dragon

Yes! We negotiated the batch sizes, the PWA was just agreed to and MGMT wasted no time and violating it. We gave away leverage and let's not forget 20 years of past practice on 23.M.7.

I'm reminded that the reason we have a PWA is to protect us from ourselves. Those that were cutting side deals should have had the hours they flew removed and given to the pilot who should have gotten the trip. Would have nipped that in the bud. Nothing teaches like a financial lesson.

Nantonaku

Explain your reasoning here. Who and how were people cherry picking IA’s? IAs by definition are an abrogation of seniority. So how does this work? Senior people were calling and stealing trips from junior people? Cry me a river. This whole problem was almost 100% a company caused problem. Technology that can’t handle our system. Scheduling understaffed and under trained. What happens next when this doesn’t fix the company coverage issues?

CBreezy

What are you ranting about? IA when properly conducted are not an abrogation of seniority. They are a contractual step of coverage.. But there were people calling up and volunteering for trips with or without a IA. And because IA calls were happening multiple times an hour, if you called up and said you'd do x trip even if it wasn't the call you received , they could and did give it to pilots. It was chaos over the last x months. They were admittedly, according to people familiar with CS inner workings, intentionally skipping WS and OOBWS and GS and OOBGS because of the number of slips and just spam calling the entire list. This SHOULD greatly reduce the number of times they will feel motivated to skip steps because it's much easier to cover via ARCOS than VRU/phone.

Nantonaku

Okay, I’m actually with you here for the most part. I hope this plays out like you think. My rant was mainly about the company just not investing in scheduling resources and technology that would have prevented this from happening in the first place. And it would have been nice for the Union to actually negotiation rather than settle to all the wishes of the company. Would it have been that hard to just keep some batch size restrictions based on time to trip? The company wasn’t going to give us any improvements? And slightly off topic, Inverse Assignments are one of the best deals we have. They should be awarded top down.

JamesBond

This is but one step in the company's plan to reduce greenslips and get rid of PB days. Hartman handed a Howitzer to them on a golden plate. (If ya'll had any sense you would recall him and send his ass back to the line to actually live with what he did) When VAS and silver slips are activated you will see that plan getting one step closer to reality. The company's 'problem' has been rapid growth and with this they are playing the long game. At some point it will settle down, and you are going to be left with this. Some say 'fine, I will go back to flying a regular schedule and be happy with that'. But once you have been feasting on those big paychecks for awhile, you get used to them and flying 75 hours/month won't make that itch go away. Deny this all you want, but you know I am right. The only 'good' that will come with the eventual slowdown is that you NB guys won't be getting pushed so hard.

hockeypilot44

I agree with you, then EVERYONE will have a captain’s bid in. At that point it becomes more about hourly rates and less about seniority. I remember being a weekend warrior. Every single trip I worked touched Saturday and Sunday. The only weekends I got off were if there were 5 weekends in the month and I only needed 4 trips to complete a schedule.

CBreezy

We already have 2000 more pilots than we did in 2019. Returning to 2015 status quo directly means less premium pay. I'm okay with that.

JamesBond

Good for you, but you are an outlier. There will be much whining about it around her. Especially when the music stops and errybody is stuck in the same chair for awhile... at 75 hours.

crewdawg

Count me in as another "outlier." Last year I bid reserve, rolled thunder and averaged ~98 hours/month. This year, I'm bidding a line, dropping everything and picking up to 50 and 60 hours/month and digging it. I was looking at only getting around 45 hours this month, but caught a lucky break on a reroute/23k, so it will be closer to the low-mid 60s. The extra pay last year was pretty nice, but I always treated it as found money and budgeted below min guarantee. Someone is a fool if they build their financial plan around big pay months.

CBreezy

Literally the entire basis for our summer campaigns in 2019 and 2022 were surrounding the excessive use of GS Duty Periods to cover flying and how it was "operating at redline." We have been imploring the company to increase staffing which, I'm not sure if you realize this, is directly related to a reduction in premium opporunties.