Originally Posted by
DrSteveBrule
Yeah, and adding a little, IOT will honor seniority and up to whatever the required coverage is for a given day...If the month is all green, one can drop to 0.
Daily Open Time works the same way, except seniority no longer rules and red/green is first come first serve on any adds, drops, or swaps. In my base for April, most days are green except Easter weekend. That's typical. The FO side is blood red, which also makes sense given the attrition issues.
Reserve pilots arent able to participate.
Im not one to drop to zero, but the value of dropping and swapping as i wish for whatever my reasons is gold...and the feeling of being stuck in the grind at work doesnt really occur, because if i am not feeling it and it's prior to 12pm 2 days before the trip and it's green, then i dont have to. No need to burn sick time. No need to use vacation time unless I choose to use float vacation time to pay myself for the drop. Drop and wait for a Y list call. It's the feeling of freedom. Inside of that 2 days from trip, no more drops, only sick time.
Your system sounds pretty good.
At JB once bids are awarded a series of 3 adjustment windows (2 seniority based, 1 FCFS) open one at a time for 48 hours each. The month is supposed to start w/ 5% above the min required reserve. If people drop out due to LOA/STD right after bids come out then it can start the first window with some days in the red. Typically the first window has green on all the weekdays and red on some weekends. As people drop/swap weekends all go red, M-Th typically stay green. Reserves and lineholders can only drop to 70 hours w/o using PTO, and they can only perform two transactions per adjustment window. Can tradeboard to 0 for lineholders. After the adjustment windows, it goes back to FCFS with no limit on how many transactions but still can't go below 70 w/o PTO.
The sticking point for most transactions is we have min (red/green) numbers not only the days in question but also for Reserves available for the duration of the trip you are trying to drop/swap. IOW if you are trying drop a 3 day trip starting Monday, it checks green/red for the all 3 days but also checks to see how many 3 day RSVs are available on M, then 2 day guys for T, and 1 Day guys for W. Each bucket has its own min number. It has to be green on all parameters.
Everybody hates our system, it did not used to have the individual (1-4 day)reserve availability check and drops/swaps were much easier to get. This item would be very high on our list to fix during a JCBA and it sounds like NK's system seems to work well by all accounts. I imagine NKs red/green is what the NCs would be aiming for. You wouldn't have to worry about the JB guys wanting to keep ours. As I said before we should be in a position to be cherry picking the best of both contracts.