Originally Posted by
TED74
Exciting indeed.
And unpredictable. Unfortunately, in order to change aircraft you'll remove any and all certainty about being able to attend any or all important functions/anniversaries/weddings/graduations/etc. in the 7-12 months following the unpredictable AE. And you may just watch someone 3,000 numbers your junior pull down a sweet IQ schedule with most weekends off while you work all of them. For significantly less than 5:15/day. On Virginia Ave. In the summer [or the winter...you're not actually sure until you're scheduled].
The one thing you CAN control is just when you put in the 40-60 hours of self study at home to upgrade (for less than 2 days' pay).
Hopefully we will some day see more training schedule control, vacation preservation, better compensation and opportunities to use one's seniority to actually bid on IQ training patterns a la CQ. I'm perplexed why we've allowed the company to control so much of our lives when changing aircraft.
Does anyone know if this is industry standard? It sure doesn't feel like an industry-leading system to me. Only a select few can count on keeping their vacation plans intact, even if...I don't know... the president were to call?
This is definitely one of the weaker areas of our PWA and I have written my Reps about it in the past. As far as industry standard - No, definitely not and most likely one of the worst in the industry.
I would like to see the 1 year Bid go away totally, but if we do keep it we need some kind of "Golden Days" to protect important events. I think two weeks of renewing contiguous golden days per quarter would allow us to protect these type of events. If your training is delayed becasue of this you forgo potential pay protection. In other words Pilots have a say in what is more important to them - earliest conversion and pay or more scheduling flexibility.
In any case whatever we go for has to have "no exceptions." Currently the company can and will do anything to keep the simulators full including liquidating your vacation that you checked you wanted to keep when submitting your AE. Not much peace of mind there.
Scoop