Originally Posted by
Globemaster2827
18 days is how it works out for me currently but I can drive to base. When based in ANC you'll need to commercial to ANC and get 10 hours of rest maybe more if Travel wants you to have a backup flight. On the back side you'll commercial home and you can waive rest to get home. It probably will take you 2 days of commuting putting you on the hook for 19 days IF you can't drive to a base. 18 days if you can drive.
Kalitta is a better job right now but reading their contract it's horrible too. It isn't a destination airline either. I think your assessment of their travel policy is correct.
As for the new contract... We're years and years away from seeing it. Currently the next domino that needs to fall is a law suit that determines if Atlas is in Section 6 negotiations or if we need to have a management grievance determine if we're in Section 6 or Merger negotiations. The Section 6 will probably take an extremely long time to hash out but yield a better contract. The Merger could be really bad. Southern owes 20 days a month and has worse work rules than even Atlas. Their 737 pilots don't get Gateway and they're going to try to ram that down our throats through an arbitrator. That could come as soon as 9 months after the law suit is settled. So in all likely hood the sooner a contract comes increases the odds that working at Atlas will be worse than it is today.
All of that is confusing so I'd say that if you come here, come with a quick exit strategy and a robust emergency fund. If being gone 19 days a month is gonna cause a divorce then it's not worth coming here at any price. If a Boeing type will get you to your destination airline quick and you're family can handle it then it may be worth it.
If you're not in Section 6 negotiations then you haven't even begun to hash out a new contract? Is that right? Why the work slowdown recently that resulted in Atlas suing its pilots? I assumed that was a negotiation tactic by the pilots because you were hashing out a new contract but management wasn't offering much.
I've been reading that Atlas wants to offer its pilots the Kalitta contract + a dollar. If you had that you wouldn't have to worry about gateway travel because they would pay for that with no imputed income and the schedule would be much better with only 17 days on total including travel to and from the airplane. That part at least seems vastly better than the current Atlas contract.
But I guess the pilots want significantly more in the form of a really big pay raise? Is that the big point of contention? Management wants to give you a much better schedule with a slight pay raise but the pilots want a much more significant pay raise?