Originally Posted by
sailingfun
150% only applies to trips American designates as premium trips. Not any trip you pick up on a off day. Their coverage ladder is quite different than ours. Trips can be designated as premium at any point so it’s usually done in advance and they get grabbed by line holders.
Sort of.
At AA, reserves flying “OG” (over guarantee, straight pay) or “PR” (premium reserve, 150%) must touch a day off. Most NB pilots, which is where the vast majority of the premium is, know this and don’t even put in a ballot for OG… they put in for PR only. If/when crew scheduling can’t fill a trip with long/short call pilots (or “MU”, lineholder straight pay makeup), it will try obviously to fill the trip OG. But since there aren’t any OG takers, it goes PR. Tons of PR going out every day, all NB domiciles and fleets. A typical strategy is to bid short reserve blocks (3-4 days), pick up 3-4 day PR trip over that footprint starting day prior, repeat throughout month. Requires you to actually go fly… but you were going to get used every reserve day anyway, might as well get paid more for it, and everything goes on top of reserve guarantee. Where AA reserve lags: no payback days, can’t do that rolling thunder thing, can’t bid more than 6-7 day reserve blocks if that’s something you want to do.
The company more or less stopped the method by which lineholders could get premium several days in advance. I don’t know why… for a while they’d recognize a lack of reserves upcoming and you could get premium trips 2+ days in advance. That method could always return if they get desperate enough. Now, they only offer premium to lineholders the day prior through a slightly different system. Lineholders tend not to want the 3-5 day trips as “PM” (lineholder 150% premium) so those go PR instead, and the turns and easy 1-1s go PM. Same concept, company would love to give out open time as MU but that doesn’t work when almost everyone is only in for PM. Nice part of AA system: no premium “trigger”, people can and do drop their entire schedules and fly nothing but premium. Senior NB FOs are killing it. AA lags: only 150% versus DAL 200%, although sounds like AA will match whenever a new contract is signed. AA has a silly punitive sick offset thing that’s complete BS, but that’s also going away. We have a “conflict” function akin to your GSWC but it’s rare.
TL,DR: to say premium is “usually done in advance and they get grabbed by line holders” is not exactly true and lacks context.