IBPilot

Been at Pinnacle 4 years, still 10 days off.....I'm guessing you upgraded in the last year or 2. You did realize when you upgraded you start all over with the crappy 10 day off lines right? or was quick PIC the only thing on your mind?

So to answer your question...just because a 4 year FO can hold 12-15 days off does not entitle you as a 4 year pilot but 1 year CA on the bottom of the CA seniority list to the same days off.

sweptback

Folks, it's simple. Min day/duty/trip rigs are protections. In a perfect world, they never pay out.

At ASA, typically day 1 and 4 of a 4-day are the 7-8 hour days. Days 2 and 3 are the low days. Before the min day, you'd routinely see a day in there that paid 1:30 or 2 hours. Kinda sucked. Now at least you get 3:45.

However, you don't see too many days where you get credit for free. All the company does is manipulate the overnights so you get close to 3:45.

Where you are protected with the min day are 30+ hour overnights. It's nice to get 3:45 of pay for sitting in a hotel. After all, you are doing that at the request of the company. Also, for reserve pilots, every time you show at the airport is 3:45. We've had reserves credit 100 hours who barely worked 75 hours of block.

The duty rig is the same story. Ours at ASA pays 1:2 until 12 hours, then 1:1 afterward. The company, almost immediately, quit building trips that go over 12 hours of duty, mainly because they didn't want to pay the overtime rig. I don't know about you, but I'd prefer not to work any more than 12 hours of duty. The rare times that you have a 13:30 or 14 hour day (scheduled), you know you are getting paid regardless of how efficient your schedule is.

For CDOs, it moved them from junk that mostly junior pilots flew to desirable trips that went senior. If a CDO ever makes it to open time, it's picked up quickly. Before, nobody picked up a CDO because most paid only 2 or 3 hours. Good for the company, because utilizing a reserve pilot for a CDO burns 2 of his days of availability to cover 2 legs.

For a few ASA pilots to get on here and say that rigs don't matter, well, that's just a confirmation that they are working efficiently. In an ideal world, you'd never want to see the rig or min day pay out because that means your company isn't as efficient as they could be.

SrfNFly227

I want to say that the trips Higney is describing is not the standard trip for all of our bases, or all of our seniority. This whole discussion started on our company board when I brought up that I have 10 days on my January schedule that are credited under 3 hours. While I also have days scheduled at almost 8 hours, the lower end is the normal. My last trip of the month is 81:20 TAFB and is worth 13:36 pay. Four deadheads on a four day trip doesn't credit us at Pinnacle very well when we only get 50% pay for the DH.

dojetdriver

Not true, see Boiler's example, or the ones I've pointed out. In 2 of my company's domiciles, a trip rig would easily get more credit per month.

Again, NO, it WOULDN'T. The regionals are at the whim of the legacy(s) they feed for as far as the schedules go. All it would do is increase pilot labor costs.

Thanks for the clarification. After I typed that out I was second guessing myself that it may have been given up later on.

That's OK man, you don't need to know about CAL's system, sounds like you guys got pretty much the same thing. XJT's utilization of aircraft for CAL went down to a similar number as your company did. And just like you guys, getting the 5-6 hours of flying in an 8-10 hour duty period just isn't possible for us either. If our average duty day went down to 8-10, our average daily credit to below 5 hours. For some of our domiciles, that is very very bad. It's more and more common that when we go into a hub, the airplanes is going to sit for hours, where that wasn't the case before.

Memphis is a 3 bank system that allows for many 5 leg days equalling 8 hours block but it takes 12 hours to do it. Other bases are somewhat the same with 6 leg days existing in DTW and MSP. The point of discussion is if a crew is ABLE to do 8 hours of flying in a day there is only 1 crew that needs their rest, if the company tries to schedule everyone at a min day level (lets say 4 hours for the discussion) the 8 hour day that 1 crew could have done would now be 4 hours with a crew swap for the other crew to get their 4 hours. That results in 2 crews in the hotel, 2 crews getting per diem, and 2 crews who have inefficient days and 2 crews that will have to work even more days overall for the month to hit guarantee.

And that's pretty much what I was getting at before. By shortening the duty day, it's more crews to staff that airframes daily utilization, driving up hotel costs.

Same for XJT, most (but not all) are over any min credit value, and at the end of the month it would balance out. But just like you pointed out, I've had plenty of days 2 or 3 doing the "texas 4 step". In other words, a 12 hour day, NEVER leaving the state of Texas, with a scheduled block time of 4-5 hours. The case where a duty rig would help. If I'm not mistaken, SKY has a "policy" of 1:2 on scheduled duty days over 12 hours.

Pinchanickled

Hmmmmmmm, not sure what to think here? You sound like one of these senior lifers that say "you MUST pay your dues and have a terrible schedule.....because I did it back in the 80's......aarrrggghhh."

It's not a question of whether or not it is part of paying your dues, part of seniority or anything else. It has only to do with ---- Is it FAIR?

10 Day off lines should be outlawed from all ALPA carriers. Did I really expect to have a glorious 18-20 day off line after I got off high minimums? NOOOO!!! But do I think two 3 day trips back to back, with 2 days off, then a 4 day trip, 2 days off, followed by a 4 day back to back with a 2 day is FAIR? NOPE!

Is it FAIR that a senior pilots gets 18-20 days off ---YES!!!
12 days off should, with a good min day or rig will cause this airline to ACTUALLY STAFF THE AIRLINE CORRECTLY.


Here's to getting a contract that can provide a LIVEABLE & FAIR schedule no matter where you are on the seniority list.

Cheers & Happy New Year!

StrikeTime

Think twice about the safety of the passengers you fly.

Sniper

All I see here is an argument to increase crew costs and increase your income - there is no QOL or safety discussion here. A 1.5:1 duty rig would pay even more, wouldn't it?
The point of a rig is to incentivize the company to make your schedule better through the only incentive companies understand, monetary penalties. Do it right, and the penalties should hardly ever kick in, not "in many cases".


So, on one hand, a trip rig is better than a duty rig b/c a pilot would "easily get more credit per month", but, re: duty rigs, "All it would do is increase pilot labor costs"? Is your motivation to max out credit hours, or to prevent the company from having increased labor costs? Mine is neither - I want to increase pilot QOL and reduce opportunities for fatigue. A trip rig won't really do that @ the regionals, due to the nature of flying regionals perform.

To the reader: how many regionals guys do you know that complain they sit in hotels their whole trip (trip rig will fix this) vs. have long duty days, but not much flying (duty rigs will fix this)?

If you're looking to just pad your bank account, get a both a duty rig and a trip rig that are very restrictive - they'll always pay out. If you're a regional pilot (this is the 'regionals' forum, right?) looking to improve your schedule so you are home more often, have later shows and earlier finishes and given more opportunity to show up well-rested, a duty rig will do the most for the average regional pilot, not a trip rig, and not a min day. That's all I'm saying.

dojetdriver

Oh boy, round and round circular argument;

First off, I NEVER said I DON'T want want trip/duty rigs. I would love to have them. I'm sick and tired of the middle days of my trips being 12+ hours of duty, 5-6 hours of sit for 5.5-6 hours credit with short overnights and not getting enough rest, all for 20ish hours of credit.

Second, which sector of the pilot spectrum do you work in? Are you currently at a "regional"? Have ever been at a "regional"? Have you ever been in at at "regional" in the post 9/11 environment?

The reason I'm asking is because the points that are being made here by myself and others would make sense if you are/were. I'll say it AGAIN, the mantra that trip/duty rigs would "force" management to build more efficient schedules is pure crap, sorry, but that's just a reality of it. AGAIN, unlike at a major/LCC, the regional management DOESN'T have control of the schedule. Often times the block hour/utilization is very fluid on the seasonal and monthly basis. ALL I'm doing is presenting the OP with the point that he's probably hearing from his MEC, and the one that I've heard multiple times from the MEC's from the carriers I've been with. Look at Boiler's example of the concession they took on the rigs. Why? It'll drive up labor costs NOT "force" the company to schedule more efficiently and improve pilot QOL/paychecks. At the regionals, the profit margin is already so slim with the cutthroat management style as well as having to remain competitive to keep flying. Sure, it'll work for some, but they can't spread it out evenly among an entire pilot group. And YES, I know we're on a seniority system, but this stuff goes way beyond that. An NO, NOTHING about this is self defeating, again, it's the reality. If those FACTS can't be realized, sorry, don't know what to say.

Like I said, I'm basing that on the arguments made from the pilot reps at the companies I've worked for, as well as my friends that worked as the pilot crew planning/line construction/scheduling reps. "That's all I'm saying"

BoilerUP

I never made a QOL or safety discussion, I was simply refuting your assertion that trip rig wouldn't do anything for regional pilots with an example I personally experienced/witnessed while employed at Air Wisconsin.

When I said "in many cases", I was referring specifically to those trips that were built to 80hr+ TAFB with less than 20 hours of scheduled block. Yes, in those cases the 4:1 trip rig provided a few minutes additional credit, where a 3.5:1 trip rig (which AWAC gave up in the 2003 concessionary agreement) would have paid a couple hours more credit.

If the 3.5:1 trip rig was still in place, I guarantee the company wouldn't build parings of 80hr+ TAFB with less than 20 hours of block because of the monetary incentives (or penalty, depending on your perspective) they'd incur with the more restrictive rig - they'd make those trips more "efficient" when building them.

I don't disagree with you that a duty rig would probably provide more benefit to regional airline schedules than a trip rig...but IMO having both trip AND duty rig prevent the company from cranking the ole' "optimizer" to 11 which ultimately provides pilots a fatter bank account AND as a byproduct will improve QOL due to paring construction.

Kenny

Here's a good example of how Duty Rigs would stop any company from building bull$hit duty days:

I recently had a crew from a large Regional, although they now consider themselves a National, deadhead with us from DCA-PWM. The CA decided to sit in the JS to get an extra non-rev on and we talked about what the AWAC contract has in it. When we got to the Duty and Trip Rig part of the conversation, he said he didn't see how they would help. So I asked him about his day. These are guesstimates as I can't be bothered to look up the actual times but should prove the point.

DCA-PWM, Deadhead blocked at 1.3. Paid half due to DH.
Sit for 4 hours.
PWM-PHL, blocked at 1.5. Paid full leg value.
Sit for 2 hours.
PHL-DCA, Deadhead blocked at 1.2. Paid half due to DH.

So for the whole day they got around 3 hours of pay, wheras if they'd had a 2:1 Duty Rig, they'd have been paid around 5-6 hours of pay. Needless to say when I explained how much more he'd have been paid at AWAC, the light bulb went on.

This is not about making any company pay us for the hell of it. It's about actually getting paid when you're at work. We are supposedly professionals, after all!