Agreed. I am not sure why ALPA hasn't held the company's feet to the fire, and only allowed IA phone calls after a robocall has gone out first. So...did you get a robocall, with the voice saying "we are in the Inverse Assignment step of trip coverage; the following trips are available"? If so, then feel free to call back. The robocall should have a "control number" or something like that. But unsolicited calls by the pilot to scheduling along the likes of "hey I noticed you have a lot of uncovered trips; I'll be happy to fly one for IA pay" should be utterly disallowed.

Simple solution.

1. IAs must always be tied to a robocall with a control number associated with it.

2. Pilots cannot call scheduling unsolicited to volunteer their IA services.

3. Pilots must provide the robocall control number when making the call to scheduling, otherwise the conversation ends before it starts.

Is that too hard a concept? What am I missing here?