What Would You Do…

[skullcap]

I think there is a difference between .1 as a minimum time and adding .1 to each flight to cover starts. News to me if people add .1 to every flight to cover start. As mentioned before that some operators charge a minimum of .2 for a flight. I can see that if a person does a lot of short flights such as heli skiing or hopping from well site to well site, but to arbritarily add .1 to each flight seems odd, but is making sense to me more and more, as how and why my competition does their billing. Pretty easy to justify a low hourly rate when you add 10% to every flight.

 

[skullcap]

Jet A;

 

No, as posted, I pointed out that 90% are ok and that it only takes a few bad apples to ruin the bunch.

 

Why do you think it is necessary to attack me personnally? Have flown much seismic and will again. Love working with the crews and don't have any problems with flying the job. Getting the job is the hardest part nowdays, can you move 36 bags an hour with a 206 near Grand Cache, I can't, I know a B2 driver who watched 2 206s moving 12-15 per hour each, yet the customer got billed for 36, go figure.

 

My only problem is that there are too many people committing fraud. You never mentioned whether you have ever heard the problem mentioned, have you? Am trying to bring up the fact the there is other issues involved with how pilots and engineers are paid and treated, if there is not a level playing field with legal methods of billing and logging hours being enforced then chaos will be a normal way of life and YOU will have no one to blame but yourself. I am NOT going to get into personnal issues as that is not the point to my beef. Capiche?

 

sc

[Seismic Pilot]

I agree totally with Skullcap, turnkey seismic has turned into a suckers game and I for one no longer provide turnkey bids, because when I was bidding TK I was doing so honestly, by this I mean a fair number of Bags per hour, and guess what I was getting my *** kicked by as much as 40% and not winning the job, but I have learned the other guys do and will drop the ball and guess who the customer calls, and we keep them because we offer Great People and Great Service and the jobs get flown in a realistic ammount of time for a fair price without having to cook the books....

[skidsup]

Well I can see that I am not the only one who has issues with non-rev flying and not getting paid for it. Thank you all for your comments, you raised some interesting points about billing and the business side of this industry. I have to agree with those of you who know that our industry is in need of some serious cleaning up. I think re-regulation might be a good thing to bring the standards for rates and terms and such back above board.

 

As for my case, I am pleased to say that the company decided it would be fair to pay me for the non-rev flying on this job because there was so much of it compared to the rev flying. Cuddos to the CP for going to bat for me with upper managment. My faith in humanity is restored! As I'm sure many of you would aggree, doing a little bit of non-rev to get to a high-hour job is not the end of the world. But there have to be limits and company policy should not be blindly applied in all cases. The progressive companies out there that care about keeping good people will be able look objectivly at a particular case and do the right thing.

I think I am working for one of them.

 

Cheers

[skullcap]

Awesome, good to hear that it worked out for you.

 

:up:

[cyclic monkey]

Well done, Skidsup.

Now if you could only get that management of yours to charge minimums there wouldn't be a problem of no non-rev pay, or of only being paid .6 hrs per day.

If operators stopped cutting each others throats (and under-paying their crews accordingly) we wouldn't need re-regulation.

[cap]

It's all a "moot" point anyway. People or companies can only do to you what you ALLOW them to do to you. So if you feel that you should be paid for non-rev, ask for it. If they won't pay then you have a decision to make........stay or leave. If you stay you have agreed to ALLOW them to do that. The reasons you have for doing that are totally immaterial. They have a business to run and the same rule applies to them.

[Biggles]

Welcome back Cap, sure has been a while !!!

[downwash]

Ditto, Biggles and, Cyclic Monkey, if you really believe that would change the way those operators pay their crews, I've got a piece of waterfront in Arizona I'd like you to have a look at.

[cap]

Geez, Downwash, I didn't realize that you had taken up listening to the top 10 on the C & W hit parade. You sold that bridge in Brooklyn did you, bought that property in Arizona and are now trying to pawn that off on some poor soul. Ya just gotta get a better real estate agent.

 

 

On a serious note, I have absolutely no sympathy for the industry since de-regulation. You can work as hard as you want to establish a busines, using all the experience you have gained over the years and be shafted by just one guy. He's the one that can plunk down $50,000 in Calgary for a leased machine, contract out for his maintenance, get a grease gun and a box of KIM towels and come park his "butt' across the field from me and "chisel charter" all he wants and no government agency cares if he shafts me or anyone else because I got nothing to say about it. Once upon a time, me and a bunch of other operators would have been asked how we felt about that and he might have been told "No you can't park your butt there......apply to park your "butt' somewhere else and we'll do the procedure all over again". Good Lord....and people wonder why the rates can't or won't go up. Don't blame the majority of the owners for the state of wages either. If I run any business I'm getting the biggest wage in that company because I'm the s.o.b. that has to go down to the bank, sit in front of the manager's desk and ask for a loan or a line of credit. If some employee figures he ain't getting paid enough, then maybe he should come down to the bank with me and have the manager take out a mortgage on his house and property as security for that loan or line of credit. Until that happens, sorry folks, but I gotta compete with that guy, his leased machine and box of KIM towels. I gotta bid down there with him and your wages are going down there also or else neither of us will have an office door to open come Monday morning. There ain't nothing gonna change until that does.........except that aircraft that cost $750,000 five years ago will be double that in another five years.