RJSAviator76

That would be total BS. Either you can cut the mustard, or you can't... simple as that. None of this "gramps needs his nap" nonsense.

WHACKMASTER

But they can’t bid the 787, right? 🤞

WHACKMASTER

Hey, hey, hey! Middle aged and I need my naps!

Smooth at FL450

let’s see them try to bid a normal schedules and then try to bid July and December off! I agree, no JV schedules.

CA1900

That's what I endured at Netjets. Several guys turned 80 just before I left, still "working." It was exhausting.

RckyMtHigh

NOT for extending retirement age, but I wouldn’t mind seeing a few lines at half guarantee or something like that. Basically a vacation month without vacation pay. I don’t look forward to grinding out the same schedule month after month when I’m 60+. The ability to bid a month or two a year with a reduced line would be nice since we don’t have that long call WB reserve or really any variation on our workload with seniority. You fly the same schedule, just different days. If we had an ability to drop trips that would have the same effect, but relying on net zero or another pilot to pick up your 4 am report doesn’t seem to work very well.

Just an idea, I’m sure there are multiple reasons why it’s not a good one.

waterskisabersw

Would be tough, if not impossible, to regulate this, unfortunately. Kind of like the commutable lines.

What if you don't get the only part time lines that work for you? Example: you only want to work the first two weeks. So you bid all the lines that work the first two weeks, but if you have to work the second two weeks you decide you might as well work the whole month. With line bidding, those lines would have to go to somebody, possibly forcing somebody junior to you into a part time line against their will.

You would have to prohibit picking up, at least from any company open time, because otherwise every single senior person would bid these and just pick up premium for the rest of the month, essentially making the playing field even more uneven in favor of the senior tournament level players.

Would you be able to pick up from other crew members? That sure would make it easier for the cartels to park trips on people's boards, again unbalancing the field for the senior players.

Would you be able to ELITT with it? What restrictions would need to be put in place on ELITT to prevent abuse there? What happens if you ELITT a three day for a two day in ELITT? Would you be able to pick up open time from the company/TTGA at that point or no? Would there have to be two net zero buckets for the part time/full time guys? What if you want to ELITT a three day into 2 two days? Would there be a credit cap? Does that extra day of net zero go into the general pilot net zero fund or just the part time line net zero fund? I'm sure there's all sorts of stuff I'm not thinking of with this.

How far in advance would you have to designate that you want to do part time lines, because that could have a large impact on company staffing projections/needs. As kind of a further thought on my first point of "what if you don't like the part time lines", how do you decide which overnights/days of the week/weeks of the month get put on the part time lines? What if you say "I'll take a part time line next month" and all the part time lines come out and are all weekend flying with double midland overnights? What if the company makes them all double Cancun 17 hour overnights on Tuesday Wednesday Thursday? All sorts of ways for the company to subvert seniority. Or if they do/don't offer part time lines with certain holidays off.

What if you just had the option to bid all the lines like normal and designate "I want these two weeks to drop without pay." What if the company doesn't think they have the coverage for that that week, would you want to bid a different line first with different weeks off or just take the full line? Or a different full time line? Or a different two weeks off? That's six permutations just for four weeks in a bid month, 10 for five, and 15 for six. In a base with 200 lines, that would mean you would have to potentially bid as many as 3,751 lines if you were number one in base/seat and wanted two weeks off at any cost, and then if you didn't get the two weeks off, you'll just put up with your first choice full time line. And that's just with only being able to designate Sun-Sat weeks off. If you want weeks off starting on different days of the week, you're in the hundreds of thousands of permutations that you would need to bid through. What happens to a week that you drop that has lead out/in pairings? How would pay/drops be affected if only a day or two of a trip is touched by your designated week off? How would any OT/ELITT/TTGA/credit restrictions be affected by this method? This method of bidding sounds like an absolute nightmare both for transparency on our part, and in terms of programming your own parameters within whatever bid program you use.

Speaking of holidays, how do you handle vacations? If you don't get the line you want because there's only so many part time lines, what's your recourse? What if there aren't any trips that would make you whole in MOT, are you subject to the same provisions of free credit that the current contract has?

The only way I see to do this would be to create a second work class under the contract, with you having to opt in/opt out for an extended period (say a year) or lock in that you will guarantee you will take x months at a part time lines months in advance, so that the company can plan for staffing accordingly. But that introduces all sorts of other seniority issues, mostly because how do you choose what pairings go into the part time bucket or the full time buckets. The other problem with a new work class is that what people do with their bidding power. It's not like "more senior automatically means you want to work Tuesday-Thursday AMs": I'm relatively senior but I like working partial weekends. You would have to poll the partial bid group for exactly what they wanted and try to "guess" what they would be able to hold within the normal bid group and then tailor all the lines to those seniority spots.

All in all I think it's way too complex, and will be way too opaque of a process for SWAPA and the membership to ensure a lack of abuse.

Much easier to just allow us to drop trips, with some basic processes and deadlines that balance both seniority and coverage for individual days/stretches of days.

Psycho18th

Senior folks get 5 weeks vacation. So about half the year, you can already bid to only fly 2 weeks, and get vacation pay. Then guys still pick up over vacation. If we were staffed enough you could easily give more trips away, then there would be no premium for the players. There’s a fine line between those of us who want to work less and those who want to work more, but only at premium rates.

ZapBrannigan

Place your bets. How junior will the last vacancy bid of the summer go?

hoover

Now that DEN is the junior base for captains I bet it goes way more senior for upgrades. All those east coast trannies that want to avoid west coast ETOPS lock can now upgrade.