Originally Posted by
TED74
It seems that you can only request one block of days from 1 to 5 days long. If this is a bid and you don't get what you request, what happens? Do they put five days somewhere else? Do you get none? Weird that you can't fit any alternatives to your primary request. Or maybe I misunderstand how it works. Presumably a whole category can't be awarded golden days not to train over Christmas?
The CQ golden days are a holdover from the pre-PBS sytem that we used for scheduling of CQ. (As an aside, our current system is vastly better, because now you can actually bid for CQ with specific patterns, Avoids and Awards, etc. Prior to adopting this system, crew resources could assign any training pattern, any time they wished...EXCEPT for the five CQ golden days.)
Once we adopted the PBS module for CQ bidding, the whole golden day concept became less important--but for some it is still a valuable tool.
However, I agree with ALPA's stance, which is: even though CQ golden days are not as important as they once were, they are an existing beneficial contractual provision, so we might as well keep them.
Please refer to the bid award timeline (available in every bid package every month) to see the following:
Before the 21st day of the month that is two months prior to the bid
period in which a pilot may be scheduled for CQ:
Pilot designates CQ Golden Day preferences...
If you aren't already signed up for ALPA text alerts, I highly recommend it. You'll get a text message reminding you of upcoming deadlines throughout the bidding process.
And last, if you forget to bid CQ golden days, it shouldn't be that big of a deal. Just make sure that you don't forget to bid for CQ via PBS when the time comes!
Not too long-winded I hope?