Originally Posted by
Foodstamps
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.
This is true. The work rules at Horizon with their old line bidding system were better than Alaska with regards to conflicts. Vacation wasn't accrued by the day, but by the hour. Thus, any trip that touched your vacation got dropped, and you got paid for it if you had the hours in your bank. None of this nonsense where you have to pick up something to get yourself back to minimum credit for the month... I once had 25 consecutive days off while using one week of vacation, and I got paid for the full month.
One of the more senior people here, correct me if I'm wrong... I believe the trip conflict language was something that got Kasher'd as well? To be honest, the advantage of line bidding dissipates rapidly without being able to use conflicts to your advantage.