Originally Posted by
NuGuy
Heyas ACL,
Yea, I know what you mean. Sometimes the schedulers can "massage" your open time request if it bails them out of another bad situation the computer might not see.
I had a deal like that a few months ago. Our book puts some restrictions on beginning/end of month swaps. It's a left over from the old transition period that was eliminated with the shift to PBS.
Anyway, a computer swap probably would have just denied it, but they had a BUNCH of open trips on the day I was trying to swap into, and they approved it because, big picture wise, it made things better.
Nu
We used to have this type of situation going on all the time at Delta. The problem with it however is that in general such deals violate the contract and while it might benefit you and the company it could be hurting another pilot. The Delta computer system is programed to honor the contract. It works very well. If a scheduler manually does something the automated system won't do usually it is a contractual violation. Years ago the pilots never even knew that type of thing happened as there was no real way to check. With the computer systems in place at Delta today pilots can monitor most of the steps in trip coverage. The pilot denied a trip via a deal with a scheduler by another pilot will be quick to file a grievance since the process is now open for all to view. Schedules knows this so they are very reluctant to do it. If a emergency in trip coverage is going on they will make deals however they then have to go back and pay the pilot who should have been awarded the flying.