Originally Posted by
Bluedriver
The only reason the company wanted an annual bid was because the union insisted (rightly so) that a pilot would keep his awarded vacation even if he later bid for a new seat mid year. That's why the annual bid is in August, and the Vaca bid is a few months later.
Even so, I don't see a huge issue with annual vacation bidding and quarterly system bidding. If keeping awarded vacation is the only issue, they could have have made a clause that said training dates and base transfers are in seniority order, but if vacation conflicts with the would-be training dates, training will occur at the next available training date after vacation, or the pilot could have the option to slide the vacation outside of the training footprint. Lots of ways to skin that cat without abrogating seniority, giving up vacation, or at least giving the pilot the choice. I don't think an annual system bid is necessary just for that.