Andrew P. Gordon
United States District Judge
Case No. 2:14-cv-00043-APG-GWF

Dear Sir,

I am hoping that by contacting you an issue of “Status Quo” may be resolved with your recent ruling regarding Allegiant Air.

A very concerning situation at Allegiant Air with respect to the company’s discontinuation of “Status Quo” has to do with our schedules and yet has nothing to do with the Merlot software that supposedly creates those schedules.

This particular concern we have is that of mixed lines (also referred to as “build-up lines”). This type of pilot schedule is not a pure flying schedule and is not a pure reserve schedule either. A mixed line is a hybrid of the two and has never been utilized here at Allegiant. This type of schedule severely degrades a pilot’s home life and is an effective way to spread hardship and misery nearly evenly across the entire pilot group.

The ruling recently received as a result of the Allegiant Air pilot lawsuit directs a return to “Status Quo”. The status quo can be found readily in our Pilot Work Rules signed by Allegiant Air’s Vice President of Flight Operations.

In Section 4 of the Pilot Work Rules Pilot Schedules are defined and reads as follows.

Trips and Bid Lines. The Company will build Trips and Bid Lines and they will be available for bid and awarded by Seniority. Trips and lines will be generated with the advice and assistance of the Pilot Scheduling Committee. (page 21)

Pilot Scheduling Committee. The Company will work with Pilots interested in helping the Company construct monthly Regular Lines of Time and Reserve Lines of Time as well as the Trips associated with the Lines of Time at the respective Domiciles. (page 22)

Obviously, there is nothing in either of these paragraphs of our pilot work rules that discusses “Mixed Lines” or “Build-Up Lines”. In fact it specifically says that the company with help from the Pilot Scheduling Committee will construct Regular Lines of Time and Reserve Lines of Time. This clearly means that schedules produced during the bidding process must be either flying lines or reserve lines. Not mixed lines. Additionally, I can be absolutely certain that no input has been solicited or utilized from any Pilot Scheduling Committee. Consultation with a Pilot Scheduling Committee may have prevented this errant departure from our clearly stated Pilot Work Rules and thus “Status Quo”.

On Page 24 of the work rules there is a contradiction with respect to the Bid Process.

Bid Process. Bids are distributed electronically via AIS and will be accessible in each Pilot’s Calendar. All crewmembers will be responsible for accessing their bid packages electronically on a timely basis. Crew members who fail to bid in a timely manner will be awarded a line after all bids have been processed. Such award will consist of any line left available and may consist of a Regular Line, Build Up Line or Reserve Line. (page 24)

Pilots who do not submit a timely Bid or who do not submit a sufficient number of Line choices, given their ability to hold the lines requested, will be awarded a Regular Line of Time or a Reserve Line of Time as chosen by the Company. (page 24)

The first paragraph indicates that a Regular Line, Build Up Line or Reserve Line will be awarded to crewmembers who fail to bid. So in this case and NO OTHER CASE may a Build Up line (Mixed Line) be awarded to a crewmember.

However, the next paragraph I show from the same page in the Pilot Work Rules clearly states that a pilot who does not bid will be awarded a Regular Line of Time or a Reserve Line of Time as chosen by the Company. This paragraph does not provide the latitude for any Build Up Line creation whatsoever.

Given the fact that clearly according to our work rules any pilot schedule must be a Flying Line or Reserve Line except in the unique and unusual case that a pilot does not bid, it appears that nearly all of our current schedules fall under the section of Crew Services Errors in our work rules.

Crew Services Errors. It is Crew Service’s intention to comply with all Work Rules. When an error is discovered it will be corrected promptly. Every attempt will be made to correct the error to reflect schedules as if the error had not been made. Trips awarded in error and removed from a pilots schedule are not pay protected. (page 40)

Since we are returning to the “Status Quo” of our Pilot Work Rules it would seem that all Mixed Lines would have the reserve days removed.

Thank you for rectifying this situation so that we might get back to the careful business of providing the best and safest travel experience possible for our customers as well as negotiating a fair and equitable contract, preferably in good faith, with our management.

Sincerely,

Dirk Digler