Originally Posted by
tennisguru
Never in a million years. I'd give up IA's though...
I'd also give up 5 days and Silver slips.
Originally Posted by
igotgummed
Why? How many pilots are actually cashing in hundreds of hours of PB days? Sure, it sounds cool….but I bet there aren’t that many. Also, there are far more commuters than RES pilots getting PB days.
It's not just the pilots cashing them in that benefit from PB days, and there are probably a lot more than you think cashing in on them. I'd wager than even a fair amount of reserve commuters are cashing in on PB days, especially now that they start getting awarded so far out. I'm not opposed to the idea of more bases, but giving up PB days wouldn't be where I'd look first.
Originally Posted by
tennisguru
Remember that WB pilots cannot PD below the min RES block length, but can with a PB day. Take a 5 day block of reserve, drop a PB day on day 3, and now you're functionally useless to the company for almost 1/3 of your RES obligation for the month. And again that can drive more GS opportunities as more RES pilots sit at home unusable or now off over what was LC days. NB pilots can do the same thing (although they can PD as well if they want) but with PB days they're not taking the pay hit. Again, fewer available RES pilots = more chances for GS for the pilots in the category, both REG and RES.
Yup. I once parlayed 15 PB days into 4 months of reserve of never being on call more than a day at a time. There are quite a few of us doing that during that time and GS flew off the shelf those months. Most of which, I did not take as I waited until all my reserve days were over.