TED74

We’d need to compare actual job benefits of actual jobs to make any meaningful comparisons. Many other professions use five days of vacation to be away from work for nine because they get weekends off anyway. Or they can use seven days of vacation to get eleven days off from work. Magically, they can even use three days at a time instead of seven all at once, they can do it in the summer, sometimes with little to no notice, and they can even start on a Wednesday if they choose instead of a Sunday. With only half a day of vacation, they can start a holiday weekend early and beat the crowds out of town. Plenty of jobs give paid holidays off in addition to vacation time allocation. And believe it or not, most jobs let even entry-level employees synchronize their vacation with their spouse’s and/or kids’ schedules.

Full pay at Delta is roughly 1,000 hours a year, or 82 hours a month. Even at 5:15/day, two weeks of vacation wouldn’t give me full pay for a month. It simply lets me stay away from work for two weeks. Depending on the threshold set by the PBS administrator, it still wouldn’t guarantee me a month off work either.

OOfff

5:15 for 14 days is 73:30. Calling that “not full pay” is pretty specious.

you’re right that things don’t directly compare with other industries, which was my point, but in very few other industries is two weeks of pay equal to your average base salary pay while also (nearly) guaranteeing the rest of the month off (since 73:30 is almost always within the LCW). Not to mention how few other industries give 5 weeks’ vacation at any time in a career.

crewdawg

Some other airline already get a full month off with 2 weeks of vacation (and I think 75 hours of pay). With smart bidding 2 weeks of vacation gets them something like 6-7 weeks off. Let's just shoot for something close to that and care a little less about what other industries get.

Gunfighter

Careful where you are headed with the 5:15 vacation day logic. It can work against us quite easily.

84 hours divided by 5:15 = 16 days
16 days = one month of vacation
4 days = one week of vacation
Congratulations. One week of vacation now only protects 4 days.

OOfff

oh agreed. I don’t mean to be arguing against more pay for vacation and more time off and less pilot efficiency overall. I just don’t think the comparisons hold up.

sailingfun

The biggest difference in other industries is if you have a low to mid 6 figure income when you come back from vacation no one did your job and you have to work your butt off catching up all the work you missed.

crewdawg

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point, but a week of vacation on reserve only drops 4 days as it is right now. On my old plane, a normal line was 2x6-day trips. A week of vacation usually meant I flew a 6-day and a 3-day, so it only protected me for 3 days. In my current category, most guys seem to protected for 4ish days as well.

notEnuf

Other industries get their vacation when the individual chooses to take it. This apples/oranges argument doesn’t stand and is a tired uninformed comparison. Personal days, PTO and holidays all contribute to additional time off without a pay cut in that world.

OOfff

so, you’re saying that things are totally different between 9-5 m-F corporate jobs and our jobs, and comparing them is difficult?

I agree.

ebl14

I think the bottom line is that a week of vacation should be additional time off. The way our vacation works now we only end up with an additional 1-3 days off with a week of vacation due to the value being so low and PBS filling the rest of our month up with credit. If I hold 18 days off per month without vacation I should have a schedule with 25 days off in a (1 week) vacation month and it should pay the same.