Leaderboard

Oh good! pawnman is in the airline thread now. Finally some real perspective on all of this.

Can’t take over anything if you’re always in in the ditch of I-25/I-70 in the winter 🤣

get out of here nav

Fact. Our union pulled the data and showed this weekend we’ve just had an average number of sick/fatigue calls and higher than average volunteer pilots picking up trips. The root cause is boring: they stretched the network too thin before staffing was back to appropriate levels, so there’s no slack to absorb any disruptions at all, which is a compounding problem in a point-to-point network. SWAPA’s been warning about it for months, and sure enough this is the 2nd or 3rd time it’s happened this year. The fact it happened a week after the vaccine mandate is coincidental, but it’s been fascinating and somewhat horrifying watching how rapidly misinformation is created and then propagated as fact. Is this how doctors have felt this whole time??

They literally do, though I’m not speaking for the entire US, but in my state, they’re everywhere. Maybe not where you are, and I’ll take your word for it. Though I’m also guessing we’re not the only state in the union with employers other than min wage fast food looking for workers. Hyperbole and false. Hard work can get you very far in this country. I’m not saying shitty circumstances don’t exist or people can’t have bad timing/a run of bad luck. This is victim mentality at its finest and serves no positive purpose.

To all you airline bubbas out there, I enthusiastically support your fight against the mandate. Don't let them bully you. Resign your seniority number and show those corporate bastards the true power of voting with your feet.

Well, if they don't get a handle on their rollin' coal membership online, they're gonna get 2017 Spirit'd right between the uprights faster than they can spell RLA. The self-immolating over on APC is priceless. So far SWAPA has had to publicly deny their inference more times than Peter denied Jesús, and it's only Monday. Best laid schemes of mice and men.... 🤣

Do you have any idea how hard this is? Maddening brother! It is so easy to just wave a hand and say "just pay more" or "fix your business model." Not trying to insult you but have you ever run a business? First, you have the federal government telling you who you can and can't hire and crawling up your ass if the employee population is not a perfect reflection of society. I have seen companies go to extraordinary lengths to meet these government quotas but fall short and be punished when the reason the goal can't be achieved is there simply were no qualified applicants. Second, American kids are far more enamored with a liberal arts degree from Berkley that allows them the time to "find themselves" and identify social injustice rather than investing in the hard sciences and technical degrees. For the record we have invested in recruiting and retaining talent. We have gone to HBCs, opened paid internships ($23-$25 an hour for College Juniors), and offered to hire 30-40% of those interns. We offer free lunch on site via catering and food trucks, tuition assistance, excellent benefits, box seats to sporting events and concerts. In certain jobs we give $30K spot bonuses to keep talent and we still can't keep up. Simply not true...absolutely not true. The government dictates many business models and I am sorry but I can't waive my hand and have a Berkley female studies major perform the same duties as a C++ or C Sharp Dev. And, while I pay many new college grads 6+ figures eventually I run into the brickwall of the government telling me what my profit can and can't be.

Sorry but all I hear is a lot of excuses. Is there risk, absolutely but there are many thousands of millionaires and hundreds of billionaires that started with nothing. Immigrants who arrived with $100 in their pocket and they somehow overcame all the drag of no college degree, low wages, housing and poor transportation.

Yes, hard work is important, and having a good work ethic can open some doors. But luck and timing are important as well and often ignored, and good luck and good timing are often attributed to just working hard and being rewarded for that hard work. But there's also a lot of other factors at play, which may limit the opportunities a person can take depending on their tolerance for risk(aka how lucky do they feel). Wages haven't kept up with increases productivity. Minimum wage hasn't kept up with inflation. Another problem is a generation has been sold on college debt: having a college degree, any degree, would open doors to better pay and jobs. That might have been true when degrees were rare, but now the market is flooded with degrees and lessened their value. (This is why college for all would fail, and why I don't agree with calls to make college "free" for everyone. Plus most of the information can be learned for free online out with library resources, so it's not a access to knowledge problem) Unfortunately for the individual, they become saddled with debt they can't discharge via bankruptcy, and can drive getting stuck in a bad job because they can't afford to take a pay cut to transition to a better field of work or to restart in a new trade. That debt and need to meet basic necessities may mean they also don't have the means to save for their future goals, whether it's retirement, a house, etc. Also related is that healthcare is tired to jobs in the US, so medical needs may cause someone to remain in a job because they can't risk losing medical coverage. On the flip side, lots of jobs now want to see a 4 year degree in their applicants, even when it has no bearing on the job itself. This perpetuates the notion that you "need" a 4 year degree. For example, registered nurses. You can become an RN with a 2 year degree. Except most "good" nursing jobs want a 4 year degree in nursing (BSN). However, there's is nothing a BSN can do that an RN can't do, they hold the same professional certification as RN. You could argue they want the soft skills associated with a bachelors degree, but you'd be wrong, they ignore other degrees in hiring. There's also lots of assumptions built into our way of life, such as transportation. Housing is cheaper the further you get from desirable areas (and one of the reasons why we have suburban sprawl). This includes places of work, and generally drives people to require transportation to/from work. In a large city with a decent public transportation system, a person could get by without a car (which saves on several costs, including insurance, gas, and parking). But in smaller cities and towns, cars become more important, because they buy you time. A 15 minute commute by car could be an hour via public transportation, if it exists. Shortening the commute to something walkable/bikeable isn't usually feasible (ref. housing costs near desirable locations), so that's typically out. This could drive other hidden costs, like increased child care costs due to the extra time needed to commute to work. None of these are easy problems to solve. But "work harder" is a gross oversimplification of the problem. (I think it's about as bad as telling AF pilots they should be happy in their job and don't need a bonus, and shouldn't complain about the ops tempo because it's what they signed up to do).

Despite the misdirection of SWA this weekend, there are thousands of pilots who are old enough with enough money to say “fuck your mandate!” and leave. A lot of airline guys in the 55-65 category who don’t trust anything and will never get the vacx…or so it seems at least. I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility that major airlines could be faced with epic shortages, or have to push back on the mandate. Maybe it doesn’t come to fruition, but it’d be naive to think it’s not a reasonable possibility at this point. A friend at General Dynamics said the company is struggling with this as they have thousands of employees in the south who in general are not getting the vax, and they also know firing all of those employees will crush the company. Biden has really put a hell of a lot of Americans and American companies in a terrible spot. Let’s go Brandon!

Not that I disagree with your literal statement, but I do disagree that such a situation is unavoidable for adults (at least it is far more unavoidable than the Dems like to make it seem). A couple local examples: 1. I have several friends who own their businesses (builder, excavation, roofing); they have vacancies paying $25/hr (and if we’re honest, there’s a lot of “under the table” paying going on). They also pay a lot more than that to many of their employees who have been with them for a while/acquired new skills while on the job. It’s hard for them to find people, let alone keep them. 2. Local area power companies (the 2 I have personal connection two) are begging for lineman. They are offering to pay $25-30k for the training/certs, and within 4 years that person is making 6 figures. Blew my mind, but it’s true. What do I see scattered all over street corners the past 6-9 mo? Abled-body men under 40 begging for money (while also getting Covid handouts I bet). They’re not disheveled, sitting in wheel chairs, etc. Many of them look like they probably work out at a local gym daily and are pretty healthy. I’ve heard every excuse in the book about these people, but when it comes down to it, they can swing a fucking hammer, they’re just too lazy to do it…they want easy money they don’t have to put effort towards. The point: Min wage is a bit of a smoke and mirrors discussion, the RC is not $15/hr (plenty for the HS kid), because we haven’t asked/answered the question why there are so many jobs out there that pay well above Min wage/offer substantially more than “that McDs job,” yet people walk right past them complaining about the “rich folk holding me down!” Barring significant medical problems preventing work, I believe the RC for these situations is our society rewards laziness while breeding ungratefulness and a weak work ethic/sense of personal responsibility.

I dunno...my memoirs?

I'd be interested to see more complete data, but I think our (American) average waistlines have increased by a similar proportion. Expect the cost of healthcare to continue to increase in proportion to how unhealthy we continue to become: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-29220000

Another fallacy in this line of reasoning is that all bottoms are equal. If you lack the timing and luck that are allegedly required to succeed in america, you still end up in a vastly better position than if you lack the timing or luck required in another country. And if you take one step up from the absolute bottom, you see an even bigger disparity. The second from the bottom quintile in America lead dramatically wealthier and more opportunistic lives than the second to the bottom quintile in European countries. And whereas our citizens in that quintile pay no taxes effectively, European lower and middle class workers pay quite a bit of taxes. So while this system isn't perfect when compared to a non-existent perfect system, it is thoroughly more beneficial to those at the bottom than other systems that do exist. There are only two valid comparisons. That which exists in other countries today, and that which existed in our country in the past. By both metrics, our citizens come out way ahead. Add in the opportunities for upward mobility, and the competition isn't even close. I do agree with the problems regarding college debt, housing prices, and wage stagnation. But the boom times of the 1950s did not come remotely close to the level of regulation and interference we have today. College debt can be directly traced to government backing student loans. That seemingly well-intentioned policy completely decimated a lot of millennial and gen z lives with astronomical debt as teenagers. And we effectively derailed the progress black Americans were making with a series of well-intentioned but ultimately catastrophic programs such as affirmative action. Decades of progress making up for a true evil, completely lost. And now no one on either side has a solution for the glaring racial problem that everyone sees but is uncomfortable verbalizing. The disconnect is that liberals generally see conservative resistance as some sort of lack of compassion. Incorrect. It's generally a realization that second and third order effects of seemingly innocuous (to liberals) government action can have quite devastating effects.

About 6-9 months ago I was curious about this debate and dug into average annual pay on manual labor jobs in 1969 compared to the 2007. Those years didn't have any real significance, other than having data that was easy to grab. The average annual pay of all manual labor jobs had risen very slightly in real terms (43k to 44.5k). The average cost of healthcare had risen 5.5% to 22% of that annual pay. The median home value had risen from about 400% to 3500%. An average college degree has gone from 22% to about 100%. Average car cost had gone from 60 to 69%. Everything else stayed the same cost or got cheaper. So there is a real something in medical costs, home costs, and college costs. Any discussion about addressing those needs to actually look into the root cause of why the cost went up. Throwing government money around doesn't inherently do that.

And there are many more who just don't make it, or just get by, but their stories aren't ones that books get written about. Those aren't excuses, just obstacles that need to be overcome. Sometimes they can be overcome by hard work alone, sometimes it requires some fortunate timing and a little luck to overcome those obstacles. And no one likes to talk about what happens when risks are realized, it's much easier to celebrate taking a chance and winning. But you are right in that our country offers great opportunity, and probably the most economic mobility. At the same time, businesses need to work harder too. If they have staffing shortfalls, stop complaining and do the work to invest in recruiting and retaining talent. If people don't want to do the job you have open, you're probably not paying enough to deal with the job. And if you can't afford to pay what the workers are demanding, well, your business model probably has flawed assumptions and you're on the path to failure.

Right, we're 100% in agreement. I have zero issues dropping mloa, I do it whenever needed without a second thought. I'm just saying don't be the dude that drops a Christmas trip so you can accomplish your stan eval testing in your 1st month (it happened lol)...then brag about it to your mostly non-mil crew. It's like bragging to your buddy who recently lost his job, that you just made 6k on a 3-day greenslip last week. Like the dudes you mentioned, it's just poor form. Crazy enough, at DAL, they will sometimes rebuild your trip around MLOA on trips dropped over holidays. I've seen it happen...dude mil dropped a 6 day trip that hit Christmas. He only dropped MLOA on day 1 of that trip, so the company awarded the MLOA then DH'd him on day 2 or 3 to rejoin the trip.

Aside from the obviously return of travel demand, I am sure the vaccine mandate was something the airlines expected months ago and part of the reason why they ramped up hiring again, knowing that a good number of people may choose to leave over it.

Access to space and the responsibilities of satellite owners. With the advent of commercial spaceflight, how to manage and deconflict orbits, and who should manage the orbits. Big sky, little satellite theory probably won't hold much longer, as it is getting much cheaper to put satellites on orbit.

Some B-52 love https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/42703/this-is-the-most-incredible-tour-of-a-b-52-stratofortress-we-have-ever-seen?fbclid=IwAR3ZGxwNXqUF76dvlVDgaSBK7IjqnJRoXCnJSaTnSjISQtnP5KVHMdSJN4Q

Look into defectors into the US. Pretty sure we got a few teenager MiGs thanks to N Korean pilots, maybe some others.

When I did my masters I noticed a significant gap in literature regarding cultural intelligence (CQ) and multi-cultural aircrews in multi-crewed aircraft, and the related effects on crew resource management. Just an idea if you have an anthro or management background as well.

Some SWA pilot friends of mine have said the flight cancellations weren’t because of the employees.

Are you looking to blend the two? Civilian and/or military application?

Well, to be fair, about a third of Colorado, over half of New Mexico and even some of Kansas, Oklahoma and Wyoming were Texas at one point; so we're just taking back territory...

If the lineman walk out as winter sets in, whoa boy! I almost wish it to happen, as they’d be fighting the unjust bullshit this admin is pushing down our throats, and it’d be entertaining to watch all the douchebags lose their minds without electrical power…hmm, guess being a smug, condescending asshole doesn’t keep you warm in winter, who knew!

ABC reported it too. https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/florida-flights-cancelled-air-traffic-controllers-conduct-mass-sickout-to-protest-vaccine-mandate/

I hope your anger keeps you warm this winter.

Agreed, except this was a completely foreseeable and realistic outcome. So when policy is developed to toss a hand grenade into the economy and the societal norms at large, a realistic possibility that a mutation will completely negate the monumental fist-fucking the policy exerts on society should be cause to perhaps view said-policy with skepticism. The vaccine is still life-saving, but saving your own life isn't (and shouldn't be) compulsory. The justifications for until-now unthinkable government intervention have been completely invalidated by Delta, but the damage done by furthering the political team sports will not be so easily erased. Let's see how long it takes the party of "follow the science" to acknowledge these studies and adapt their policies. I'm not holding my breath.

Well west of there but we headquarters out of Wengen. Discovered the Lauterbrunnen Valley area (below) when stationed in Germany. Has changed little in the last 40 yrs unlike the rest of the world. Airline job allowed us to retire <60 and visit it often. I plan to die there.

Been reading all these comments, I wonder if it was like this for officers before the Civil War given orders to march to their home states. LT Col Robert E Lee USA being offered command of all Union Armies just to turn it down knowing that he would have been ordered to kill Rebel Virginians. Myself being retired and USAF civil service, being just given a ultimatum to comply with the covid shot, I took it way back in Feb BTW but it was my choice and I am scared of what my long term health prospects are. I believe our Federal Govt leaders are corrupt to the core and pray the states call a convention of states just to start over. I'm just hoping I can make it to my Colorado cabin in a year and half and live out my days being left alone.

I mean they’re both at fault, and people who want to blame one or the other are looking at it with a partisan lens.

Hell no. It’s a ways off, but if Trump is the nominee in 2024 I may go 3rd party. Not super excited about that possibility, but that’s why I plan to vote in the primary next time and have some say on that aspect of the process. Trump is no leader and his narcissistic personality is not going to reunite the country or set us back on the right path. He’s right on much of what he says and the policies he tried to implement, but it’s not always about just having the right ideas. You have to sell those ideas beyond just your base, and I think Trump struggled at that. Maybe I’m crazy, but I still believe there is someone out there in this country that can stand up to far leftist bullshit, be professional, and have the best interests of all Americans in mind, and still not bring the baggage that Donald Trump does. My best guess though, I don’t think Trump will run next cycle. Anyway, back to Biden saying gibberish from his White House set across the street from the actual White House.

So if it’s between Biden (or Kamala) and trump you would vote Biden?

He’s making a very strong case to being worse than Carter and Obama. And we aren’t even 1 year in. Likely beyond his control and is only in this spot because of his handlers. And ruining his legacy. Well what there was of it anyways.

You know, I've seen lots of Biden's speeches, and they're a little scary. But this, one worried me a little, as he is beginning to slur his words (instead of just misplacing them):

Just curious... do companies get to impose whatever restrictions they want, and if you don't like it, go somewhere else? Seems like I've seen that argument in a few threads on here... Would you feel different if he'd gotten fired for smoking weed?

Well, well, well... if it isn't the consequences of his own actions.