So WTF is going on at work?
Ah good, I see everyone made it over to DarkMercury from merkursytesnet! I've been mentioning on the side that work has been stressful and troublesome and all but I've not quite said what's happened. Throughout the year as gas has been getting more and more expensive American announced some major cutbacks. They announced a 12% reduction in flying but never really specified what was being cut. This has been a huge source of stress to me, and there's a few reasons why.
Very early in the year we saw many airlines go out of business. Quite literally they stopped overnight, stranding passengers and even flight crews everywhere. Employees showed up to work only to find a sign on the door that said they were out of a job. ATA, Skybus, Champion Air, I can't remember them all but there were 5 or 6. This means there's a lot of pilots out on the streets looking, and not a lot of opportunity. If AMR (AMRon as we joke internally) was to furlough me I'd have to compete with them and of course they have way more hours than I do. The only thing I'd have going for me is current CFI certificates but I don't want to be back to $15/hr. I've got an awesome yet wickedly expensive car to pay for..
So I've been going to work as usual, flying day to day like nothing was going on. All the meanwhile talking to the captains I fly with, trying to figure out what was going to happen and making backup plans just in case. As it turns out, Eagle was in the middle of a hiring boom when oil shot up in price. The first thing they did was stop hiring. Literally just froze everything. It sucks cause I had two Kent friends in the first class that got canceled. I got scared that immediate furloughs were to come. Immediately after that, they announced that my airplane, the Saab 340 was going to be retired. But when? I knew they couldn't just fire all the saab pilots, since everything in the industry is seniority based. But what was going to happen now?
The answer laid in a displacement bid, where every pilot in the company makes a list of where they prefer to be based and the airplane they want to fly. The most senior get their first pick, and on down the line. My bids were to stay in Dallas, and at this point I was just hoping to keep my job. I bid for the ATR-72 which is a 65 seat turboprop that is coming to replace the Saab. As Will is so fond of pointing out "Waaa it's a turbprop! :( It's not a real plane /cry", this feeling is echoed by pilots, who overwhelmingly bid to fly the jets. Here's why I bid for the prop (even though I could have gotten a jet):
- There's a pay increase for flying the jet (even though the prop is a larger aircraft, go figure), but there's only so many monthly schedules to bid for. I'd be on reserve (on-call) for possibly a year or more. I can fly more at a lower pay rate and still make the same amount as I would on the jet.
- Since no one else wants to fly the prop, I am a pretty good way up the list and can hold monthly schedules. Much better than reserve as far as quality of life goes. More guaranteed days off.
- Since it costs ~$10,000 or so to train a pilot in each plane, typically you are locked into your airplane for a year or two to make up for it. This isn't true in a displacement, so I can bid for and move to the jet whenever I want.
- Real men fly props
My soon to be new plane, the ATR-72:
