Originally Posted by
sailingfun
Lets not give 60 days of SIL’s mythical status. It was a fairly small cost saving and the union specifically stated the company was allowed to post them at the companies discretion. As it turned out the company not offering SIL’s during that 60 days was probably a good thing for the pilot group as the flying collapsed far faster than predicted and a large number of pilots sat home and got full pay and in many cases above full pay as they picked up trips that never operated. It certainly provided nice checks for a lot of pilots me included.
About ten years ago we used to have SILs posted somewhat regularly in the winter for wide bodies. Like you said, it provided some cost savings - maybe not tons but some. A year ago it the company was trying to save every penny as refunds rushed out the door. Why not take the cost savings and tell the other departments "we need every penny" and focus on their departments for cost savings too?
Optics be dammed - we needed to save money. And SIL would have been voluntary and saved money. What's not to like about it? You could have not taken a SIL and still had your nice check. Also, it would of provided a intermediate solution between PLOA and a full paycheck for those who wanted some time off but didn't want to lose their whole paycheck.
In the end, Ed torpedoed it and ended up paying a lot of pilots to sit around, only to spend MORE money to displace them, train some of them, and reinstate them. Now we've got maybe 1500 NQAT (150 from the old AE and all the UNA) pilots ALL being paid to sit around while the seriously overwhelmed training department tries and figures it out.