Originally Posted by
Alan Shore
Agreed. by the buddy bid triple pay scheme, do you mean giving them back recovery for OE? If so, bite your tongue, Sir!!
Yeah I know. Its just such low hanging fruit that disproportionately benefits such a tiny empire of pilots at any one time. The old recovery system was redonk for sure and set up for massive company abuse, but I was suprised that we were able to get a complete no obligation release with the tack on ability to W or G slip above it. In busy categories a tiny group of pilots can push triple pay, but only as part of a system that we all enable equally. I just don't see that one very expensive item surviving the next round of constructive engagement when its one of the few remaining areas to generate more productivity in a way that is very likely quite easily palatable for the group in general.
Depending upon how you do it. You could set it up so that the full flight counts as block time for scheduling purposes and aircraft movement under its own power would only count as actual. This would decrease the amount of 23 K. removals for overflying, but would not allow us to be scheduled for anything more than we are today. Would that be such a bad tradeoff for door pay?
Hmmmm. No, I still don't like it. That directly leads to the need for fewer pilots. I can't believe wheel spin up/taxi under own power even made its way into the new regs. Switching to that after the fact (almost all airlines use the start of pushback and have for a very long time) is a clear attempt to roll back some of the safety gains in 117 with dirty backroom lawyer tricks. I really hope we play no part in facilitating that. Door pay isn't worth it. Not to mention, once we agree to that precedent, the next time we're in negative pressure bargaining you know that's going to be the first thing they hammer. Fewer pilots needed and erasing some of the recently gained safety improvements with no additional safety added in for a couple minutes of theoretical pay. No thanks. I do worry we will walk right into that exact trap though.
They could offer us higher pay rates via pay banding in return for longer category freezes.
Possibly, but if they go that route I think they will merely try and tinker with the definitions instead of the duration. Like perhaps keep a freeze at 2 years, but don't start the clock until you are "OK" qualled and released to the line, or something like that. Increasing the duration of a freeze would be much tougher politically than tweaking the definition of a freeze so if they attempt something in that area that is what I suspect they would try.
FWIW I'm not against door pay. If we can get it, great. But I'm very much against giving up anything block time related to get it. And we need to preserve the two most important elements of 117 WRT reserve QOL: nothing before noon on day one under any circumstance, and a longer than 12 hours long call. I think 19 fits quite nicely without being a concession over current language and the regs and solves the 3 hour notification issue. But I really hope we're not going to fall for some siren song door double edged door pay trick.
