Originally Posted by
Icarus39
it’s rare that I pick up a trip, but I care about this. If we end up with pilots on furlough, do you think these individuals that repeatedly manage to be the 1st one to pick up a trip are going to stop? If we had hundreds of guys on the street they would still be trying to credit 200 hours a month. And they must be incredibly fast if they are winning the Flica race and crediting 150 to 200 hours when other pilots are trying and can’t pick up one trip. Even if bots aren’t being used (Which I find hard to believe since apparently a few people are consistently getting the trips) why not change the system to make it more balanced? And I’m not even sure we have to wait to for the next contract to get the change. It’s a simple change that doesn’t cost the company anything. In times of change many things are possible. Just like the fact that London slots or LAX gates might now become available to JetBlue, a simple change in a computer program might be available to JetBlue pilots.
At Delta, a pilot can swap with another pilot (or give away his/her trip) anytime. Open Time (time that has been given back to the company or removed from peoples schedules due to sick or other conflicts) is available to everyone but you put in a request and then 4 times a day (as specified times) they run the computer which goes in seniority order to assign/swap with open time until all requests were assigned. They also have pickup limits that prevent a pilot from just picking up more than 15hrs (not sure on this number) more than the average line value for each pilot so it keeps pilots from being able to just hoard all the open time trips.
This system seems to honor seniority, while allowing as many as possible to participate in open time but not requiring a pilot to sit in front of their computer all day long waiting for a trip to drop into open time.