Greenslips would dry up like the Martian Soil. This is a huge concession for all FO's and Junior Captains.

IF YOU ARE AN FO YOU HAVE TO VOTE NO!

Here's my take on what I believe to be the worst part of the TA (followed closely by the JV concessions), LCA bidding changes.

I know a lot of people are thinking that the LCA bidding concession only affects a few fat cats at the top of the FO feeding chain.

Actually, that is incorrect. Top 2% FOs are the ones who will be affected least.

Imagine a hypothetical and oversimplified aircraft/base combo, where there are 100 capts and 100 F/Os. Slightly understaffed, there are 7,200 hours to fill this month, and with an 80 hour ALV, that works out to 90 regular lines and 10 reserve lines. Because it’s oversimplified, every pilot in category puts a 3 line bid in PBS for trips: 1) Award LCA, 2) Award “Best” trips available, 3) Award Reserve. There are 720 hours to be flown in OE this month (conservative in the current environment) 10 LCAs in category.

Under C2012, we could expect that the top 10 FOs would get LCA lines. Because they’d pull these out of the middle of the pack, that would effectively give all other FOs a 10% bonus in bidding power, i.e. FO#11 would get the #1 most desirable line… and so-on. FOs 91-100 get reserve. During the month, those top 10 FO’s pick up most of the trips that make it past the reserves as green slips, but a few greenies trickle down to the middle of the FO pack.

However, under TA15, all but 180 hrs of OE would be blocked from bidding. What happens now? Well, for the top 2 FOs, it doesn’t affect them much. They still are awarded pure LCA lines. #3 gobbles up the last 4-day LCA trip, and fills the rest of his line with the most desirable trips. #4-10 now get regular lines - taking the ones that the FOs behind them would normally have gotten. This trickles down the line, with each FO essentially being bumped down in bidding power by about 7 positions. In other words, FO #25 now gets the line that FO#32 would have gotten under C2012.

Oh, and FOs 83-90, instead of being lineholders, now join the other 10 junior FOs on reserve. And most of those open trips get picked up before anyone gets a chance to pick them up as green slips (and of course, the top FOs get first dibs).

So pretty much every FO except the top 2% lose QOL, and many lose money as well.

But junior Capts, don’t worry, you don’t get left out either. FOs #15-20 had been planning to bid over to your category in the next AE, and they’re junior to you, so that doesn’t affect you. However, now that TA15 is law of the land and greenies are no longer, FOs #3-8 decide that they’d rather make Capt pay, and they bid over. Sure enough, three of them are senior to you. This phenomenon affects WB FOs as well.

Who isn’t affected by this? Senior Captains. I guess we have to count on your sense of unity to help keep this from negatively impacting your fellow pilots. And if that doesn't do it, the JV concessions should.