Originally Posted by Timbo

It's a long story, but I'll try to keep it as short as possible, I may have to leave out some of the details, but the overall idea is, we lost about 50% of our days off, and that doesn't include the 2 lost weeks. Remember, we had a 75 hour line cap back then too, that was the most you were going to be paid, any overage went into a bow wave for the next month's bid run, or you could deposit it to your bank, up to +60 hours, to be used in a short month.

In the good old days, pre 1996 POS concessionary contract, when we had 'Line of Time' bidding, you were awarded a week of vacation, and then when you did your bidding for that month, your goal was to try to bid a line with as many trips inside that week as possible. After the bid awards, any trips that touched your week of vacation were dropped and paid. Those dropped trips were then made available in a secondary bid run a couple days later, called "Move Up Bids". Any other line holder or even a reserve line holder, could bid those trips in the move up bid run. So as a reserve pilot, you might get one or more trips put onto your line, ending up you might not have to sit straight reserve all month.

Also, a line holder could bid any weeks of reserve that were dropped due to vacations of reserve line holders. So as a line holder, you might end up with a few days on call, if you bid it. This was beneficial to the line holders as they got paid for both the X days and the on call days, added to their regular trips on their regular line. If a guy was sharp (and many were!) he would bid a line with high block time 4 day trips, with a week off between them, then pick up a week of reserve on the move up run, get paid for 7 days of reserve at about 2:20/dy and not be available due to the 30-7 conflict with his other trips!

Pay wise, let's go max best case to illustrate the point: A line holder bids two 25 hour 4 day trips which both touch his one week of vacation. That's 50 hours pay and two weeks off, for 7 days of vacation. But that option was only available on the primary and secondary vacation, on the tertiary and follow on weeks, you only got paid for the flying days that actually fell within the week of vacation you had.

Still, a domestic guy could bid the crappiest, highest time 4 day trip and drop it, usually at least 24 hours pay. We only had 3+4 day domestic trips, no 5, 6, 7 day domestic trips, not even our international trips were that long, usually 3 day turns to Europe.

When we went to the bank system, we were only paid 2:45 a day for each day of vacation. 7 days x 2:45 is only 19:15. Yeah. Even at today's 3:15/dy that's only 22:45 per week of vacation. Still well below what you could have bid/dropped every single week under the old system.

The pilot (most of us) argument was, we should be getting 5 hours a day for vacation, since that was our contractual daily average trip value.

The argument by the company for such a low value per day was, "The reserve guys are only paid 2:20/dy so why should they get 5 hours a day, and also, you slackers can't fly 7 days in a row, FAR's won't allow it, so why should we pay you more than 4 days at 5 hours per day for a week of vacation?

So, the bank came to be, in the concessionary POS 96 contract, and we lost half our vacation value. In the 2000 contract, we lost the ability for reserves to bid the move up weeks of dropped trips, so you were stuck on reserve all month.

When we gave the company the biggest concession in the history of aviation, PBS, with no 75 hour cap, we lost much more in terms of vacation and especially in terms of manning. The way our PBS vacation works now is, you get a week, PBS won't touch any trips to that week, it will build you a line around that week, and pay you 3:15 for the 7 days... pay, but only credited as a trip for the initial bid run. As soon as your line is awarded, you can then go back and pick up MORE FLYING because the vacation credit time is dropped from your line. You'll still be paid the 22:45 for the week, but your new ALV+15 max pick up limit just went up by the same amount, allowing you to pick up to the ALV +15, AND be paid the vacation time on top of that. The net effect is, guys are 'selling back' all their vacations by picking up more flying, just to get a regular line value PLUS the 22:45 on top.

Under our old 75 hour cap, line of time bidding, our reserve manning was normally 30%. If there were 100 guys in the category, 70 of them held lines, 30 were on reserve but able to bid the move up's to the trips dropped for vacations and for training too. Now, with PBS 'no cap' swap limits (the FAR is the only pick up limit now) our pilots are averaging 87-90 hours per month, and our reserve manning is down to about 12%. The company just doesn't need nearly as many reserves because the line holders can all swap their short trips for higher paying, longer trips, right up to the FAR limits.

PBS has cost us about 20% of our jobs, due to the change from a 75 hour cap/bow wave, trips touching vacation drops, to the system we have today, where there is no limit but the FAR and most guys are picking up more flying in a vacation month, not less! Our average pilot is doing 90 a month now, vs 75 a month then. That's 20% fewer pilot needed.

Before we made this change, guys used to brag about how much time off they had. Now they brag about 120 hour months! The company LOVES it, that's one less pilot they had to hire.