Originally Posted by
sailingfun
You used to not be required to show for the trip. The problem was all to often things happened and the IOE did not go off as planned. What we really should look at as a pilot group is going to a system like most other airlines have where a different mechanism is used to schedule IOE’s and people are not paid to not fly. It’s a very high cost item and the reduction in efficiency is used against us at contract time. We cost out the savings and apply it to items across the contract that benefit the entire pilot group rather than having the current system that rains cash on a small percentage of pilots.
I realize for some reason this is a third rail item and was a huge issue in TA1 so it’s never going to happen.
If we did want to make changes we could probably sign a side letter tomorrow that would make positive space to work permanent, 14 hour long calls and a 3% raise effective immediately. It’s a far to socialist concept for the pilot group so it’s not going to happen. We will continue to toss a large and costly benefit at a small minority.
Well TA1 tried to rip the whole benefit out of the group with what seemed like little (or nothing) in return. They wanted to withhold all trips bid by LCA from FO's during PBS so they could assign IOE and then allow FO's to pickup the remainders (or go to reserves). That was a complete abrogation of senior FO's seniority so despite agreeing that the present system is way inefficient, that solution was too much of a pendulum swing (along with trying to change PS and other things). TA2 (present system) allows them to pull trips out of open time I believe to augment what LCA's already have. Beyond the cost, it's a huge manpower inefficiency because the relieved pilots are not required to pick anything up, so you basically have to try to plan as though they don't and lure them back with GS's and hope.