Quote:
Originally Posted by cashflyer
I am an A&P mechanic....
I am also Chief Inspector and Accountable Manager (that's an FAA term, for any who do not know) at my shop.
And I am also DOD contract negotiator at my shop.
I have done First Article production and testing. I have sat through the audits with military big-dogs. And I have put my name and stamp on the bottom line plenty of times.
And I'll happily change jobs before ever signing a union card.
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Please do not work any ANY airplane I ever fly. If you cannot understand that unions exist so that people can protect each other against management harrassment and even malfeasance, then I don't trust your skills.
I bet you're one of those mechanics who's REAL GOOD with a pencil.....
-Story: Over Switzerland, 2000. I was the captain of a cargo 727. Middle of a beautiful night, and I was looking down at the snowy Alps in the moonlight enroute from Brussels to Bergamo, Italy. My flight engineer taps me on the shoulder; we are losing oil from number three engine. We took off with three gallons, and were now down to 1.5 after an hour of flight time. WAY out of limits. I told him to tell me if it dropped down to 1 gallon. Sure enough, 15 minutes later it was indicating a gallon, and I pulled the engine to idle. We were just letting down into Bergamo on a perfectly clear night and I could see the airport 30 miles away, so I just idled it. I had it available for a go-around with 1.0 gallons as a result, but I didn't use it and landed normally with it idling. We landed, the sun was coming up, and I used normal reverse. As we were taxiing in, the Italian controller comes on the radio and says to us "Eurotrans...be advised you have large cloud blue smoke from right side during roll-out". Great. Only NOW do you tell me that I'm on fire...!
Well, I parked the plane, jumped out of the seat, and ran down the steps as soon as they were in place. When I went back to the number 3 engine, there was oil pouring out of the bottom of the cowling like a garden hose at full blast! We blew some sort of seal, and it all went into the reversers.
I figured we were going to be stuck in Bergamo for a day or two, while they fixed it or hung a new motor.
-I wound up on a conference call to Dallas with the Chief Pilot, the Director of Maintenance, and the Director of Operations. Our mechanic in Bergamo [I have several four-letter words to describe this individual] determined that the engine needed to be changed. And so our BRILLIANT management team in Texas decided that me and my crew were to fly the plane BACK TO BRUSSELS!
I'm like "I DON'T THINK SO!" and I used those exact words! They said that they would fill the engine with oil, and we would ferry the plane back to Belgium, about a 2 hour flight. When I said NEY they started the typical non-union airline crap:
"Well, we really need you to be a team player on this, and you know we have a lot of faith in your airmanship, and we think you can get it back to Brussels, and well...if you can't work with us on this, then we will have to have you come to Dallas and we will need to reconsider your employment....blah blah blah." To which, I replied the obvious:
"If I accept and attempt to fly an airplane knowing that one of my engines is GOING to need to be shut down in flight the FAA will revoke my license! I want to help you out, but I cannot take this airplane. The mechanic here has told me it cannot safely fly back to Brussels, and you are just going to have to do what you have to do. Me and my crew are going to the hotel." I had a lot riding on this: I was 33 years old and making $105k a year at this job-
And that's exactly what I did. I figured I was going to be fired, but I'm not going to get in trouble with the FAA or
KILLED just because some scumbag freight airline can't maintain a friggin' JT8D, only the most ubiquitous motor in the airline industry.
They didn't fire me; during the conversation I mentioned the FAA, and they knew that I was a young guy with lots of flight time and I would just get another job and sue the crap out of them, on top of getting the feds involved.
No. You know what they did? We had a captain who lived near Bergamo. Don Whitley is his name, and he's an Eastern Airlines SCAB. I have the ALPA scab list on my computer, and he's right there. Well, they called him up, and he was only too happy, at the age of 58, to take the plane to Brussels.
AND he got over Germany and the motor ran out of oil and he shut it down. AND the FAA came after him for it too!
Good. Justice. Dumb bastard!
-What you don't seem to understand is that if we had been a UNION airline, the company wouldn't have been able to mess with me like that. I lucked out; in many non-union shops [such as what you advocate] you are fired if you so much as write up a maintenance problem!
Question sir: Would you be comfortable putting your wife and children and relatives on a plane operated by the company I worked for?
N?