Freedom2A

78% of eligible pilots voted. 93% in favor.

Ravenwing

I heard NavBlue was busy building PBS for Alaska and Sun Country. They won't build our software until they are done. It's going to be 12-18 months before our PBS is ready for a 3 month trial of parallel bidding. You won't see any fun changes for over a year. But I'm sure there will be lots of grumbling in the pilot group anyway.

PBS won't affect anyone's vacation plans until at least 2026. Although I personally think the 3 vacation extension days will work out well, especially since you don't lose pay using them.

DMH1967

I remain skeptical about the 3 vacation day extension vs. DTS, as well as the ability to build the schedules we want. Most of our trips are low block hours, and they aren't using the trip rigs in the credit to build a line using PBS... so if the company comes out with an 88 hour bid divisor for DFW CA for instance, Navblue will try to build a line between 83 and 93 hours (I believe). When you're only blocking 18 hours for a 4 day trip, that comes out to 4.888 4 day trips required to meed the average 88 bid divisor. That's actually 19 days of work in a 30 day month, leaving only 11 days off, and then you get into an area where it can't build the line and your requests go right out the window.

For vacation, the FAs get 4 days, we get 3, that in and of itself is b.s. IMHO. BUT the scenarios they put out basically give you a big block of days off only when your seniority allows you to fully control the specific days off. If you're able to get say Tue-Thu off every week, but can't add another day or so to that before and after what would be your vacation block, it's going to put something right on either end of that 10 day off block you get with your magic 3 days. If I can bid any one of 100+ lines that conflict with those days off, I can end up with 2 full weeks off using DTS. They gave in and lowered us to 3 days because most pilots are only using 2.something days of DTS because the majority of guys here only want pay and hours so they can move on. That's fine, it's a majority vote, but I prefer max days off. Hell, if they'd offer it, I'd take a part time line every month for the last 8 years of my career and be happy.

There just seemed to me, during the presentation by the union, to be a lot of belief that the union will have more control over PBS than I think they actually will. When I spent a decade working under Navblue, only the most senior guys really benefited from, and had the ability to, make their schedule what they wanted. The rest of us ended up in denial mode more often than not because they company would set unreal bid divisors.

Ravenwing

I will take your word for it since I have never worked under PBS. I still think our pilot group has no bargaining power and we didn't have much choice other than to accept what ALPA negotiated for us. Voting down the TA could have caused us to lose min 12 days off and duty and trip rigs, then we would still have gotten PBS with fewer QOL rules and they would have been able to make those 11 day off lines.

Our contract is so old it mentions 3 or 4 different aircraft Envoy no longer flies and yet it doesn't expire until 2029. Yes, a 4th vacation extension day would have been nice. Mainline has it. But ALPA keeps taking the contract extensions Envoy offers. As a regional, we could be shut down at any time and another regional would just take over our flying. It's happened before. I would prefer to look at the bright side. Regional contracts and pay are a lot better than they were 20 years ago. Horizon even has 1% DC into their 401Ks. Almost every other pilot group has PBS and mostly likes it. So let's get with the times and negotiate better control over trip building when we get the chance.

If you don't like what ALPA is doing, volunteer and see if you can do better.

Peoplemvr

Other airlines don't have Jane.

Erubya

Ah, there it is

DMH1967

I agree with several of your points: We have no power in that our group is built almost entirely of people who have no permanent stake in the outcome. Most people, understandably so, have the outlook that they'll be here the minimum time they can be, so why fight or sacrifice anything to make it better here? In my 12 years here previously, we had a lot more career regional pilots, and it was still a fight to get people to put any skin in the game for the contract. Our contract IS old, it's the 16 year contract that got railroaded on us when I was here before, and it's only been "amended" over the decades since, which is why it still refers to "reduced rest overnights" etc. Again the previous point: people aren't looking long term here enough to try to make big changes.

Also to your point, our pay is a hell of a lot better now than it was when I left in 2006 as a 13th year pay E145 CA making $75/hour. So I'm not saying everything is awful here... in fact if it was, I wouldn't have come out of retirement to come back.

My main point is that there seemed a lot of optimism on the part of the negotiators for our PBS deal, and my experience with PBS, Navtech, Navblue, leads me to believe otherwise. There are a lot of ways we can end up on the ugly side of schedule building based on parameters the company sets. But that's also secondary to the other parts of the letter, all of which I agree we'd have had to give up. Was losing DTS worth the other parts of the letter? 93% of the voters obviously think so, so who am I to say what is right or wrong? It's just my thoughts on how this might not be as cheery of an outcome for everyone's schedules as they wanted us to believe in the meetings.

AS for me volunteering, in my 12 years here before I served on several different committees, including Pilot 2 Pilot (Inforep), Ballot counting, Strategic Planning. I have some understanding of how things are negotiated, I know we had no leverage on the company to turn down this LOA and hope for something better, and as previously stated, I don't think this pilot group is willing nor able to commit to giving leverage to the negotiating team. AMR and Envoy management hold the power here, I'm not naive enough to believe otherwise. That doesn't mean I am 100% on board with every part of this, nor optimistic, I just figure the outcome "is what it is" at this point.

Erubya's "Ah, there it is," comment. Yes I have had my career as much as I need, almost 33 years now. I came back to it after retirement to have something to keep me busy, and maybe I still have something to offer the pilot group with 3 decades of experience. If that puts me apart somehow in your mind, makes me one of the people you hear and say, "Oh you're one of THOSE guys." I guess, yeah, I'm one of THOSE guys. Think what you want of it.

Satoshikitty

I'll 100% second that! Not all of us need to built our time to move on to better bigger things! Done that already!

I'm just after a nice gig that pays decent money for my experience and QOL. Full stop!

Cujo665

They are also doing Republic's "new" PBS

Cujo665

regional contracts are better than they were 20 years ago because the unions DIDN'T just take whatever TA was offered. Almost ALL regional pilot unions voted NO on multiple TA's back in 2010-2015; some voting NO on three different TA's. Eaglevoy voted No 3 times, Republic voted NO 3 times, Mesa voted NO, Trans States voted NO, even Silver voted NO. So, while a single MEC can be threatened with being the next Comair (and that is exactly what Jerry Glass threatened to do to Envoy) they can't Comair II every regional at once.

This is where ALPA National really drops the ball. We - the individual MEC's - had to organize and fight together with almost NO help from ALPA National. In fact, we got more help from the APA keeping all the MEC's and Executive Boards (teamsters) on the same page.