Originally Posted by
Sink r8
As I read it, our 3-hour acknowledgment is dead. It's illegal. They can't assign retroactive rest for Reserves, so you need to get your assignment, and go to bed, shut the curtains nice and tight, and sing yourself a lullaby.
I think the questions are:
1) Do we really have a responsibility to be available via phone at any time? We seem to have a responsibility to be available for contact, and we seem to have the right to acknowledge electronically.
2) Who has the right to determine how contact is made under the current contract?
The bottom line is that there are some issues in the contract that are changing because they violate FAR117. Some of these penalize the company, and this one seems to penalize us. Nonetheless, there needs to be a discussion on how the transition occurs, and I think we all agree that it's not SD's prerogative to make decrees in that regard.
I think you're looking at the wrong aspect of the rule you cite...
The 3-hour prior notification is a result of a rolling 9-hour response time to a notification from scheduling, from
When Scheduling Calls:
If a long-call pilot desires to be out of contact entirely for periods of time (sleeping without interruption, golfing without a cell phone, etc.), then he must check his schedule (or messages) at least every 9 hours. This ensures that he can acknowledge no later than 3 hours prior to any rotation, 1 hour prior to start of a short call or 6 hours after the start of a rest period that might have been assigned while he was out of contact.
This is a legal interpretation of our PWA as provided by the MEC.
At times the PWA and the FARS can be more restrictive, this occurs throughout the PWA in just about any section.
If our current PWA gives us a 9-hour response time to acknowledge a call from scheduling, there is nothing in 117 that precludes that 9-hour response time.
The company is attempting to redefine the response time as 2-hour when on long-call but that is clearly contradictory to the PWA and the guidance provided in WSC.
It is
inconvenient for scheduling to have to provide 19 hours notice to a long call pilot but that is the result of the restrictions in the PWA (9 hours to respond/schedule check) and the restrictions in FAR 117 (10 hours rest prior to a report).
At any rate an email memo from a Delta SVP can't change our contract.
In reality Delta holds an even larger competitive advantage vs our peers because as Mgmt has pointed out much of what is in 117 matches our current PWA whereas some of our competitive set are being forced to adjust their staffing/scheduling to comply with the new FARs.
Cheers
George