Yes, Blank Day's are considered the company's day and I have no problems with being assigned flight duty on those days (as is the general consensus and purpose of those day's), not seat support or fill-in duty for people undergoing recurrent training or check rides. Two previous companies I have worked for have tried this $#@! and we simply refused the duty until they eventually got the message and stopped trying to assign this BS. One company went so far as trying to make us go into the office and selfstudy on our Blank Days during office hours or make us come in if we had a partial flight duty day in order to get a full 8 hours of work in (lunch excluded). The answer was simple, we all refused it and if it boiled down to it, we would quit, so we stood our ground, and then management backed off and that was the end of that. I have been in Japan for well over a decade and the bottom line is this: You have to stand up for yourself and draw the line (respectfully), otherwise, they will keep pushing and pushing and not respect you at all. It gets a bit tricky being in the contract world as we are all on individual contracts, hence it's more important than ever to have the right people in place serving in the role of Chief Pilot, etc, but you still have stand your ground as an individual and have some self-respect and professionalism.
Last edited by blink; 4th Aug 2017 at 15:05.