Reading the CBA lesson #91

Well, this thread really isn't the right place to air our internal dirty laundry, but there is, apparently, a portion of the CBA that says that for open time trips that start out of base "the Company is not obligated to choose a Crewmember on the basis of system seniority if the Company can select the next available Crewmember which does not incur a substantial cost to the Company".

So, theoretically, you could accept a trip overseas and out of seniority.

Because Atlas operates via a scheduling model of panic planning and management by catastrophe, not an ounce of forethought goes into staffing any trip. For instance, every month, I bid for and am awarded a line of fourteen to seventeen days of DHL trips, all of which will go and they will go on time. Unfortunately, I (and the entire remainder of the crew members who were awarded that line) will only fly the first one of those days. Upon arrival at our first destination, we all go in different directions, never to see any of the trips that we were originally awarded. Now, crew scheduling now has to cover all of the trips that we were pulled off of by redirecting other pilots from their awarded trips, and so on.

Consequently, there are literally dozens and dozens of open trips every day - very few of which are ever published as open time trips. This creates a situation that is ripe for the company bottom kissers to make deals with crew scheduling violating contractual rest requirements, notification requirements, seniority requirements, etc, etc.

As is true for a disturbing amount of the current CBA, this pitiful clause written by the Atlas lawyers and is yet another one of the many disgusting contractual flaws that we have to contend with at Atlas.

Forewarned is fair warned.

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