Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

I haven't been keeping up with this story too much. What is the speculation as to why they had all the cancellations? I read that United and Spirit canceled 2% of their flights but SW was at 30% over the weekend.

I'm guessing a lot of the anti-vaxxer crowd blames the vaccine mandate for causing short staffing, but United, American, JetBlue, Spirit, Alaska, and Hawaiian all have employee mandates too. And like you said their cancellation rates were like a tenth of that for Southwest.

And if any think this means Delta is the MAGA airline of choice, consider that they are the ones charging all unvaccinated employees an extra $200 a month to stay on the company healthcare plan and mandatory weekly testing. They say they will have over 90% vaxxed by the end of the month.

Business-oriented articles OTOH say Southwest overstrained their staff by adding routes much more quickly than they hired back employees. Being a flight attendant wasn't super appealing before covid and probably even less so now that the odds of getting at least one "very difficult" anti-mask passenger on your flight is high.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/11/sout...llations-.html

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-1...ajor-airlines/

https://www.dailyitem.com/business/a...5d902acee.html

[Kapture1]

KOUHF4yR.jpg

[Hannibal]

I'm guessing a lot of the anti-vaxxer crowd blames the vaccine mandate for causing short staffing, but United, American, JetBlue, Spirit, Alaska, and Hawaiian all have employee mandates too. And like you said their cancellation rates were like a tenth of that for Southwest.

And if any think this means Delta is the MAGA airline of choice, consider that they are the ones charging all unvaccinated employees an extra $200 a month to stay on the company healthcare plan and mandatory weekly testing. They say they will have over 90% vaxxed by the end of the month.

Business-oriented articles OTOH say Southwest overstrained their staff by adding routes much more quickly than they hired back employees. Being a flight attendant wasn't super appealing before covid and probably even less so now that the odds of getting at least one "very difficult" anti-mask passenger on your flight is high.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/11/sout...llations-.html

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-1...ajor-airlines/

https://www.dailyitem.com/business/a...5d902acee.html

I cant find any reliable information out there about vaccine mandates and whether we are seeing people walk off the job or have a "sick out", as I have seen the Southwest situation referred to in some circles. It's all anecdotal.

This is one of those situations where it would be really nice to have a reliable media that we can trust to give us accurate and reliable information, but it feels like that ship sailed ages ago. If there was a legit "sick out", the employees aren't allowed to acknowledge it, and the media sure as hell isn't going to tell us.

[Kapture1]

I cant find any reliable information out there about vaccine mandates and whether we are seeing people walk off the job or have a "sick out", as I have seen the Southwest situation referred to in some circles. It's all anecdotal.

This is one of those situations where it would be really nice to have a reliable media that we can trust to give us accurate and reliable information, but it feels like that ship sailed ages ago. If there was a legit "sick out", the employees aren't allowed to acknowledge it, and the media sure as hell isn't going to tell us.

but to come out and blame it on the weather lolz


LETS GO BRANDON!!!!

[Mike]

I thought I edited my earlier post to reflect the pilot “sick-out” at SW.

Also: Superman is bisexual now.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/...ay/6093678001/

[THE_WIZARD_]

I haven't watched any of the late night talk shows with any regularity since Johnny retired.

Maybe an occasional look at Letterman before he lost his mind, but I used to watch Johnny all the time.

Liar. You love Jimmy Kimmel.

[Hannibal]

https://amgreatness.com/2021/10/11/a...r-the-weekend/

A Southwest Pilot Explains What Happened over the Weekend

Southwest Airlines canceled more than 2,000 flights Friday through Sunday, and hundreds more on Monday because employees called in sick, or refused to sign up for overtime hours over the holiday weekend, a Southwest Airlines pilot told American Greatness.

Southwest blamed “air traffic control issues” and inclement weather for the cancelled flights, but the problems were actually a direct result of the airline’s announcement on October 4 that all of its 56,000 U.S. employees were required be vaccinated against COVID-19 or face termination.

Southwest Airlines (LUV) stock plunged Monday after the airline experienced the massive cancellations and delays.

The carrier’s 10,000 pilots “are the most conservative collection of white collar employees in the country,” explained the pilot, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal. He estimated that at least 60 to 70 percent of pilots at Southwest are, like himself, former military.

The tyrannical mandate, he explained, erased all of the good will pilots and other conservative employees had felt toward their company.

That newfound ill will manifested itself over the three day weekend, not with an organized strike, but with many disgruntled employees calling in sick, or not signing up for overtime to help the airline fulfill the increase in flights typical for a holiday weekend.

Gary Kelly, the CEO of Southwest, told employees last week that the airline had no choice but to comply with the regime’s vaccine mandate.


“Southwest Airlines is a federal contractor and we have no viable choice but to comply with the U.S. government mandate for employees to be vaccinated, and — like other airlines — we’re taking steps to comply,” Kelly said.

The pilot told American Greatness that the mandate did not sit well with him or his colleagues.

“This is a collection of very conservative white collar professionals that are very successful, and have done well,” he said. “You mandate a vaccine on them—and these aren’t necessarily people that are going to comply,” he explained, adding “to some extent they’re going to resist.”

He said that over the holiday weekend, Southwest probably saw a 20 percent increase in flights, and relied on the goodwill of pilots to fly those extra trips.

The way Southwest schedules these flights these days, he said, is they rely on a significant number of pilots to pick up an extra trip for time and a half overtime pay. That time and a half pay is usually enough of a enticement to draw the needed number of pilots to fly those trips, he said.

After the vaccine mandate, however, Southwest shouldn’t have expected any pilots to sign up for those extra flights, he said.

The same was true for the pilots who called in sick.

“Let’s say I was supposed to work this past weekend after this vaccine mandate, and you know what, I’m going to lose my sick days in a month or 45 days, so I might as well just use them now and stay at home and help potty-train my two year old, you know what I mean?” the pilot said. “These are my sick days, and I own them, they’re mine.”

He continued: “So you have some people calling in sick, and then you have this extra 20 percent of flights that they’re relying on people to come out there and cover,” the pilot explained. “And people like me are saying, a week ago, you mandated me to do something I’m not comfortable doing—so these are the dominos beginning to fall.

Southwest runs that tight schedule, and then they try to get people to do overtime, and they’re relying on the goodwill of their staff to do that, and it’s not going to happen right now. There’s no good will right now at that company,” he said.

The pilot told American Greatness that Southwest really relies on the goodwill of its employees.

“Historically, it is a family. It’s people that care about each other, and people that will go out of their way to give the shirt off their back to you,” he said, adding that management in one week had completely demolished all of that goodwill.


He stressed that there was no “organized sickout,” or even unofficial talk amongst themselves about calling in sick.

“Nothing like that is going on,” he insisted.

However, the pilot went on to note, everyone knew that it was going to be a busy weekend and the airline would be relying on everyone working together “like we were all one happy family.”

“I knew what the consequences of what me doing that would do,” he said. I knew it would make a tight weekend even tighter, but did I know that there would be maybe a hundred other people doing it? No. I did not know that.

He defended his action, saying, “all I was doing was using my sick days before I get terminated.”

Update:

According to conservative director Robby Starbuck, a Republican candidate for US Congress in Tennessee, employees from several other airlines have been messaging him to say that they have been “emboldened” by the actions of the Southwest employees over the weekend.

[Mike]

Good info. Thanks.

[lineygoblue]

So its not just snuff-chewing, pickup-driving, assault rifle toting, redneck Trump supporters that are refusing The Chairman's vaccine mandate. These qualify as professional people, .. I think.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Get right with the jab old man.

Do as you are told.

[lineygoblue]

I thought you liked it when I act like a neanderthal.

[Mike]

Here's some back story on one of DOJ's domestic terrorists:

You may have seen or read about the contentious school board meetings in Loudoun County, Va. Scott Smith, a 48 year old plumber, made the media rounds for being dragged out of one such meeting by the police with a bloody lip. Turns out this happened:

On June 22, Scott Smith was arrested at a Loudoun County, Virginia, school board meeting, a meeting that was ultimately deemed an “unlawful assembly” after many attendees vocally opposed a policy on transgender students.

What people did not know is that weeks prior on May 28, Smith says, a boy allegedly wearing a skirt entered a girls’ bathroom at nearby Stone Bridge High School, where he sexually assaulted Smith’s ninth-grade daughter.

Juvenile records are sealed, but Smith’s attorney Elizabeth Lancaster told The Daily Wire that a boy was charged with two counts of forcible sodomy, one count of anal sodomy, and one count of forcible fellatio, related to an incident that day at that school.

As a result of the viral video showing his arrest, Smith became the poster child for what the National School Boards Association has since suggested could be a form of “domestic terrorism”: a white blue-collar male who showed up to harangue obscure public servants on his local school board.

“If someone would have sat and listened for thirty seconds to what Scott had to say, they would have been mortified and heartbroken,” Lancaster said.

Minutes before Smith’s arrest, the Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) superintendent lectured the public that concerns about the transgender policy were misplaced because the school system had no record of any assault occurring in any school bathroom.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudo...om-father-says

That link is paywalled but there is a detailed article from the Daily Mail about the incident:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10083783/Loudoun-County-father-arrested-school-meeting-says-daughter-raped-boy-girls-bathroom.html

On the day of the incident, Smith says the school told him to come to the campus because his daughter had been physically assaulted. They did not say she had been sexually assaulted. Once he got there, he says school staff told him they would handle it internally, choosing not to call the police for an as-yet unexplained reason.

He was enraged by the decision and challenged them on it. The school board then did call the police but to report Smith, not the boy, for making a scene.

'I went nuts. I called the principal a p****. Six cop cars showed up like a f****** SWAT team,' he said. The school's principal sent out an alert that day warning parents of what had happened involving Smith, but it said nothing of the sexual assault allegations in the bathroom.

[Kapture1]

the first time the cops were aware there was a sexual assault, is when they were called ON SMITH.

[Mike]

Yep! Oh, and that same kid assaulted another girl last week.

[Kapture1]

I remember being called a bigot for saying this exact thing would start happening when progressives fought so hard to let boys into girls bathrooms and locker rooms.