Originally Posted by
PilotWombat
But there are a couple other niche issues related to sick and LTD that most people don't know about, but absolutely need to be corrected because when it happens to you, it suuuuuuucks:
- Pilots returning from LTD are punished for two years following their return with regards to vacation:
- If you were out for the prior vacation year, you get no vacation AT ALL for the remainder of the vacation year you come back in.
- Even if you weren't out the entire year and you do have some accrued vacation, you missed the master bid and therefore get assigned whatever weeks the company wants to give you no matter your seniority. You can only change it via the move-up process, which is cumbersome at best.
- Pilots don't start accruing next year's vacation until after OE. This means a minimum of two months of full time work with no accrual, and if you come back late in the vacation year, it could push you into the nest vacation year with no vacation.
- Once you are back to work, for the following vacation year, you will not have a full year's worth of accrual. This means less total vacation pay and because you don't have a full bank, fewer weeks of vacation for the vacation year AFTER you come back.
Agree 100% with all of this. The same thing happens on MLOA (or any LOA really) and it was absolutely crappy. I think I was on year 10 pay before I both, got to bid for my vacation AND had my full allotment of vacation. I was never a long term MLOA guy, just did the occasional TDY and went on our deployments when activated. One thing to add is the idea that if you're docked just 1 day of vacation, you lose the ability to bid that week as a separate week of vacation, which makes zero sense. Unfortunately, they just slap that vacation week on to the end of another vacation week, but BOTH weeks have to be available, which also makes zero sense. It's like a double jeopardy event.
The ridiculous part about all of this is that if you showed active 31Mar, you could just tell them to place your vacation wherever your seniority could hold. However, if you showed up 1Apr, they just place it wherever and you had to hope for a move up. This should be an easy fix for everyone on any LOA. Whenever you get back, you should just be able to place your vacation where your seniority allows.