Originally Posted by
Proximity
Wrong. It will happen right before Zap decided to bid for upgrade.
Seriously, what percent of pilots can make it to 65 years old? I don't think age 67 would have the same impact at age 65 did. I think it's a distraction, like PBS is...they can't program changes to our vacation bidding, they aren't gonna figure PBS out anytime soon.
Which reminds me, I forgot to mention that negotiations for our next contract will start in 2020. Based on what other labor groups have expereinced recently, expect a long and difficult negotiation.
You sure PBS is a distraction? And if it is, for who? Us or the company?
They couldn't "figure out" vacation bidding because it doesn't give them any kind of advantage to act quickly on it. However, it does provide them an advantage to draw it out. It divides the pilot group going into 2020. Russell McCrady is not dumb.
PBS, on the other hand, creates a win/win for the company. Either they obtain it and save themselves a ton of money on overlap and other scheduling inefficiencies or they use it as leverage causing clue-lacking SWAPA to back away from many of its asks in order to keep PBS off property. Expect company whisperers to start using terms like "good PBS" just like they started talking about "good code share" last time.
And I wouldn't count on this next negotiation being long and difficult. It might end up being that way but, for a variety of reasons, there's a decent chance we'll have a TA about a year from now. That's probably not a good thing for the pilot group. Hope I'm wrong.