I don't buy into the premise that fatigue is the sole issue that is driving sick calls to be 80% higher YOY and 40% higher than the previous month.
The fact is that sick abuse has been escalating for the last 5 years or so, to the point where it's an absolute joke. The sick percent of hard used to be in the 5% range for several years. In recent years, this has been on a steady increase, to now where it's just above 20% of hard. That is a four-fold increase in sick usage rates over that period. If this hadn't been escalating to such a degree, then NWA wouldn't have had to be so aggressive in cutting other areas of the contract, in an effort to get our pilots to be as productive as the industry average. If the sick abuse that popped up in recent years was eliminated, and sick % of hard went back down to 5% of hard, there would be about $30M of annual savings to the company that wouldn't have had to be reduced from other areas of the contract.
OK, let's look at the last five years in general, not just NWA. Most of the US airlines have been trying to get more work done with fewer people, or at least the same amount of people. They call it efficiency. The problem is that people are not machines. I don't have any studies to support this, but my guess is that the average worker can work indefinately at 80-85% of peak maximum efficiency. They can increase to 90-95% for periods of time, but working that efficiently causes problems because some people cannot maintain that for as long as employers would like. People working at 100% of peak maximum efficiency definately cannot maintain that for any period of time. They just can't.
Now piloting comes with a certain amount of stress. Rules, regulations, procedures all get mixed into constantly changing environemts, such as weather, airport facility availability, equipment issues, etc. So the pilots, while flying, are constantly working to maintain operational integrity while keeping fully updated on any and all information that bears on the flight. Pilots in 2007 are working a lot more hours then they were pre-deregulation. Unfortunately, air crews just cannot work as effciently as some admin types behind a desk would like them to obtain and maintain. Why, because I submit the folks on the ground generally don't have a real clue what pilots are supposed to be doing.
I'm not sure whey it's mandatory for all unionists to jump to the pilot's defense on this issue. Apparently, a few hundred pilots sitting home all month earning sick pay, playing golf is ok with you, as long as it makes NWA look bad.
By the way, if it were fatigue driving this, wouldn't the fatigue occur in the middle of a trip? All of the sick calls are occurring between trips (after pilot has been home for a couple or more days), and the pilot calls in sick for the next trip just prior to the scheduled beginning of his trip. That way, he gets to take the entire trip off, and gets paid the entire value of the trip.
I'm not a traditional unionist. However, after having been employed in the airline industry I know that the average front-line employee is probably better off with a union then without one. Hell Finny, airlines make a game out of finding convoluted ways to interpret contracts that they themselves negotiated and then tell the employees to "grieve it". Because of the RLA the employees are pretty toothless when pushing for any remedies and the employers know it.
As for how and when the pilots are calling out sick I suggest two things. One, maybe they are at home or a crash pad and feeling not at what they consider necessary in order to come to work. I'll tell you that one of the things I really worried about was getting full-blown sick while away from base on a trip. I've had ear problems twice. Both times, thank God, was on the way into a city with a domicile because I could not work like that. In fact both times the company doctor grounded me for 30+ days. So, perhaps at least some of the pilots are trying to avoid having to cancel legs away from base where there is no one to pick up the slack and keep the operation running, rather trhen stranding a plane, crew and customers in some out station.
I would suggest that if you have never worked a 12-14 hour day in bad weather, had min rest scheduled, a noisy hotel and a lack of food available that your ability to understand just what it is really like on the road impairs your ability to judge these folks.
