Originally Posted by
LivingTheDream
Yes and Yes! This, after all, is the internet age. No matter how great an idea(s) 15 or so guys have at an LEC meeting, it(they) can be easily vetted by the entire pilot group via a one week poll/vote on the interweb.
There is virtually no excuse, in this day and age, for something as onerous as SDPs to be sprung on the pilot group at the nth hour. (We are very lucky that we dodged this bullet.)
Again, how this made it to the level it did, and how our chairman was able to sign an email announcing how great this TA was (that included these SDPs), is beyond unbelievable.
Is our MEC really that out of touch? (I intend to find out.)
I do not have great hope for 2015.
P.S. I still feel strongly that a TA that changes so many of our pay/work rules should be an automatic memrat.
The MEC was not out of touch. They had a list of items where there was a lot of feedback pilots wanted improved. At the very top of the list was a higher daily min and getting rid of 30 hour layovers. CDO's were part of a option to put a package together to achieve that. There were a lot of former NW pilots who flew and liked the trips and that feedback went to the MEC via reps in those bases. I just talked with a NW guy who is mad they removed them.
When CDO's went public it became obvious that overall the pilot group by a substantial margin did not want them and they were removed. The cost to the company to fly a CDO under the TA was going to be so high they would have been the choice of last resort anyway so it was not hard to get the company to agree to the change.
5:15 per day is huge and is going to improve all pilots Schedules. I had a international guy tell me it did nothing for him. He flies KEF and DUB a lot. I pointed out that a 3 day KEF now pays 15:45 and the 4 day Dublins now pay 21.
There is however always a downside to work rule changes. When 5:15 is programmed into the computer I suspect we are going to see more longer trips to generate minimum credit. As a commuter that's fine but guys who live in base may not like it. Watch for whining when the new trip mix shows up.