Originally Posted by
Rock
This thread has several posts with me and other guys explaining the long term precedent regarding upgrades from business to first class. When I inquired, ALPA, management and now the expense report folks all confirmed that my particular expense should be covered. It always was in the past. It was this time despite your understanding of the contract. What would I grieve?
Apparently things have changed since my expense happened. The date things changed seems to be 19 May 2022. Now if you want to upgrade, you can still do it using the procedure I outlined. New rules. Is ALPA going to grieve it? I have no idea. I suppose it depends on how many people got bit between the change of the old rules and the new rules.
Ok, first, I'm glad that you got your issue resolved. I did not see that in your post.
As I said much earlier, my guess is that there was some sort of audit done and someone discovered that pilots were using deviation banks to upgrade scheduled tickets that was not covered by the contract language. I also said my guess is that it took a while for this to be caught because there wasn't a large section of the crew force who was doing this. I could be wrong, it is a guess.
You say that the new rules are as you posted. Those new rules are what I was saying the contract language supported. Do you think that the company can just make up rules that are not supported by the language? I know you say that it is past precedent. I spent almost a decade flying international and never flew with anyone who said they were doing what you were doing.
It was precedent that when we filled out our expense reports that if we took a flight from MEM to home after recurrent training, we did not have to check a box that determined if the cost of the ticket was considered income. That was precedent for years, but an audit was done. The rules weren't being complied with, so there was a change.
If this was a rule change that isn't supported by the contract, have you made that clear to the union? If so, and it isn't supported by the contract, they would be negligent if they did not grieve it. Supporting the contract is one of there primary jobs, and they could be sued if they knowingly let the company change the rules without it being negotiated.
Again, I am glad that you got your issue resolved. I also hope that the union grieves the arbitrary limit on the cost of a deviation ticket. Someone with direct knowledge and communications with the company needs to bring this to their attention. I would be happy to, but using APC as my reference would not support any argument we may have.