The Regional Truth - Part 2

This post was going to touch on the way regional airline pilots are treated and my company stepped right in to provide me with the perfect story on this past trip. We had a wheels up time to New York because of weather. After an hour-and-a-half on the ramp, we returned to the gate to refuel and let passengers who were going to miss connections go. Two hours behind schedule, we took off and headed for JFK, where we would then work a flight back to Boston for the overnight. In range, however, we realized our flight had been given to another crew that departed a mere 15 minutes before we reached the gate, something of a common tactic from crew scheduling as of late to avoid cancelations that would mandate them to give us a hotel room even in base.
So we were now stuck in New York. Because it is our base, eventhough no one in my crew lives there, the company will not provide a hotel. We still called scheduling to see whether they could put us up because we had a 13-hour day the following day. The answer was an unequivocal and resounding no. I told the scheduler that my captain and I refused to sleep in the crew room, or the terminal in this case since six pilots had already claimed the filthy glycol-stained sofas as their own, and were heading to Boston to look for a bed to sleep in, like normal people.
The scheduler put me on hold and returned a second later with a threat. If we missed our deadhead the next morning they would slap us with a missed assignment and a note to that effect was now on my file. They could have simply deadheaded us from Boston in the morning instead, which would have given us a few more hours of sleep, but obviously this particular scheduler chose the war path instead.
Undeterred, we got on a flight to Boston. We figured out what crews had made it to their overnight, and more importantly which hadn't and managed to score a couple of rooms for the night. At 2 a.m., I got into my room, completely wiped out, only to get up again at 6 a.m. to return to the airport and fight my way back to JFK.
Playing around wording in our contract, making threats and being generally uncooperative is sadly what we are faced with every day we have to talk to crew scheduling. Of course, some schedulers are very nice and will go the extra mile to help but they are few and far between.
I am fully aware of economic considerations the airlines face, especially these days, but how can a company refuse to put up its crewmembers in a hotel on the eve of a 13-hour day? The scheduler I talked to simply told me to get a crashpad, a bed in a house or apartment full of commuting pilots. As a lineholder, however, I should not have to shell out the extra $250/month for a bed I might only use once or twice a year. In any case, on my First Officer pay, a crashpad or a hotel room in New York are luxuries I simply cannot afford.
In the wake of Colgan's crash, airlines have to wake up to the fact that they too have a responsibility in keeping their crews well-rested. These scheduling games aimed at circumventing contractual agreements have to stop. Some I've shared this story with have suggested I should have simply gone home and called in fatigued the next day, as a retaliatory move. While it might have created a scheduling hiccup, I would have lost two days of pay, something I just cannot afford either.
The mood at my airline, and I suspect at many others recently, has been been very dark lately. It is as though we are in a constant tug or war with the company, a game it is obvious we will never win.
The problem at the regional airlines today isn't experience. The fact that we have 200-hour wonders flying around the system is something that can be dealt with easily by pairing these pilots with experienced captains. After all, major airlines have in the past used so-called ab initio programs to train pilots.
The true issue is how airlines treat their pilots, flight attendants, gate agents and ramp personel. All of us work hard, go the extra mile to help passengers and run a safe ship but all we get in return is disrespect.
It is time for the press to leave behind this issue of lack of experience and focus on this: your crew is tired, underpaid, overworked and pissed off.