I feel a change in the air…

There’s nothing wrong with change. They say that change comes to all things. We human beings dread change. There is something comforting in the status quo, like a warm receiving blanket or the heat of a crackling fire on a cold night.

I have to admit that I’m somewhat torn. On the one hand, I have been subjected to change all my life. With my father’s military service bouncing us all over the country my entire pre-adult life, I got used to drastic changes in my life as our family was uprooted time and again.

On the other hand, however, I have over my lifetime, looked forward to change and accepted it as a new challenge…like exploring a new frontier never-before encountered.  And in that vein, I have been able to face change, for good or ill, with excitement and acceptance.

As I have aged, though, I find it harder and harder to embrace change, especially when it feels like it won’t be pretty. It’s like a dread hanging over me that I somehow knew was coming somewhere around the corner, but hoped it was a corner I could avoid.

Today was a real test of my internal fortitude.  To start with, I had gotten on a flight to my home base in San Francisco that would have gotten me to my trip a little over 4 hours before my check-in.  As it turned out, we circled SFO for almost 2 hours, then were force to divert to Santa Barbara to get more fuel and get a new departure time.  Air Traffic Control gave us the bad news…we would not be leaving until 12:20, an entire 30 minutes AFTER my required show time.  Unfortunately too, my trip was little affected my all the delays into and out of SFO this morning so it left shortly before I arrived.

Knowing now that I will probably face disciplinary measures for having missed the trip, I decided to settle in for the day to see if I might be able to make up the time.  As it turns out, our regional jet carrier snapped the screen on my laptop computer and I was informed today that they are not liable for the damage, since electronic devices are excluded from their limits of liability.

When things happen to us, I try to find the good in it to bring my self to accept that change and embrace the new with optimism and forward thinking. There have been times in my life that change came over me and I was ill-prepared or caught off-guard and having no control over that which overtook me, I lifted myself up and worked with what life had doled out to me, knowing full-well that I was walking in new territory and feeling inadequate to resolve it.

I still feel as though change can be a good thing and help us to grow as individuals, but I am uncertain of the future that this change will bring me. I feel as though I have been working on a puzzle for so long and discovering that I will never finish it to completion because there are too many pieces missing.

I hope that is not the case, but if it is, and I am forced to face and embrace this change, then I ask the universe to watch my back, shore up my footing and point me in the newer, and hopefully BETTER direction.

As you know by now, I work for a major airline, and I have done so for over 13 years.

While I have enjoyed my career there, I have felt an “undertow” of change in the industry that has become increasingly disturbing to me and many like myself who take pride in what we do and truly do have concern for the traveling public.

As an airline employee, I am a SAFETY PROFESSIONAL first and foremost.  And I take that duty very seriously.  I know that 99.9% of the people I work with also take that duty with an almost religious fervor that is tough to find in any other industry except maybe the medical profession.  We are responsible for millions of lives everyday–and all we are trying to do is to get the public from Point A to B in a safe, comfortable condition.

The recent focus on airline safety is not only disturbing to the general public.  We, as the airlines FRONT LINE employees are truly concerned at how the “suits” at the top of the ivory tower have whittled away our ability to always have that focus as our number one priority, and it seems that more and more “whistleblowers” are stepping forward to try to put a dent in the public’s perception that those who manage the airlines truly have the public’s safety in their sites.

While the major carriers can boast about on-time arrivals and safety being #1, a large dark shadow has increasingly loomed behind them that they tend to turn a blind eye to: the regional carriers that masquerade as being part of that major carrier, but in reality is run but a smaller, separate company that may not have the same integrity or motivation as the majors do.  And all because the regional carriers are making huge money at the expense of it’s own employees.

Don’t get me wrong.  The airlines WANT you to believe that airline employees make BIG money.  That myth has to end!  What job do YOU know of that requires you to work (on average) 12-16 hour days, with as little as 8 hours of rest in-between, and of all that time you are on duty, you are only paid for 30-40% of it?  Most pilots and flight attendants are only actually paid for the actual flight time (that is, from the moment the brakes are released at departure to the time they are set at arrival).  All that time before flights (including during boarding, where we are actually interacting with AND serving passengers), in-between flight segments waiting for aircraft, including time waiting for mechanical issues to be resolved, as well as the time we spend away from home, waiting for hotel vans to and from the airport while away from home — NONE of that is PAID time!

The airlines will argue that pilots and flight attendants really ARE paid during all that time (via a “per diem” stipend) but that usually amounts to $0.90-$2.50/hour when away from our home-base but that is strictly dependent on each workgroups’ Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), and since most of these airlines have recently had the ability to have these CBA’s altered due to bankruptcy or near-bankruptcy threats, most airline employees have either had NO cost of living increases (COLA) in years, or have actually LOST income over time.  At my own airline, we are currently paid at 1991 pay levels…that’s almost 20 year-old wages without an increase (and soical security beneficiaries have gotten routine COLAs 15 times since 1991!).

PBS’s Frontline series is airing a special investigation program on this ever-increasing problem.  I have posted a preview of this program here for you to view.  Tell me what you think and please feel free to respond to my poll below…

Please go to: FRONTLINE

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