Originally Posted by
IrishNJ
disagree. If I’m going to training, or changing bases, I want to know as long as possible so I can plan vacations, time off etc.
and the bid IS a quarterly bid, just bid the dates.
This is a yearly bid, based on the fact that we can only bid ONCE a year. You can do what you described with a quarterly bid, just like we did before the contract. If you can hold a seat, you can bid it when the window opens.
Instead, we have 1 chance once a year to bid (supplementals aren't guaranteed) and if you screw the pooch, or there are life changes, then you're stuck. I don't know any other airline that does it our way. You can still plan your life out as long as possible with our old system.
There's a reason we get a million emails from the union and from management during the system bid window saying "Make SURE you know what you're bidding because mistakes aren't hardships". At my old shop we could bid a new base every month. Hell, there were guys that would decide on the fly "I think I'm gonna go to the West Coast for a couple months and then see how that goes", or if someone made a mistake, they weren't stuck for a full year, they could fix it the following month.
That's not something we can do here.