I have recently had management (read imbeciles) at my pretend airline making life unnecessarily hard for the pilots yet again. I realise that it will just be a matter of time before the pilots compensate, usually at the company’s expense.
It has just got me reminiscing and smiling again.
I remember this one operator who required us pilots to rent 1 of 6 rooms from a property that they were renting them selves. That was the condition of employment at the time. $100/wk for a cell with one toilet to share. The operator was collecting $600/wk for a $250/wk property. That was just the tip of the exploitation iceberg.
We compensated by reducing our power bills quite substantially. Each room did have a separate power meter, but so did the common room which powered the tiny fridges. The power for the common room was paid for by the operator. Knowing this, we all bought extension cords and power boards. We ran all our aircons, tvs, whatever for free and just paid to run the lights. The funny thing is that the operator couldn’t work out why the common room power bill was so high. They also couldn’t work out why the fuel burns (ie fuel from browser) were more on the weekend when they were away. Classic.
I also remember another operator who did quite a bit of back charter. It was asked at a meeting if the pilots who organised and flew the back charter would get a 10% cut. Not surprisingly the operator said no.
Soon after any recorded back charter stopped completely. The idiots could have had 90% and ended up with 0%. Pilots with 100%.
I would love to here any other stories of passively getting back at immoral operators.