UnDA
Although as you point out, credit still does exist, as we all know the company doesn't give a rats a** about "credit" anylonger. They are strictly concerned about "hard time" as this is what the budget is predicated on. The credit system has been left in place for workload sharing ...but it works only in theory. In reality if you take examples of rosters with leave or other "soft" credits there is still a disparity between monthly credit of those individuals, and with that of a non-leave/soft credit pilot. Other companies utilising the ADOPT system publish the credit hour "window" each month that all rosters will fall between (usually a 3-5 hour spread), and final rosters do not fall outside those boundaries to ensure workload sharing based on credit. EK chooses not to publish these figures perhaps for obvious reasons. We have no idea each month what the "window" is, nor can we easily compare with others to ensure distribution compliance (not that that would make any difference). They need to extract maximum hard hours as possible from the guys as it is obvious we are deftly short of crew. Hard hours is what keeps the aircraft flying, not credit hours. Flight cancellations are the final proof of understaffing. The levels of individuals leaving EK indicates many have reached their personal "limit" of tollerance. And this is even before the "pilot shortage" has really developed yet!
Last edited by Outta Heresoon; 7th Mar 2006 at 11:28.