TwoDogs

What are Delta's contract rules for the following:

Flying min schedule--can you fly as little as you want and make it up by flying high time the next month or what are the options? From what I understand Delta pilots simply bid what their seniority will hold and so depending on the staffing for that particular month a pilot could either end up on reserve duty or have a schedule. SWA pilots from what I hear can fly as little as they want to, USAIR--actually America West pilots ideally can, but in reality this rule does not come into play as there are certain conditions that rarely if at all happen. NWA guys will get certain amount of credit for their military leave for that month but they may have to be on reserve airline duty if it affects their monthly hours.

If you take mil leave at Delta, I assume you are basically on leave without pay, but do you get credit for that time? For example say you bid and were initially awarded a schedule in March to fly for Delta two 5 day trips and one 4 day trip, then your squadron is suddenly short or a mission pops up that requires you to cancel one five day trip and your four day trip, now what are the Delta pilot's options? Can that Delta pilot pick up open time trips to make up for the trips he had to drop, or can the pilot elect to not make up the trip? Better yet or for that matter say the dropped trips covered the last two weeks of the month so it is impossible to make up the time, in that case can the pilot use his vacation so he will get paid for some of those dropped trips? Sorry for all the questions and hope this makes sense but just wanted to know how those elements work out on your contract, thanks!

StripAlert

My first month with a line, so take it with a grain of salt, but I'll take a stab...

I put all my March trips up on the pilot-to-pilot swap board for trade or take as soon as the schedule was finalized, and they were all gone within 12 hours. I have to assume, since I was about 10 from the bottom for line holders, that I didn't exactly have a choice schedule. (All three trips left on Sunday, though, and none touched a Friday or Saturday. Layovers in SNN and GRU, which always tend to go junior.)

I did pick up two 3-day trips operating exclusively during the week, again from the pilot-to-pilot board, which was my goal. I still have two empty weeks and would like to add another trip or two, but not at the expense of a weekend. Reserve levels on NYC 7ER are low again next month, so I'm hoping to be able to green-slip at least one trip for extra pay. If I can't pick up anything, I'll just make it up drilling.

As far as flying a lot one month to offset a light one, there are two provisions that you're up against. One is the block hour limit. There's a formula, and it's different for domestic and international, but the basic gist is that they limit the amount of flying you can do in the current month to prevent you from going over 1,000 in a calendar year (domestic) or 1,000 in a rolling 12-month period (international). It's just there to keep you from flying hard, timing out, and then being useless to them while receiving the guarantee for the rest of the year. Obviously, if you fly a little one month, your block hour limit will be higher the next month, so I wouldn't think it would be an issue.

The limit that will probably affect you most is Average Line Value (ALV) + 15, which is the maximum that you can block each month. (It's 89:45 for NYC7ERB in March, for example.) This restriction applies to "white-slips" which is basically grabbing open time in advance for normal pay. It doesn't apply to "green-slips" which are same- or next-day trips awarded for 150% credit. (Reserves cannot be utilized over the ALV unless they submit a request to do additional flying--a "yellow-slip"--in which case they may also fly up to ALV + 15. Reserves are also green-slip eligible, in which case they could fly over ALV + 15.)

As far as how much you fly, PBS will attempt to build you a schedule that falls between ALV - 7.5 an ALV + 7.5 hours. If it succeeds, congratulations, you get a line. If not, you're on reserve. If you're on reserve, you don't have much control over anything except which days you have off (if you're senior enough on reserve to bid the reserve line you want.) Plan on spending 18 days a month on either long or short call on reserve. If reserve levels are low, you can probably count on flying a good portion of that, and there are a few things you can do to increase those odds or influence which trip you'll get, but the only sure thing is that you'll never know for sure what you're going to be doing until the day prior at the earliest, unless it's one of your hard off days (known as "Golden Days").

If you get a line, now you can wheel and deal with open time and other pilots to drop, swap, or pick up trips, and you have a lot of control in relation to being on reserve, especially if the trips you're trying to get rid of don't suck. (There is a 72-hour weekend Ghana layover in open time right now--any takers?) You can always find flying to pick up on the weekends if you want. I was fortunate enough to stumble across a 3-day Venice during the week that had somehow managed to live on the swap board for 2 hours.

Let's address this in two parts. For the purposes of constructing your schedule, you get a certain amount of phantom credit for being on Mil Leave, which works out to about 2.5 hours per day. Although you don't get paid for this, you get credit towards the ALV ± 7.5 hour Line Construction Window, which may increase your odds of getting a line. For example, 30 guys senior to you might not get a line because it's impossible to build one in the LCW with what's left over at the bottom of the seniority list. Perhaps there a three trips available in week one, two in week two, none in week three, and one in week four. Well, none of those combinations add up to ALV ± 7.5 hours, so you can't build a line from them alone, but if you just happened to take MLOA in week three, perhaps the 12-15 hours credit you get from that can combine with trips from the other weeks to get you to the LCW.

If you get a line, and the scenario plays out as in your example, you can drop short-notice MLOA and your conflicting trips disappear, along with your pay. There is no obligation to make this up. (BTW, this should probably not also happen every month, and not every time you get the 72 hour weekend Ghana layover.) However, if you want to make up for it, you can pick up open time or grab trips from the swap board that other pilots are looking to drop. However, you cannot pick up a trip that conflicts with your originally-scheduled mil leave, so keep that in mind. (If your squadron legitimately swapped your duty dates or you are no longer going to drill the week you intended due to the change in plans, you can call skeds and have the original MLOA removed from your schedule, which will allow you to pick up trips during that time. Again, that shouldn't happen every month.) Generally, Delta is extremely mil-friendly and doesn't ask questions, and they trust us not to abuse it, so try to declare your intentions early and stick with them, but don't worry if plans legitimately change once in awhile.

Razor

Great post StripAlert. Thanks for that.

Lifeisgood

Thanks, StripAlert.

Is there a bottom limit for actual LV?
Say you want to drop as much as you can and advertise (to take, not trade) your every trip. People are interested and are picking up. How low can you go?
Is there a limit when the system stops letting your fellow pilots take your trips?
In my previous employment airlines had 62 and 55 hours respectfully.


Thank you

groundstop

When you drop a trip off your schedule to another pilot, how is your guarantee affected? In other words, lets say you end up with a 75 hour line and drop a three day worth 15 hours to another pilot. Is your pay now 60 for the month?

Also, does the trade board allow line holders to drop trips in to open time? How about pick up trips from open time?

What about reserve guys, can a reserve pick up a trip from open time?

Thanks for the thorough post

E1Out

Strip Alert -

That was an awesome post. Thank you so much for all of that information.

Quick question: At my previous company, if you're on reserve and you see a trip in open time that you'd really like, you can call Scheduling the day before and request to be put on that trip if a line holder doesn't end up taking it... Can you do that at Delta?

Herkflyr

I've been at DAL for awhile. Here are some answers.

Correct. There really is no regular line guarantee at DAL (there is in theory, but it rarely if ever comes into play). PBS will build you a line, which could range between 65 and 89:30 (not in the same month, but those are the two extremes of the Line Construction Window, depending on the month; month to month ALVs never range more than 15 hours). You could drop a line to ZERO and get paid zero--but also owe nothing to the company. In fact I recently flew with a captain that dropped every trip for two months so as to work with his wife on her catering business.

The only issue you get with perpetually doing that is at some point you need to get your 3 takeoffs and landings every 90 days; it might be hard to explain why you haven't done that when you drop everything for three months straight and you were holding a regular line.

There are two separate issues here. One already mentioned is the "Pilot to Pilot" Swapboard. This is accessed via the DAL computer, but is entirely between pilots. You can offer up a trip of yours for another pilot to pick up, offer a trip of yours for a swap, or vice versa. I have done all four.

Entirely unrelated is the open time in the company computer. You can attempt to swap with open time (or put in a blind swap hoping a trip might pop up into open time) or you can attempt to drop a trip into the pot. If reserve numbers are good, then the trip will just drop into open time and off your schedule. If reserves are tight, then the trip will remain on your line, but will go into open time with a "Q" next to it, meaning "Qualified." That means that the trip is available for another LINEholder to pick up, but until that happens it is still on your line. If no one picks it up within 48 hours of report, the trip is taken off the open time list and remains yours.

So...if a pilot really wants to get rid of a trip, it would behoove him to BOTH put it up for "pickup" on the Swapboard AND try and personal drop it via the company computer (known as DBMS). Some pilots check one without the other, and vice versa. Using both venues increases your odds of getting your desired result.



Unfortunately no. A reserve can try and specify what kinds of trips he would like to fly if called upon, but even that is nebulous. You cannot just call scheduling and say "I want to fly trip such and such tomorrow" and
have it happen.

Good luck at DAL!

StripAlert

Nope, no limit. Like I said, at one point, my projection for March was zero. I picked up the two three-day trips I mentioned because they appealed to me and were during the week, but I wasn't obligated to.

StripAlert

Yeah, to piggy-back on what Herkflyr said, you can put in preferences for what you want if they need you, but they're only to break a tie between you and another equal guy for two equal trips. I've had limited success with this. For example, you are on reserve tomorrow for the first of four consecutive days. You check the reserve availability list and see that there is one other guy with four days of availability. You check open time and see that there are three four-day trips in there. You know that two of those will go to you and the other guy with four days of availability and the third will go to a reserve with 5 or more days of availability. You can list preferences for the trip you prefer, either by specific trip number or by other criteria, such as layover location or report time, etc. Provided the other guy doesn't put in a preference or is junior to you, you'll get the 4-day of your choice.

There is no provision, however, to look at next week's open time knowing you'll be on reserve Tuesday through Saturday and "put dibs on" the 3-day Nice trip leaving Tuesday. That stays in open time until a regular line holder grabs it and is assigned to a reserve the day prior if it's still uncovered. Kind of sucks when you're on reserve, especially when you're sitting there looking at the open time for next month and you realize that you could construct an entire legal line from the abandoned children in there if they'd only let you. However, once you get a line, you'll appreciate that you can pick up and swap with open time up until the day prior, and then the guys on reserve are stuck with the stuff nobody else wants.

E1Out

Thank you guys so much for explaining all of this to us new guys... I'll be sure to "pay it forward" when I'm squared away and know what's up.

StripAlert - That's basically how it works at my previous company. On reserve, you could request a specific trip in open time the morning of the day prior, but a lineholder could still grab it from you up until 12 hours prior (or something like that - I haven't been on reserve in awhile!). I figure, if there's a trip in open time you really don't want - you can always request one of the other ones, and hope to get the lesser of two evils.

Thanks guys!!!