Washington Post Crash Pad Article

One of the best summaries of the current state of affairs. Thanks for sharing!!!

To me, the "flipping" schedules are incredulous and a slap in the face to safety and human well-being. No one is designed to work from 5am-1pm on days one and two and 3pm-12am on days three and four. They defy common sense and the limits of the human body. It'd be akin to asking a 9am-5pm New Yorker to go to Taiwan on Mondays and Tuesdays and work 9am-5pm local there, too. What a load, and all to subvert duty and rest requirements. They'd rather have you live less, be prone to hypertension, get type 2 diabetes, and be perpetually exhausted than mess up their completion factor.

Is management evil? To a certain level, no (I have friends in operations management that are desperate for this game to end). However, the CEO who has three houses just might be. Ignorance is not an excuse.
 
C150J said:
One of the best summaries of the current state of affairs. Thanks for sharing!!!

To me, the "flipping" schedules are incredulous and a slap in the face to safety and human well-being. No one is designed to work from 5am-1pm on days one and two and 3pm-12am on days three and four. They defy common sense and the limits of the human body. It'd be akin to asking a 9am-5pm New Yorker to go to Taiwan on Mondays and Tuesdays and work 9am-5pm local there, too. What a load, and all to subvert duty and rest requirements. They'd rather have you live less, be prone to hypertension, get type 2 diabetes, and be perpetually exhausted than mess up their completion factor.

Is management evil? To a certain level, no. However, the CEO who has three houses just might be. Ignorance is not an excuse.
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Do you really think these CEO's are ignorant to the present state of affairs?
 
C150J said:
Absolutely not. Just trying to take any excuse away from them.
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Good point.

Anyhoo.. if we can get enough people educated about the way the system really works, they'll see they've been duped into a ride on a boat with a rotten hull.

Then maybe things will change.
 
However, Williams, the Pinnacle spokesman, said: "On average, Colgan pilots fly less than five hours a day and average 50 hours a month. It is a rare occasion to actually exceed seven hours flying and extremely rare to legally exceed eight hours."

Unfortunately I think this is the one paragraph most people will pay attention to and will just think we whine too much. Wish the article would have addressed how misleading this statement is.
 
Copperhed51 said:
However, Williams, the Pinnacle spokesman, said: "On average, Colgan pilots fly less than five hours a day and average 50 hours a month. It is a rare occasion to actually exceed seven hours flying and extremely rare to legally exceed eight hours."
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This guy is on my "How does he sleep at night?" list. Seriously. Some of the stuff that comes out of his mouth makes me wonder if he's ever even spoken to a 9E pilot. Do they average 5 hours a day with the high speeds? 'Cause that'll drop the average WAAYY down there. I know on our side of the operation two legs is likely over 3 hours, and I RARELY have a 3 leg day. If I have a day that only has one leg, you can bet your bottom dollar I'm gonna have at LEAST one 5 leg day within the next two days. DTW has SEVEN LEG days now. During the winter, it's NOT rare to see crews legally exceed 8 hours of flying time here. Ask the guys in TVC that went off the end of the runway. 50 hours a month? Seriously? I fly more than that on RESERVE.

I know it's Colgan he's talking about, but Jesus.
 
Whatever happened to the crash pad issue in Chicago? Didn't Boss D try to close them down a couple of years ago?
 
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I think the end of the article is especially moving:

The wife of a captain who stays at Sterling Park said she resents the situation, particularly his sharing a house with other women while she and their children live on the other side of the country.

“Sometimes I feel as though he’s off to this life we know nothing about,” the woman said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of fear of career repercussions against her husband. “He kind of lives like a single person in a dorm. I don’t know any of the people he talks about. I don’t know any spouses or any family. There are no Christmas parties, no socializing.”

She said it has been difficult for their children. “My little girl, she says, ‘When is Daddy coming to visit us again?’ I said, ‘Daddy doesn’t come and visit us. This is his home.’ “
 
stillageek said:
I think the end of the article is especially moving:

The wife of a captain who stays at Sterling Park said she resents the situation, particularly his sharing a house with other women while she and their children live on the other side of the country.

“Sometimes I feel as though he’s off to this life we know nothing about,” the woman said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of fear of career repercussions against her husband. “He kind of lives like a single person in a dorm. I don’t know any of the people he talks about. I don’t know any spouses or any family. There are no Christmas parties, no socializing.”

She said it has been difficult for their children. “My little girl, she says, ‘When is Daddy coming to visit us again?’ I said, ‘Daddy doesn’t come and visit us. This is his home.’ “
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OK, but to tack on to that, it sounds like there are some MAJOR trust issues in the marriage itself. I don't take anything away from her in the fact that it's tough overall.

I've already had to put my career aspirations on hold, only halfway done with my ratings (PPL/Instrument). And with what I make between both my current jobs (IT Consultant / Ramp Rat at US) a first year FO wage would be almost a 50% job cut...I can't do that with a new mouth to feed as well.

We need more of these articles so the traveling public wakes the hell up!
 
ozziecat35 said:
We need more of these articles so the traveling public wakes the hell up!
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Not gunna happen buddy. I don't know how many articles its gunna take for you guys who think like this to realize the public doesn't care.

Only when people start getting killed is when the gov't will step in, which MIGHT be the case here, but even that is a longshot. Our best hope for improvements is the massive retirements in a couple years.
 
Trip7 said:
Not gunna happen buddy. I don't know how many articles its gunna take for you guys who think like this to realize the public doesn't care.

Only when people start getting killed is when the gov't will step in, which MIGHT be the case here, but even that is a longshot. Our best hope for improvements is the massive retirements in a couple years.
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Are you volunteering at all for any ALPA Committees?
 
Good article.

However, I have had stayed at crashpads where there were also mainline guys. I guess the majority have been regional people, I'm just saying the article makes it sound like they are the only ones that do this.
 
I'd even say the timeline in the article is off, 15 minutes from block-in to the hotel usaually only happens in those airports where the hotel is in the terminal.
 
EDUC8-or said:
I'd even say the timeline in the article is off, 15 minutes from block-in to the hotel usaually only happens in those airports where the hotel is in the terminal.
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The article could have explained that no matter what we are off duty 15 minutes after block in, but that by no means means we are actually at the hotel resting.

Our CP even put out a memo saying that travel from airport to hotel is rest, unless it is delayed for some reason.
 
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