Originally Posted by
gloopy
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.
It did become low-hanging fruit during the pre-BK time at Delta when our reps were trying everything in the book to mitigate the massive pay cut. The problem then became that the senior FO to bids FRA every Tuesday (and remained in the right seat in order to be able to hold it reliably) no longer had any assurance that he would not instead be sent to DKR each week instead.
As I understand it, we bought it back in exchange for the 12-month new hire freeze, which will save the Company much more money than doing away with OE recovery cost.
Originally Posted by
gloopy
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.
It would lead to incrementally fewer pilots to the extent that fewer pilots go illegal and so there are fewer reserve and/or premium pay duty periods assigned as a result. In terms of this being anything new, the definition of flight time under the FARs has always been aircraft movement under its own power. It's just that most airlines have not had the technology to measure that, and so have long over-counted their pilots' flight time.