Nosmo King

The initial trial of the program generated data that convinced management to make it a full time policy. The person that issued the initial bulletin is now flying the line as a 747-400 captain, but I haven't seen him in NRT for a few months. I am sure he has the initial trial data. The current data can be obtained by Greg Baden.

Given the history of labor relations between ALPA and NW management, it should be no surprise that the cost to the company was minimal. The problem here is its apples to oranges and apples to leeches. Apples to oranges in that NW reserve staffing was much leaner than DAL. Apples to leeches in that our management had no obligation, or "family history" of giving something to all employees after it was given to the pilots in a policy. There were the standard "me-too" clauses negotiated in the contracts by all the unions, but policies are not part of the contract.

That said, DAL is about to have an explosion in its percentage of pilot commuters. The reason the policy got changed at NW was due to the high sick rate during periods of difficult commuting. Amazingly, those periods usually coincided with periods of high load factors like holidays, summer vacations and days after huge weather events. The reserves would get called out for the sick calls and there was no staffing left for other IROPS events.

My guess is that the policy won't get revisited until next summer at the earliest, if we expand as planned. Then if there is a high sick call rate resulting in high reserve utilization and cancelled flights due to staffing unavailability, they will have to consider changing the contract language/policy. Until then, they have shown a FEAR of giving something to pilots that they cannot offer to the non-unionized groups.

My $.02

KC10 FATboy

Can someone please post the ALPA breakout of where Delta/Northwest pilots lived and commuted to?

If not, can you PM me?

Thanks.

DAL73n

Gee,

Maybe you want to go back to getting a doctor's note every time you call in sick just to catch a few guys abusing the system. I don't think you want to open that can of worms. Also, how do you think you're going to staff HIGH COST bases like New York and LA ($80-100K doesn't go very far in those places) if you have an anti commuter airlines. Think about it a little!!!!

Chente

Gotcha! I thought you were but I got confused there for a bit
And I agree with you too. Especially about the "I know better than you do" mentality.

DAL73n

Good list and in a perfect world we'd all use.

Try LA sometime (half the pairings are redeyes). Going up the night before for a 2100 report doesn't work very well if you have to check out of the hotel at 1100. Off line commuting from nearby states (very few of us can afford to live there) is a necessity as Delta doesn't fly from most of the nearby cities. LA has and probably always will be a bastard step child. Somebody has to staff this base and that's probably why its usually junior (at least on the narrow bodies).

dojetdriver

Bummer that LAX DelCon program got canned last summer. There were plenty of SAN/PHX/TUS/DEN/SMF/OAK/SJC/SFO/SEA/PDX/GEG/EUG/BOI/RNO/LAS commuters that could at least ride on their own paint job, without there being a weight restriction on a "regional" jet.

Nosmo King

PG misses the point. The pilot calls in sick or he doesn't, he is still going to miss his trip. The policy is in place to make sure the trip is flown and generates revenue.

Whether the pilot calls in sick or not is strictly a matter of whether the pilot wants to get paid under the policy in effect at that time.

Guess what, if the planes are that full and reserves are short in supply, the pilot can probably call in well and pick up a trip out of open time.

The other half of the NW policy was that we had sick leave flyback. You could fly an open trip (if available) and not get paid out of your sick leave.

LeineLodge

Anyone know the secret to inserting a new entry in the middle of one of these bids (AE, MD, or VD)?

I have a long list of % bids, and am now trying to insert a new entry without retyping the entire list, and thus the potential for a mistake. I've looked on the 'help' page and it references inserting an 'i' somewhere, but I cannot get this to work no matter where I put it.

NuGuy

Heyas,

There are guys who "called in honest" who have horrible commutes.

There are "company men" who never called in sick in their career.

Who wants to make a guess which guy says "well, I fly by the book" as soon as you sit down and wears long sleeves. Who wants to make a guess which guy can make a 4 day trip seem like 8.

It's always the guys with long sleeve shirts. I swear, it's like a red flag.

Nu

Ferd149

And of course you are correct, a perfect world. I do commute up the same day for our late afternoon/early evening trips that only have one leg to the west coast as you point out. Also, I now live in PHX and I've gone over to LAX to catch my deviated DH flight to NRT (vs MSP) and have to ride SWA. I'm amazed at the number of pilots from several airlines going on those flights. As I said earlier, the biggest stress is an off line commute. I did them out of DFW but always had a NWA backup (for call in honest)

Ferd