Air Retarded...

Air Retarded

This is the name of the airline I just got laid-off from, except in airline parlance they
use the word "furloughed". (I think laid-off sounds better...like maybe sex was involved
instead of some dough-making trick). Okay, it's not REALLY the name of the airline I
worked for, but they SHOULD be named Air Retarded.

I took the job with Air Retarded out of desperation (never a good thing, but dreams die
hard...and not in a Bruce Willis testosterone-laden die hard kinda way, either) because my previous airline went out of business. (That previous airline would be Skyway; look up the word "skywayed" on urbandictionary.com to get an idea of what that place was like...another blog soon to follow). It had lots of things going against it in my mind, but again, desperation
makes people do stupid things. My total time at Air Retarded from getting hired to being laid-off was 4 months.

So why is it that I can't stand Air Retarded and would rather chew razor blades than go
back there? Here's just a few examples (I have used MUCH brevity to avoid a novella):

*Their ground school sucked. The instructors basically just went through the motions and
if I hadn't been through three ground schools already, it would've been WAY harder than
it needed to be. As a previous airline ground school instructor I know what
I'm writing about here. But it went from 'just' sucking into 'hardcore fellatio' sucking when
the ground school "instructor" called me a "...fucking moron..." when I dared raise the
fact that the flaps have no overspeed protection in a descent. Needless to say, I didn't
say much after that. (I had flown the big brother jet to the runt jet Air Retarded flies so
I already knew the answer...I just thought it might be something all the other new pilots
might need to know).

*I got a sinus infection on a Tuesday and was out for 5 days with a doctor's note. I was
supposed to start work on Thursday. I called Air Retarded's crew scheduling on said Tue
morning to give them a heads-up that I would miss my first three days. (The IQ-challenged
scheduler informed me that I could just call on Thurs to call in sick...then changed her
mind and told me to Fax the note to her). Skip ahead to Thurs: I turn my phone on and
have four messages that they are marking me down as a NO SHOW as I missed my
assignment. WTF? So I call them back and a new moron tells me they never got a
Fax. I inform her that I have a transmission receipt and a recorded phone line that tells
me you DID get one. Then they tell me that I have to call my manager to call in sick and
then HE will call in sick for me. Oh I get it...you want me to add a middle-man, just to
make it even MORE retarded; oops....confusing. They still have me marked as a no show...
even though I had a medical excuse. Nice.

*I emailed payroll three weeks before my ass-reaming (aka, furlough / laid-off) to find
out what would happen with my uniform deduction, as $300 worth of uniforms hadn't
been paid for yet. I got no answer after a week so I called and left a polite message. No
answer to either of these. I got my answer the day my paycheck (normally $665) got
deposited and my statement showed a whopping $234 deposit. WTF? "Oh, we just found
out today what was happening with that." Yeah, right. It's okay; I'm sure the bills I owe
the first-half of the month won't mind if I just don't pay them. Fuckers. If they had simply told me ahead of time, I could've budgeted for it but the people running the show are, well, retarded. (FYI: First year pilot pay at Air Retarded is about $22,000 a year).

*I get a call from scheduling to fly to DCA (Washington Reagan airport in D.C.) and then
"deadhead" (ie, ride in back) back to Norfolk, VA at 6:30am the NEXT day. I show up for my 6:30am deadhead (scheduling is in charge of deadhead tickets) and get to Norfolk as scheduling told me to. I turn on my phone and have about six
messages (first message was at 3:30am) telling me to call scheduling ASAP as my showtime is now "way later". I call them and they ask where I am. "Norfolk" is my reply.
"No! You're supposed to still be in DCA! You need to get right back there now!" I'm like, "WTF? Why didn't you call my hotel room?" Their answer: "It would take too long."
(a total lie, btw...they have to bring up my schedule, which has my hotel number,
just to see where I'm at). I tell her: "It was 3:30am...how busy could you have been?"
She didn't like that answer and put me on hold. (Crew schedulers use "hold" like religious
zealots use the bible...it's the only thing they have to stand on sometimes).

*After all of this, I get a call my second to last day from some union guy. He starts talking
to me like we're old buddies from 'Nam when he drops the bomb: "Hey, I'm just giving
you this call as a courtesy. You know, you're still on probation and your attitude is getting
you into trouble." I'm like: "WTF? What is this in reference to?" His answer: "I don't
have any information on WHY I'm making this call, I'm just making it." Me: "Oh, are you
retarded? What can I fix if I don't know what's broken? By the way, I haven't done
anything wrong: You haven't had to cancel or delay a flight by any reason that I caused."
He had no response to that, so he just kept repeating: "I'm just making this call as a
courtesy." (Union guys must use that like schedulers use "hold").

There's more, MUCH more, but I'm sure you have better things to do than read why Air
Retarded is the shittiest airline of the three I've worked for. Additional stories would include:

- Sleeping in a sex dungeon (complete with rats and moldy piss carpet).

- A pompous British manager with a name right out of a Tolkien novel, INCLUDING
a hyphen!

- Management sending "warning emails" prior to every holiday to all of us "high-schooler"
pilots that if we call in sick for a holiday, we must call our managers instead of
scheduling directly. (And they wonder why airlines are going bankrupt).

- A bidding / scheduling system that rivals the Soviet Gulag for efficiency and confusion.

Ahhhh...airline flying would be great if it weren't for the retards running the show. (No
offense to mentally handicapped people; you're WAY smarter than airline management).