Originally Posted by
FangsF15
As a longtime Reserve bidder, I'd love to explore some options for this as well. We just need to fully think through the second and third order consequences of various ideas.
Ya I think the company would love x day flying. It would be another big win in their war on PB days.. Many of the things being discussed are premium/PB day killers. The system we have right now is pretty dang good and many airlines would kill to have it, wrt our premium flying anyway. I'd much rather we just keep it as is and shore up reserve staffing.
Originally Posted by
FangsF15
I'm sure the company would jump at the chance to pay X-day above guarantee - it would likewise be a PB day killer, I suspect, since it would basically be a single-pay GS without PB days. I've noticed (at least in the largest base) that NB A's have much less ability to GS at mid seniority, and virtually no chance at low seniority - especially compared to the B's. My hypothesis is that there is a higher % of A's who don't commute, and who are also more likely to be empty nesters with nothing competing for thier time than B's. Regardless, it's a lot tougher to add anything to your paycheck on Reserve than it has been in the past (even without considering the post-covid GS-palooza) in most categories.
In theory the 150%/200% above X hours sounds good, but I have imagine that this would kill anything in open time. I think NWA had it so maybe they can shed some light on it. Either way I think that would a huge staffing concession for us. It would also kill premium flying and further drive down PB days. One defense for this is to make it pay those percentages only for the initial bid award. But that again could have a determintal impact on staffing. I'm not totally against things that may drive down premium/PB days, we just really need to cost out the 2nd/3rd order effects. I'm not convinced we did that for some of the changes from the last contract.
How is the staffing in these categories? Are reserves being abused? While your category has lowered premium availability, we're having a GS/IA/OOBGS/SS palooza over here. On the upside, they keep not adding pilots in our seat, so we got that going for us, which is nice. 🤣