SWA's Tech problems... how are flight crews compensated during such an event?

[AggieMike88]

Some of the news stories on Southwest Airline's tech problems mention that passengers are asked to deplane after boarding and then holding at the gate because the flight crew's duty day times out and a new flight crew must be rounded up.

Leah Boyd and her husband, Matt, were flying to Providence, Rhode Island, but were held up at the Baltimore airport for three hours by mechanical issues with two different planes.

They finally boarded a plane, but after sitting at the gate for nearly an hour passengers were asked to exit because of the technology outage, Boyd said. Then the pilots reached the end of their shifts, so passengers waited for a replacement crew.

It got me wondering if the flight crews make the same $$/hr whether they are flying, or waiting like everyone else for the release to push and depart. Or if it was a different rate.

 

[NJP_MAN]

Im guessing cancellation pay or just the good ol fashioned guarantee pay.

 

[kayoh190]

Dunno about SWA, but I'll be willing to bet their work rules are better than ours. So:

If I'm a line holder flying a four day trip worth say, 24.2 hours - the company is going to pay me 24.2 hours (or more) no matter what happens while on the trip (unless I just flat out drop the thing). So if some legs cancel, they pull me off the trip to have a check airman do some OE, or whatever else, I'll still get that 24.2 hours of pay. But if we're delayed a few hours while on the gate, I'm not making extra money because of the delay - it just eats into the time I spend at my overnight. Obviously there are rest and duty rules that limit how long I can be waiting around. If I'm *off* the gate and there's a delay, depending on how the trip is built, I might make extra money because of it. It sounds like the nature of this SWA problem meant that the planes were all still on the gates, though.

For a reserve pilot, a properly staffed airline won't have that reserve flying anywhere near his/her minimum guarantee, so usually none of this matters (unless a trip was picked up on days off or it's a premium trip).

Anyway, that's kind of a simplified view of how we do it at my airline. It took me damned near two years before I started to really understand the intricacies of our work rules, and what I should and shouldn't be getting paid for.

 

[bflynn]

It depends on the airlines as to how the pilots are compensated. At SWA, I'm sure there are allowances to compensate the pilots when tech issues prevent the trip from being flow.

 

[Zeldman]

For this summer job, I get paid whether I fly or not.