DC8DRIVER

VXing prior to a trip is totally fine.

If you live overseas and there is a trip published in open time, and it starts where you live, then by all means bid for it. If you get assigned the trip, you should also be assigned the time and pay as though you began the trip from your base of record. In other words, if you live in Amsterdam where the open time trip starts but are based in ANC, you should be scheduled and paid for the time required to reposition to the Netherlands from ANC even though you are already in Amsterdam. You won't be paid the price of the plane ticket, but you'll have the "travel day(s)" at home and be paid the deadhead or Rig Time for that day(s). So there is a way to have it work out to your benefit.

Where the line is crossed (and it is being crossed by a few) is when a pilot calls scheduling and says "I'm in Amsterdam do you have any open trips over here?" and they then assign you a non published open time trip or assign you an open time trip out of seniority (frequently without even publishing the trip to the rest of the pilot group). There would be absolutely no way for another line pilot to track this violation and the company and the pilot assigned to the trip would have gotten away with screwing the rest of the group.

There is no transparency in the assignment of open time trips. If you were motivated, it might be possible to find out who was assigned an open trip (if you could even find out that there was an open trip to be had), but a line pilot would have no idea if it had been assigned correctly.

VX trips should be offered to crews of a specific base (or bases) in seniority order. If a pilot is assigned an unpublished trip or assigned a trip out of seniority, that is where the contract is violated. And it is happening now and it is a violation of the contract and a violation to your fellow pilots.

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