Seniority Rules

The airline industry is not a meritocracy.  Everything we get or “earn” is based on seniority – our pay, trip pairings, days off, vacation, travel privileges, and pretty much anything and everything else.  We realize this is how things are done when we sign up and are OK with it; it’s really the fairest way to do things in most instances.  The longer we’re at our airline the higher our quality of life.  Personally, I find it comforting to know that all I have to do is bide my time and eventually I’ll have a good work schedule with the days off I want earning a living wage.  I just have to pay my dues and my time will come.  I wasn’t the first to have a crappy schedule with low pay, and I won’t be the last – at least I hope not.

However, there has come an occasion where I am not OK with the seniority system.  We’ve recently had a flight attendant come back on line after being out on medical leave.  Now, I don’t know this person from a ham sandwich, but if what I’ve been told is correct then I don’t think she should even be employed with my airline anymore.  Yeah, that may sound harsh, but there should be a statute of limitations on how long one can be on medical leave and keep a job.  I’ve been told that after being hired by the airline and working on line for six months she went out on workman’s comp.  After about two years of being on workman’s comp, she took a medical leave of absence for about four years.  Our union contract provides that employees out on these types of leave not only retain seniority but also accrue it.

On paper this seems like a good idea, but in practice (obviously) it has its flaws.  I think after two years one should no longer accrue seniority, just retain it.  There are other types of leave that we can take that only allow for accrual for the first 30 days.  Why for these two is accrual indefinite?  She only worked for 6 months, left for six years, and now that she’s decided she wants to come back she comes back at number 34 on the company-wide seniority list!  I’ve only been flying for less than two years, but I’ve worked more than she has.  Something doesn’t seem fair about this.  It is what it is, and there’s nothing I can do about it, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.  And it’s not like I have a problem with her personally, I just think our union screwed up when they negotiated this part of our contract.

Even though my company-wide seniority has gone up three spots in the last month, now that’s she back, she’s bumped me down one spot on my base’s seniority list.  Being on the bubble of holding a line and being on reserve makes this a big deal, which is why I’m so upset about this.  No one senior to me ever leaves my base; they all leave from the Charlotte base.  Eventually, I think I might like to be based there because the trips are better, but since it’s so much bigger I’m even farther away from holding a line there.  Maybe this flight attendant will realize she doesn’t really like the job all that much and decide to do something else.  Even better, maybe the industry as a whole will improve beyond anyone’s wildest imagination and I can get called up to the big show.  A boy can hope, right?

Job Shadowing

I can’t really speak for other airlines, but at my airline crew members do not get along with crew schedulers.  For various reasons we feel like they’re out to get us . . . at least the reserves anyway.  As a reserve flight attendant I’m at the mercy of our schedulers.  As long as they schedule me legally and according to Federal Aviation Regulations then I have to do what they tell me.  That means if they schedule me for six legs and 14 hours of duty with a 9 hour overnight only to work another 6 six legs and be on duty 14 more hours the next day I have to do it; that’s legal.

Also, because I work for a small airline there is more interaction on a human level; our scheduling is system is not done by a computer but by actual people.  A computer wouldn’t allow illegal schedules to be built, but because a human is doing the building “mistakes” can be made.  I use quotation marks because sometimes it’s not a mistake.  Just recently my roommate was assigned hot reserve at 5:00am.  For hot reserve, duty starts at 5:00am so the latest we can be scheduled to work is 7:00pm.  They tried to schedule her until 9:00pm, and when she called them out on it they acted like they didn’t know.  When they finally changed her schedule to be legal and got her back into base, they tried to cut her rest short.  Our contract says that rest in base will be at least 10 hours.  When she arrived in base and checked out of her trip at 8:00pm, they had assigned 5:00am regular reserve.  She called them on this illegality and the scheduler quickly backpedaled (but not without copping an attitude).

The way the schedulers arrive at their decisions when assigning flying is something that boggles my mind, too.  Yesterday was my third day of reserve in a block of six.  There was a four-day trip that started yesterday, but instead of giving it to me (I was legal for the trip) they instead gave it to someone junior to me who couldn’t finish the entire four days; she could only complete the first two days and then had to deadhead back on the third day.  Guess who has been given the rest of her trip?  Yours truly.  Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Crew Scheduling?  Are you all braindead?

So in an effort to help crew members and crew schedulers understand each other’s job, our management has decided to let crew members shadow schedulers and vice-versa.  From what I hear the schedulers will be following Check Flight Attendants – of which I am one – on trips (with overnights), and these aren’t the nice, cushy, easy trips but the ones with 14 hour duty days with short overnights.  They won’t be allowed to sleep or sit on the flights but must actually help with boarding, beverage service, trash collection, and whatever else may arise.  I hope I get one, but being on reserve I might (and probably) won’t.

I’ve also requested to shadow a scheduler.  I realize that many of them are doing a job and sometimes we don’t like what we have to do.  I also realize that some of them are jerks because they can be.  Maybe by doing this I’ll be able to better understand why junior FAs are given flying that I feel I should get and why I ALWAYS get hot reserve.  We’ll see how it goes.  I just hope those schedulers are given hell when they have to fly and that they are as tired as we are at the end of the day.  Perhaps by putting a face to a name and voice we can better understand each other and not have such animosity towards each other.

A Quick Break

It’s 7:30 in the morning on day four of a four-day trip. I’ve finished my beverage service, and 29 people are staring at the headrest in front of them, the back of their eyelids, or out the window at the quickly rising sun as we zoom east towards Charlotte. Row 13 was open a few minutes ago, but now I’m sitting here staring out the window, joining my passengers who have nothing else to do either. The sun is on the other side of the plane, and although I don’t have the good fortune of watching it paint the sky I’m easily mesmerized by these clouds; I never tire of looking at them. I take this brief moment to relax because I know the next five legs and 12 hours are going to leave me spent with little opportunity to sit and hide from the ever-watchful eye of the traveling public.

As I stare out the window into the nothingness that is 34,000 feet I see some clouds on the horizon. To me they look remarkably like snow-capped mountains. Though they are obviously clouds and nothing else, they still have the ragged edges, peaks, and valleys that mountains would have. It is at this point that I start to envy my two other crew members; they get to sit up front and chase sunrises and sunsets and see things that I can only see in my mind’s eye most of the time. What a job they have!

I’m quickly brought back to reality and out of my daydream by the ding-dong that is the In-Range Call from the captain. He wants to know what I need when we arrive in Charlotte. Having lost myself in wonder it takes me a second to remember the passenger who boarded with a wheelchair; I guess we’ll need one of those when we land. I go back to work collecting from traytables the trash left there by my slumbering passengers; I find myself envious of their freedom to sleep, too. Because I was lazy and didn’t get my uniform ready the night before I had to wake up at 4:30. Running on little sleep I think about the long day I have ahead of me and am grateful for the break I just had, even if it was for just a few minutes.

Don’t Sit There

So I’m finally working again.  I feel like it’s been forever since I’ve flown.  I originally had Hot Reserve this morning (6th time this month), but thankfully someone called in sick the night before and I was the only one who could work the flight on time.  Originally I was a little upset when I saw I had a 4-day trip put on my schedule (why?  I need the work), but then I saw I was working with my favorite captain.  Without sounding like I have a crush on him, let me just that he’s a man’s man and a lot of fun to fly with.

Anyway, somewhere along the way 5D’s seatback breaks.  As an empty seat it looks normal, but put a body in it and the seatback just reclines.  It doesn’t recline any more than normal; it just reclines without pressing the button.  Sit up and the seat pops back up on its own.  This is a safety issue for the people in 6D & F since it can impede their egress into the aisle during an evacuation.  So I tell the captain, and he calls maintenance who responds by saying that they are really busy fixing a bunch of planes for another regional airline and can’t spend five minutes to tighten a seatback (it literally takes less than two minutes to fix; I’ve seen it done).  Instead, we defer the seats and make it so no one can sit in them . . . or so we think.

We flip the seat cushions upside and thread the seatbelts through the straps (the cushions are an approved flotation device after all) and buckle it in.  Unfortunately, we don’t have the massive stickers that say “DO NOT OCCUPY,” but you’d think that an upside down seat cushion that you have to unbuckle would send up a red flag to a passenger.  Yeah, you’d think that, but you’d be wrong as hell.  After 38 people board my plane, I walk down the aisle closing overhead bins and looking at bags, and what do I see?  That’s right.  Two people sitting in 6D and 6F.  I tell them the seats are out of commission and explain why, and the husband says (in a friendly manner), “Well, we put them back in commission.”  I politely ask them to move and they oblige, but as they sit down, the guy across the aisle in 6C starts to move his jacket over to the seat so he can have them to himself!  What is wrong with these people?!  Seriously, if I saw that my seat had an upside down seat cushion buckled down, I’d wait and ask someone in charge what the the scoop was.  These people are ridiculous.

Before the passengers boarded the captain made a joke about people still sitting there, not realizing they actually would.  I knew someone would because I’ve had people do it before.  People are idiots; God love ‘em.

Hot Reserve

As you may or may not have noticed I am posting less and less these days.  When I started this wee little blog I was a fancy lineholder meaning I was working regularly and had more chances for more stories and inspiration.  Well now I’m back on reserve, and I expect it to stay that way for the foreseeable future (unfortunately, I don’t qualify for any government assistance programs).  This particular post is more a means to vent some frustration than anything else.

Like I said in the above paragraph, I’m back on reserve.  Reserve is not a fun way to live.  The main reason I don’t like reserve is I don’t make a whole helluva lot of money.  My airline guarantees me 72 hours of pay whether I fly that much or not; most months I do not break guarantee.  While it’s great to know I will get something every month, it’s not nearly enough (what can I say, I have expensive tastes).

Another reason I so disdain reserve is that I must maintain daily contact with Crew Scheduling.  Some of the schedulers are nice people who are simply doing their job, and that job can sometimes piss off the crew members.  However, some of the schedulers are also mean, spiteful people who condescend to crew members and talk to them like children and jerk us around with our schedules just because they can.

I also hate reserve because I never get late reserve times like 8:00am or 10:00am.  If I’m assigned those times then I don’t have to worry about Hot Reserve.  It has come to my realization that scheduling hates my guts.  Why, I do not know.  Every single time I start a new block of reserve days after a day off I am given 5:00am Hot Reserve, which means the rest of my reserve days will start at 5:00am (a double edged sword to be sure).  For Hot Reserve I must wake up well before the sun is up so I can get dressed in my snazzy uniform and be at the airport where I spend the  next ten hours of my day dying on the inside ready to cover any last minute call offs.  For the rest of my days spent on call I am given 5:00am home reserve, which theoretically allows me to sleep.  Most of the time I can sleep through a large portion of my reserve period (it lasts until 7:00pm) – that is unless scheduling calls me at 5:00 to come in as a replacement flight attendant on hot reserve.  This doesn’t happen often, but it did happen recently.

After having Hot Reserve the previous day I am rudely awakened by the most skin-crawlingly awful ring tone and asked to come in again because the original hot reserve flight attendant was used.  Thankfully, the voice on the other end of the phone belongs to someone I like and I just roll with it.  That was the third time on Hot Reserve this month; tomorrow is the fourth.  I imagine I’ll get up to six days before the month is over.  This is getting old.  FML.

Slam! Click!

Most jobs have their own vocabulary that those on the outside won’t really understand even though the individual words by themselves are oftentimes easy to define.  The airline industry is no different.  Take “slam-click” as an example.  Everyone knows what slam and click mean by themselves, but put together they take on a completely different meaning.  To slam-click is to go into your hotel room and never come out until it’s time to take the van back to the airport; it gets its name from the sound of the door slamming shut and the clicking of the security latch over the door.

If you’ve got a short overnight then you have to slam-click and no one thinks a thing about it.  A lot variables must be taken into account when trying to decide whether to slam-click.  For example: Did I recently get paid?  Is the crew cool?  Might we get into shenanigans by going out?  Do I have to wake up early?  If you’re on reserve and working with a fun crew then slam-clicking is a bad idea.  The next time you fly it might be with a really boring crew who force you to slam-click by slam-clicking themselves, so you must take advantage of your good crews while you can.  Even if you’re short on money you should try your best to go out and have fun.

On a recent trip to BHM I had the pleasure of working with a fun crew (well, 75% fun anyway, including myself).  I was running short on money and not feeling like taking my aforementioned advice on fun crews so I asked the first officer if he and the captain were going to make me feel bad for slam-clicking.  He said no, but then a few minutes later the captain mentioned going out to this certain restaurant, that I had actually been craving lately.  He mentioned barbecue and beer and that was that; I had to go out.  You see, this place, only a few blocks from the hotel, serves up some savory BBQ and tasty brews, and I wasn’t going to miss out on this opportunity to have some fun.  We asked the other flight attendant if she wanted to join us, but she preferred to stay in and watch some DVDs like a square.  So . . . Guys’ night out!  Now we can do man doings and say man sayings without fear of reprisal.

After being manly and saying horrible things about (probably) wonderful people we arrived back to the hotel and remembered it was “haunted” and that our other crew member was afraid of ghosts.  We enlisted the help of the nice front desk lady to play a little prank on the slam-clicking flight attendant.  After making a key for me to gain entry to her sleeping quarters we had her call up to the room to tell the slam-clicker that she had forgotten to sign a new no-smoking policy.  When she finally went downstairs to sign it, I slipped in her room, moved some furniture around, and left a hand-written note (written with my left hand) on her bed.  The note called her by her full name (which she hates) and thanked her for staying at the hotel again.  Oh, and we also changed her 6am wakeup call to a 4am wakeup.  Unfortunately, after getting back to her room she did not coming running and screaming down the hall.  I guess she was smarter than we gave her credit for.  Though it didn’t have the effect we desired, we still had a fun time plotting it.

And that is why you don’t slam-click if you can avoid it.

Honored

I’m working a flight to FAY, and it’s still dark outside.  I’m tired, and I don’t really want to be here right now or going to this place.  This flight is too short to perform a beverage service so I just stand there for 20 minutes like an idiot and the flight feels much longer than it really is.  Thankfully we don’t have many passengers; we’re maybe only half full.

As passengers are boarding one lady asks if she and the people traveling with her can get off first.  The first thing to pop in my mind is something along the lines of Who does this broad think she is?  You can get off  when it’s your turn. But then a friend of hers explains that she and he and the other people with them are Air Force personnel who have just arrived back home from Afghanistan.  Well Hell’s bells, I can’t believe my luck.  It’s not at all uncommon to have soldiers or airmen on these flights since there is both an Army and Air Force base in Fayetteville, but I feel honored to take these people home.  I realize this is simply pure coincidence and I wasn’t chosen for this flight, but still . . . With a big goofy grin I tell them they can do whatever they want and welcome them home.

After boarding I talk to the one woman in the group and find out they’ve been in Afghanistan for about six months and won’t have to go back for a year.  Once we finally close the door and I’ve done the safety dance I sit in my jumpseat and start to think.  Of all the flights on all the days that I could be working I’m working this flight on this day with these passengers – these passengers who have put themselves in constant danger for half a year because I asked them to.  What luck!  I start to tear up a little bit, and I don’t know exactly why.  I guess it’s a combination of their sacrifice, willingness to face danger, gratefulness to be back home, and just the simple fact that I get to be the one to take them there.

We take off, and I get up.  I walk through the cabin and ask each one if I can get him (or her) anything, and then I repeat…anything. They all politely decline because apparently – and according the the one female – they’re all still loaded from the last flight when they got upgraded to first class and drank all the booze.  That’s OK; I’m glad they were taken care of, even if I wasn’t the one doing it.

When we land I make an announcement asking everyone to let them deplane first and explain who they are and where they’re coming from.  Everyone obliges, and as they step off the plane I shake each hand and thank them.  I mean it, and I try show them that I’m not just saying words but expressing true gratitude.  I think they get it.  I hope so anyway.

Winter Weather and Another Reason I Love My Job

Click to enlarge.

I was supposed to start a three day trip today, and I guess, despite mother nature’s best efforts, I technically did.  Originally, my schedule had me working four legs today and ending in Newport News, VA, but last night Crew Scheduling called and told me the first two legs were canceled and that I and the crew would be ferrying (flying the plane without passengers) to RIC to work the last two legs and end in PHF.  Around 5:00am scheduling called again to tell me my show time would be 9:15am instead of 6:45am – I’m all about sleeping in – and ferrying a plane to LGA only to work the flight back to DAY.  All this because of the snow that hit the east coast over the last couple days.  As a lineholder, I get paid for my original schedule or the two flights I was actually on today, whichever is greater (obviously, the four flights I didn’t work were worth more time than the two I did), so I kinda get paid to not work.

I really enjoy ferry flights.  There’s no one on board the plane, and I get to ride up in the flight deck.  It’s amazing the stuff that goes on up there during a flight.  What with all the buttons, dials, and switches, it’s a wonder people can fly anywhere; how do pilots learn it all?   Also, with all the chatter that’s going on with ATC, it’s amazing anything can be understood.  I’m not that great at understanding everything ATC tells those guys to do, but usually I can pick up on our call sign and flight number, frequency changes, and altitude changes.  Other than that, I’m totally lost.  It’s still cool, though.  Every time I ride up there (so far, only three times) I’m like a kid in a candy store – my eyes are open wide, and I have a goofy grin on my face.  It’s the coolest thing.

Today’s weather flying into NYC was just perfect.  You could see the Statue of Liberty clearly, and the new Mets stadium.  The captain pointed out Rikers Island (I watch Law & Order: SVU), but I couldn’t find it.  The Expressway Visual Approach was super cool to watch, and I got some good pictures and video of things.  To see my pictures, head over to Fotki; to see some videos, just go here.  The captain even let me enter a new altitude with the fancy little dial and twice let me adjust the vertical speed (the rate at which we descend) with the press of a button and the turn of another dial.  It was like I was an eight year old kid.  I’m no pilot, but I’d sure like to be.

Even though I had a good day and got to do something that I think is cool, I still feel pretty sorry for all the passengers that got jerked around.  Of course, it wasn’t the airline’s fault, but that’s who they’re going to hold responsible.  This was the second day in a row that weather caused lots of cancellations.  I take pride in my work and who I work for, and this bad weather makes us look bad, again, even though it’s not our fault.  But at the same time, if I’m told to fly on an empty airplane, you better believe you’ll find me up front with the bus drivers.  I just hope everyone got to where they were going and that they were compensated for their troubles.

Why I Do This

There are lots of different aspects of this job that I really like.  I like the flexibility in scheduling; no day, week, or month is ever the same.  Sometimes I have very long days, and sometimes I have very short days.  I also get to work with different people.  Some of those people are awesome, some are OK, and some I’d rather not ever work with again, but it’s always different.  I get to meet some interesting characters on the plane, too.  Some are incredibly attractive, some are funny, and some are just rude, but I never know what combination I will get when boarding begins and we close the main cabin door.  Some months I work a lot (when holding a line), and some months I don’t work very much at all (when I’m on reserve), but the constant and unpredictable variety is a huge part of why I love my job.

However, the main reason I got this job and still love it as much as I do is for the travel benefits.  Twice this month I’ve tried to take a day trip to NYC, and while neither has worked out and I haven’t left town, the ability to go there for the day and sleep in my own bed at night is a major perk.  And I can do it for free.  Hopping on a plane is like hopping in a cab for me.  I can jet to Europe for $40.  Awesome.

Right now I’m in Valdosta, GA (WTH is that?) visiting my best friend and his wife.  It’s great to be able to just say, “Hey, I’ve got a few days off.  I think I’ll go somewhere and not spend a single red cent getting there.”  I don’t have to take my work home with me, and I can do whatever the heck I want.  I’m not paid a whole lot, but I didn’t sign up to earn a paycheck.  I do this job to be able to fly wherever I want to whenever I want to, and for the time being I don’t want to do anything else.  I love my job.  Oh, and I’ll try to get some stories from the line instead of being all philosophical and crap.

Keeping Me Safe

Obviously, since 9/11 our nation’s airports have been on high alert.  There are so many rules and regulations saying what a passenger can and cannot take through an airport security checkpoint, but we can’t know everything.  Sometimes there are exemptions to these rules, but who really knows what’s getting through those X-ray machines?  I once read a story about a guy who was making fake boarding passes and using fake IDs to get past TSA – those entrusted with keeping our planes, trains, and automobiles safe – just to make the point that it’s not security, but security theater that we experience when traveling.  When a TSA agent asked him why he had two full-sized contact lens solution bottles in his bag he responded with, “Two eyes,” and he was allowed to proceed with both.  Had he been planning shenanigans then he would have had a free pass.

Part of TSA’s job is to notice any suspicious behavior.  I imagine they are trained to do this, though how extensive the training is I cannot say.  Noticing suspicious behavior is also part of my job, only to a lesser degree.  My training is presumably not nearly as extensive as TSA’s, but I do know that in order to notice suspicious behavior one must look at people.  I don’t know how many times I’ve walked up to a security checkpoint in uniform only to have an “agent” ask me if I have liquids in my bags or ask me to take my shoes off before passing through the metal detector.  I know that if they cannot discern that I am a uniformed crewmember (and therefore exempt from liquid/shoe rules), that they are not on the lookout for anything suspicious.

I also had a couple friends tell me about the time a TSA agent let a man through the security checkpoint when the name on his ID did not match the name on his boarding pass.  This was not a simple misspelling or omission of a middle initial, but two different names . . . like Terry Tate and Ndamukong Suh (who, by the way, should win the Heisman Trophy).  This security breach occurred in Dulles – a very major airport.  Thanks for keeping me safe, TSA.  I hate you.