Originally Posted by
onedottoolow
G'Day Shoddy88
I echo what you say as being reasonably accurate but I have to ask.
7 Years as a Captain on the Atr and you cannot get a 737 gig! WTF ?
My thought, start studying the 777 manual as when the music stops not all will have a chair to sit on.
I wish it were that simple... and...
Yes, that is correct. 7 year ATR captain and I can't get a 737 or 777 or A330 or F100 or Tiger 737/A320. Nothing! absolutely nothing for 12 months because the cap is exceeded.
My only crime is that I'm an ATR peasant who is imprisoned by the company's creative use of the 10% Cap.
I haven't done anything wrong and I'm not under any freeze or anything, I've jumped all the hoops etc . I'm not even particularly high on the seniority list (there are plenty more senior who are just as stuck as I am).
To add insult to injury, on August 1 they awarded a bunch of positions to ATR crew, but they did not give any start dates. Those crew who have been awarded positions almost 6 months ago are still getting flogged on the ATR and have no start dates. The company in the meanwhile is hiring external pilots and putting them on instead. All the while the company proudly proclaims that the 10% cap is exceeded.
It's incredibly frustrating!!!!
Originally Posted by Chadzat
On a related note it amazes me the amount of whining about the cap coming from ATR pilots. My knowledge is that without this cap then integration would never have been agreed to by the company (VARA) at the time of the last EBA. Surely some movement is better than potentially none (or limited/unstructured as in the qlink case)
Nobody is whining about integration. The reason that we got integration was because when Virgin took over Skywest, certain managers were hell bent on taking away our business class international duty travel. This was something that was in our EBA and Virgin simply refused to honour it. When pilots started refusing to fly to Aukland for sim in cattle class, Virgin took Staff travel away from the entire VARA organisation. Engineers and Cabin Crew and even admin staff were sent emails saying that they can't have staff travel until the pilot "problem" is resolved.
Now I could get into a lot of detail here, but it would result in a very long post. The point is that giving up this business class duty travel was the main reason we got integration. The company didn't just do it because they're such great blokes!
The issue is that the integration came with a 10% cap, which was a huge mistake, but it was rushed through because the west coast pilots didn't really care as they were more worried about securing something ASAP before the F50 fleet was retired. (Understandable and I don't blame them).
The problem with the 10% cap is that it allows the company to completely make mockery of the the seniority system. This is achieved by offering jobs like 777SO and VANZ737FO positions. These jobs pay less than what an ATR captain gets so anybody who applies has to take a pay cut and be frozen on that aircraft type for 2 to 3 years. Of course when they offer these jobs they make plenty of false promises that there will be Australia based jobs on the 737 so that you don't have to take a pay-cut to progress off the ATR.
I and many others believed them and held out on the ATR until the good jobs came. The problem is that by the time they offer the decent jobs they've already used up the 10% (because all the FO's at the bottom of the seniority list went to NZ or the 777).
And voila... All the senior ATR pilots are stuck while the company employs more external pilots over the top for 12 months.
When the 12 months is up they offer more VANZ and 777 jobs accompanied by the usual lies and promises of AU737. The cycle repeats.
As the years have gone by, those pilots who went the 777 and VANZ from the bottom of seniority are now off their freeze and happily moving over to fly the jobs that we wanted (AU737).
Now you might think "you dumb ass, you should have gone to the 777 years ago and now you'd be ok"... Well yes, but that wasn't what we were told and most of us were tricked/deceived. Now its too late and even if the seniority list is followed they're only letting 6 pilots per year go (10%) so we are pretty well screwed.
The thing is that before integration, we were at least able to apply as external applicants. We no longer have that privilege. We still have to go through the same interview process as an external applicant, but we have fewer rights and opportunities to do so.