops right now ready to fly." "We can't use him. Then we won't have a ready reserve." <facepalm>
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Hahaha, are all your scheduling and crew planning people ex-Mesa crew stalkers? That sounds exactly like how my airline is run!
 
cencal83406 said:
$20 Per Diem earned this month. 3 airport reserve sits. Miraculously, the third is only around 4 hours since it's a 2030 to 0000 shift.
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I don't know what is up with ATL, man. Seriously. I've had two RSV days they didn't use me. Both were followed by a an already assigned DH to DTW for a highspeed. So, they would have either had to re-assign me for the period of the high speed or give me something that had me done by 6:30 am so I could get 10 hours of rest. I've still got 3 more RSV periods left with nothing on them before I start vacation, and I'm up to almost 60 hours of credit......and I've been doing mostly high speeds.
 
I also got the same letter saying there will be no interviews or classes in 2009. Will just have to wait and see whats gonna happen. Hoping for some good news this year
 
kellwolf said:
I don't know what is up with ATL, man. Seriously. I've had two RSV days they didn't use me. Both were followed by a an already assigned DH to DTW for a highspeed. So, they would have either had to re-assign me for the period of the high speed or give me something that had me done by 6:30 am so I could get 10 hours of rest. I've still got 3 more RSV periods left with nothing on them before I start vacation, and I'm up to almost 60 hours of credit......and I've been doing mostly high speeds.
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What's even better is the # of landings I've done this month...... 2 :DI managed to pull off an 11 day off CDO for March (because I guess some of the displaced guys don't want to fly - and they won't, on reserve). We shall see.... what happens. I haven't really been here long enough to have been Pinnacle-ized. :D
 
cencal83406 said:
What's even better is the # of landings I've done this month...... 2 :DI managed to pull off an 11 day off CDO for March (because I guess some of the displaced guys don't want to fly - and they won't, on reserve). We shall see.... what happens. I haven't really been here long enough to have been Pinnacle-ized. :D
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Yeah, I got PBS-hosed. Had my days off requests in the CDO and RSV bid scope. Were there in the mock....I got none of them. I asked for the 8th, 14th and 20-21st. I got nothing. But for some insane reason I got 23rd-26th off in a row.
 
I bid for 85+ hours of credit and I got 76. Still got 18 days off and weekends... Folks junior have 90+ hours. There is open time remaining in the system so it will be interesting how this month gets managed. I could easily see mgmt offering 150% for all open time when they open up the trip trades on the 24th to clear out open time and be able to use reserves as they should be. We had tons of cancellations last month for crew issues and I would imagine that having open time already out of the way would allow things to operate correctly. That being said there is already the discussion on the company site of NOT touching any open time. If you need more $$ get it from someone junior who wants days off. That being said- any MEM FO's wanna get rid of something march 3-6? haha.

To those looking at coming to 9E- we still don't have a contract and any hiring would be risky in my opinion. We have displaced the 30 CA's to FO's and the last displacement loaded up ATL and even put a few CA's down to FO. As far as upgrade- all those getting displaced have been here less than 2.5 years. Our staffing is now correct on both sides for the flying we were SUPPOSED to have, which is 10% less than what we currently DO have.
 
citationCJ1 said:
How do the schedules look like? Short staffed? Also, what is the pilot count?
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Well, they kept the number of RSVs about the same, but some guys that haven't been on RSV for like a year are on it now. They just upped the credit for lineholders into the high 80s/low 90s from what I can see on a LOT of them.

The FO I flew with the other night was flying on his day off (Junior manned) and the FO that flew my DH home last night was ALSO flying on a junior man assignment. This REALLY leads me to believe they displaced CAs to solve an FO staffing issue without hiring.
 
higney85 said:
I bid for 85+ hours of credit and I got 76. Still got 18 days off and weekends... Folks junior have 90+ hours.
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No kidding.

I have the last, repeat LAST, line in MEM on the FO side. 12 days off almost 95 hours.

Could be worse... could have ended up on reserve...:panic:
 
Here's a depressing email I received this past week:

February 20, 2009

Good morning,

Currently we have placed all interviews and pilot classes on hold for the year of 2009. We are still maintaining your name and pilot information in our databases for future reference. We will be contacting you as soon as we know interviews will recommence. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me.

Thanks for your patient and interest in Pinnacle Airlines. We look forward to seeing you soon!


Cynthia Cunningham
Flight Operations Recruiter
Pinnacle Airlines
 
"On hold" doesn't necessarily mean "not gonna happen." I think they're playing the "wait and see game" to see where block hours fall. If they keep going the trend they are, well, they're going to HAVE to hire at some point this year. Either that, or they're gonna have FOs timing out left and right come December with no one to fly the planes.
 
Kellwolf, I hope you are right. The email from HR and "hiring freeze" from the company website doesn't seem very promising. By talking to a few folks, online and offline, 9E is now normally staffed due to the displacements. Unless, there is a good number of attrition, I doubt anything good is going to happen this year.
 
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