Originally Posted by
ShyGuy
Had a Delta jumpseater to SEA and the stuff he said was completely surprising.
So on reserve, I asked him if you can pick up a regular pay trip on days off for extra pay? He said no, at straight pay the trip would count towards your monthly bucket (so you time out sooner) but the pay would not go above guarantee.
I asked how you get extra pay on reserve days off? He said it's only with green slips (the premium 200% or 150, I forget). And that green slips are bid in seniority order so as time gets near to the trip, if a senior guy has a request in for the green slip on that trip, then you don't get it.
So if you are one of these 12 month street CAs, can you get green slips approved? He said unlikely.
That's a complete 180 from what I thought Delta had. I thought at Delta you could pick up a 2-day trip at regular pay any time out of the opentime pot and get paid on top of guarantee, and they had to remove 2 reserve days later in the month - a rolling thunder. Apparently, this was completely not the case.
True that a reserve pilot cannot just pick up open time on days off. As a reserve, a green slip can be awarded (in seniority order, with the caveat that once you had one, you go to the back of the line for #2 etc) on your days off, but a reserve gets the straight value of that trip over and above guarantee and the next future on call days converted to days off unless there are no more on call days in which case you get "pay back" days to drop trips in future months.
"Rolling thunder" requires a pretty undermanned category for a given month and is an anomaly, not a regularity.
The thing that makes Delta different from AK is that Delta has many bases and aircraft types, so a temporary manning issue can develop as the pilots are much less interchangeable than when nearly everyone is qualified for every trip.