Free Flyer

The reason vacation starts on a Thursday is because they use Jan 1 of the following year for the start date. Hence, 1/1/2015 is a Thursday. It's always been that goofy way.

Dave Fitzgerald

Got it, the info is on Skynet. Trying to figure it out now. Wow, I hear already major problems. Wrong equipment, wrong vacation days....it never stops.

As of noon today in flt ops, SFO, no one knew how to make it work yet. Even the PBS guys were printing out the user manual to try to figure it out to teach us. Even ALPA did not have any info till they opened it up. What could go wrong?

CleCapt

So why May to May?

Who plans that way?

Wouldn't it be nice to know you have summer vacation before march of the same year

Please don't say we've always done it that way

Doesn't make it right or better

pilot64golfer

No clue, but this isn't the way we bid vacation at UAL pre merger. Even last year it was bid using the old method and made sense. Now bidding in "bid groups" and if it can't give you exactly what you want, it just fails and gives you whatever the company wants you to have, is ridiculous.

We always knew our vacation at least 4 months in advance and as many as 15 months in advance, unless we didn't bid and had unassigned vacation, which we found out 60 days in advance.

Coach67

Way back when ... the Company wanted it that way so they could liquidate vacation before the busy summer season started. They didn't want to have to award vacation at the end of the year with Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. It is a manpower tool for them. They couldn't buy back vacation like they can with this contract.

syd111

Think they have been buying back vacation here since 2003

El10

When you have so much movement from vacancies you want the vacation year to start as close to summer as possible. Summer vacations are highly sought after. This way you have the highest probability of being awarded vacation in the position you will be flying in during the summer and not have to dump your summer vacation if awarded a vacancy.

untied

I disagree.

Legacy UAL vacation was horrible. You had to bid for a number of days, but you had to put a bigger group of days in the request and ask for "early, middle, or late". Who knew why a request failed or how to avoid making your vacation request invalid??

This system is so easy and logical. You bid for the week you want off, and then put other dates around it as your 2nd, 3rd (etc) choice. That's your first bid group. Perfect!

Now you make bid group #2 and go for a different vacation.

You may go for a summer vacation on #1 and then try to get Christmas off on #2.

I don't know how it could be simpler.

If the dates don't work out perfectly, you can always bump your vacation up to 3 days. I've done this many times already and they always move the days (as long as they don't touch a holiday).

They need to fix the bugs (wrong number of days accrued, wrong fleet), but I really like the new system so far.

I found the instruction manual to be very useful and simple to follow too.

Don't get me wrong....I usually complain about EVERYTHING. This may be the only change that I've liked so far.

pilot64golfer

Which is a great system if you are junior. It used to be the senior pilots would grab a summer block and then Christmas.

This CAL way of bidding forces you to pick. You get to choose which one you want, because you can't have both. Chances are if you pick summer, then a bunch of other guys will pick Christmas so when you get around to bidding secondary, all those dates are already taken.

In the old UAL system you could have Christmas and summer vacations, but not anymore.

Its great if you are in the bottom half of your base, which is now why I'm starting to understand why the LUAL group tended to stay senior and not upgrade, and the LCAL group bid up right away.

Now that's going to even out since LUAL pilots aren't getting the advantage of being senior in a seat as much, so might as well upgrade ASAP like the LCAL side traditionally did.

untied

I think the senior guys get their first 2 choices. You can get 2 vacations awarded in the primary cycle. You can get summer and Christmas. You can't get summer, another summer, a third summer, Christmas, Easter, etc.

LUAL had a culture of "everything for the senior and let the junior guys **** off".

I'd rather see 40 guys get at least one summer vacation than 10 guys get 4 summer vacations.

I like the balance of the senior guys getting their first choice, but other guys getting something good too.

(I'm in the top 10% of my seat....so this new system doesn't benefit me, but I still think it's better for the group)