Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Looking for the Silver Lining

I'm starting Captain IOE later today and am fighting to stay focused with all the hubbub surrounding Monday's announcement of the merger between RedCo and WidgetInc. I'm trying to stay positive. I'm pretty tickled to be upgrading, that's a good start. I figure I'll get in a decent bit of turbine PIC before the negative effects of the merger trickle down to NewCo. That was pretty much the goal. There's a strong worldwide demand for JungleBus-rated expat pilots, with some fairly lucrative contracts out there. That's reassuring.

And then I came across this little nugget at the merger website:

Will employees have reciprocal pass privileges on both airlines?

Employees will enjoy reciprocal pass privileges on both airlines’ worldwide networks, beginning as soon as possible during the regulatory review process.
WidgetInc has a much superior worldwide network everywhere but Asia, so I'm pretty psyched about that. Hopefully we'll be able to take advantage of the expanded bennies a bit while I'm still an employee!

9 comments:

sequ said...

Congrats on your upgrade Sam,

Hopefully it will work out fine for the moment regarding the merger and your job.

Saludos,

SEQU

Anonymous said...

Sam,
good job and congratulations on upgrading to captain! I know I speak for a lot of people when I say I'm really looking forward to a post from you about your IOE as a captain for the first time of an airliner! We're dying to know!!

Uttabull said...

Well done on your command. I Also work for an airline and were currently hanging in the balance, we may be here next week, we may not,

Which every way it happens as you say, We have to keep looking up for that silver lining....
Good Luck,

Liam

Windsor said...

Congrats on the upgrade! Hopefully you can squeeze in as much turbine PIC as you can before the merger goes thru. Things are gunna change.

Anonymous said...

I hope all goes well.....get those hours under your belt and I will pray that you can find a great (better) new role if the worst happens!!

Jonathan B. said...

So, I guess is MN didn't give it away, this last post finally conclusively solves the mystery of what NewCo stands for.

Anonymous said...

Congratulations!
As an ignorant earthbound person could you please let me ( and others) what does IOE mean?
Thanks from Aussie.
Bill

noah said...

Bill: IOE=inital operating experience

Sam: I'm hoping that UniCo doesn't become a reality myself. I'm way to low on the seniority list for that one to happen yet. Good luck, and I think you'll be fine at least for a few years. Last I read they were leaning toward keeping the RedCo and WidgetInc. owned regionals. NewCo doesn't have the 50-seater problem the others do either.

Sam Weigel said...

Bill from AU:

IOE means Initial Operating Experience... it's basically on-the-job training, flying the line with passengers on board with a check airman in the right seat. Because I was qualified as a Captain in the sim back in November, all I need to do to upgrade is complete Captain IOE. That's unusual, you'd usually see a much lengthier training process.

Noah-

I have no doubt that NewCo will do just fine in the merger. The question is whether RedCo will furlough or not, because there is a flow-down in place at NewCo. That's actually how NewCo was born: the RedCo pilots agreed to permit a limited number of 76 seat airplanes in exchange for flow-down rights in case RedCo ever furloughed. They would flow to the top of the Newco seniority list and displace the "native" NewCo pilots downward. NewCo isn't that big yet so it wouldn't take a very big furlough to "flush" the list.