Not the Brightest Bunch
I will accept the retorts when they come but pilots as a whole and particularly in this company must carry some of the responsibility of the twisted system now in place.
Remuneration should be a function of hours worked for the company. Not hours with the engines running. Does anyone accept that work is not being done because the aircraft is not moving?
Likewise fatigue is a function of hours at work amongst other things - like when the work occursi n the diurnal cycle.
Some basic principles could solve many of the current issues:
1. Accurately account for time at work.
2. Roster to a duty threshold short of a duty limit and then pay overtime.
3. Have realistic limits. 190 hours in 28 days is a farce. No one in EGHQ is expected to do those hours, much less at any time of day. 55 hours may be tolerable in a week but the maximum over 28 should not exceed 140 hours. 35 hours on average per week is a normal 40 hour week discounted to allow rest for diurnal disruption.
4. Pro rata the duty and remuneration in a roster when leave occurs. This is the most obvious flaw in our current system.
Never would they do this I hear you cry.
Well I agree to some extent however some of these principles should be argued. Why do we accept 92 hour rosters that include leave and training? Why do we accept duty starts an hour before departure when the sign in clearly says otherwise? Why do we accept that time in a simulator does not get accounted in flight time? They are zero time simulators. Why do we accept so many other easily arguable things?
Pilots worldwide have accepted the nonsense and facilitated the status quo. I roll my eyes when someone complains of a 95 hour roster. He has bought into the whole fight hours myth. It could be a dream roster if the duty is not above 110 hours. Yet we propagate the stupidity!
Here we have a feedback process. Hell, we can write to the President by invitation! How many have done so and pointed out at least one or two of the irrational issues involved in our rostering and remuneration? Have you even written to anyone a bit further down the ladder and at least produced a written trail of the law bending and financial discrimination?
It gets raised again and again in various forums but that is deniable and unrecorded. Make the effort to put it in writing at whatever opportunity arises. If a mere 10% of the pilot body did this there would be change. 20% would terrify the upper floors.
Don’t complain if you don’t have the intellect, resolve or guts to do anything about it.
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle"