Originally Posted by
lowflying
Don't blame me; I'm new here too. There's quite a lot of leverage when PBS will save the company around 10 percent in staffing requirements. I'm sure the senior guys can score an extra week of vacation for themselves with that in negotiations.
As far as conflict bidding there is one and only one thing in AS's CBA that makes you say, "wow that's cool." Pilots can trade away single vacation days to each other in order to conflict bid the days off they need. One week of vacation over xmas can be very powerful.
While that is nice, with PBS at VX I've had Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years off, every single year, as a junior reserve pilot...as a junior lineholder...and as a well established lineholder. I don't NEED conflicts because...there aren't any.
I can bid in five minutes and get every day off I want, every trip I want, commutability, every overnight, every bit of soft time, every start/end time I want and everything else you can imagine, that
I have selected, within reason. Line bidding is great if you have PAID conflicts and decent pairings. Alaska has neither, so let's stop lying to ourselves and moving forward, negotiate what benefits us all. I'd rather our company and pilots be more efficient and healthier, in turn we get compensated accordingly.
If the uneducated guys keep us in this archaic system of having to dick around with our schedules all month long and having 12-14 days off a month until we've been flying at Alaska for three decades, we'd be better off quitting to go somewhere that values their pilots both monetarily, and by giving them a respectable QOL. 12 days off is a joke. I had more than 12 days off on reserve.