Originally Posted by
Sunvox
This is a perfect example of the problem with certain issues.
United has the best rules in the business as regards reassignments as has been shown at length in prior discussions. Unfortunately the discussions have not been here, and I don't want to take the hour or more to go back and pull out the relevant quotes. Every airline has to cover short term problems somehow. At Delta for instance people at United who's spouses work at Delta have said that NB captains at Delta more often than not do NOT fly their actual trip but are reassigned. United has accepted certain tradeoffs with regards to allowing junior reserves to have days off rolled, but in general United uses reassignments less often than AA or DAL. Same holds true for regionals. People will point to rules at regionals that don't allow rolling of days off, but forget how easy it was for a line holder to have their trip changed. Rolling days off is a choice in our system that protects more senior line holders. It is not as simple as saying United lets days be rolled and other companies don't.
Bottom line: Other companies don't have it better as regards reassignments.
Most pilots at United fly what they bid and rarely get flown into days off. Other airlines are reassigned way more often than United pilots, but almost never get flown into days off . . . however, they don't have rules forbidding being flown into days off, the schedulers simply don't need to since they can so freely reassign a line holder, and most important for this discussion the new TA puts further limits on reassignments and increases pay in some instances so it improves things.
This is a highly complex issue, and if it is really your primary concern I urge you to call a specialist and get educated on the topic before coming to a final decision.
I don't know UA's rules remotely well enough to compare with DL, but I can tell you this: whoever told you DL NB CA's get reassigned "more often than not" has
no friggin clue what they are talking about. Absolute, grossly exaggerated nonsense. The
closest it has ever come to resembling anything even remotely close to that was in the spring/summer of '22 when the flying public came roaring back, and pretty much every airline was caught flat footed on manning - everywhere was a ****show, But even then, it wasn't even close to 50% reassignments. But more importantly, that was very temporary and ended in the fall of 22. And especially
now, with the new reroute rules fully in place with the new contract (where every single reassignment/reroute pays, 50% premium on the first FDP, and 100% premium on any/all subsequent FDP's), reassignments are now quite rare.
And OBTW, rolling days off has
never been a thing at DL. Period. Not saying you can't ever get 'reassigned' into a day off, but hard limited to a
single additional day, it's
expensive for Mgmt,
super rare (as in, the plane just broke and literally couldn't get you home), and you get that day off back, or put in a bank for use at your discretion over the next year (and can be used to easily get 8-13 hours additional of pay each).