3 green

Pilots that want to sell their vacation back and fly instead, have no life. Period. These are the same guys that will call in sick to get their vacation week, and they will also fly sick since they are using sick calls for vacation.

The Localizer

Before you go that far - realize that some people are junior and only get winter vacations and can’t go on vacation three months in a row in the winter.
maybe if we shifted the focus to getting better vacation work rules requiring more vacations in summer months and improved IVD it would change

CBreezy

Agreed to the second part but, not sure if it's different in other fleets. In the bottom 1/4 of my fleet, Vacation weeks were open Sept through April. Except Christmas and thanksgiving.

jaxsurf

Sure, but in that scenario the vacation week isn’t burned for someone else.

Sure, but at least there’s a slim possibility that they’ll actually use that vacation time or not bid for it in the first place. Nothing is perfect, but the system we have now is decidedly better than the system you would like.

I guess I’ll just never understand the mindset of the people who avoid their families and/or being home. Seems sad to me that pilots would rather bounce around airports with a stranger than actually spend time off during traditionally family-oriented holidays.

Edit: standing by for the inevitable responses of ‘you don’t know people’s situations/empty nesters/people can do what they want’, but it’s still sad to me that their lives are that way or they arrange it that way or they want it that way.

JamesBond

After almost 20 years on the ER out of NYC, I will guarantee you that NY will get zero trips to Tahiti. Of course when we started Portugal out of NY, guess who did that? Yep. LAX. You are exactly right, no base owns the flying.


All your kids be mine.

jaxsurf

And another thing, yes, while pilots CAN burn their vacation weeks via IVD such that someone else can’t use them, there isn’t really much incentive to do so. Being able to work over vacation would actively incentivize the most selfish of the pilots in our group to do so. People will always be selfish and only care about themselves, but at least let’s not actively incentivize it in this particular area, to the detriment of the pilot group as a whole, and to those pilots who would actually enjoy premium vacation weeks off in particular.

There are many areas in which selfish pilots do things that actually harm the group as a whole. Just because those things are already in the contract doesn’t mean that not wanting to allow MORE such opportunities for selfish pilots to harm the group is hypocritical. It’s not letting the camels nose under the tent. It’s protecting the collective group from the selfish tendencies of the worst of us.

Sorry not sorry that the current system doesn’t more easily allow you to actively work against the good of the collective group for your own selfish benefit

GogglesPisano

Back in the day we when did SNN (before it paid 15:45) it was a simple 3-day for NYC pilots that paid block (11-12 hrs.)

When we went to 5:15 per day, there was no way they would allow us to get 3-4 hours of credit. So LAX crews flew LAX-JFK-SNN and back to eliminate credit. I believe this has a lot to do with it.

Snookered

When does one’s GS counter reset? More specifically, if a GS is awarded on the last day of the bid period and reports on the first day of the next bid period, does it count as your first GS of the new period or is added to your current GS count for the current period. … 1st world problems.

Crown

I don't even think it's greed in this case - I think this is an example of "I want it because we don't have it."

tennisguru

The second part of your answer is a bit confusing. For clarification, if you are awarded a GS today (July 31) that reports Aug 1, that counts as GS#1 for August.