This is always a tough question. I would think the percentage of pilots with family issues every month is low. I mean real family issues, not I want issues. The real issue is Drft/Vol. Essentially, you are helping them out when they are in a bind. Picking up trips in Open time to replace the ones you dropped I guess would be better on the average for the negotiations, since there is no way you could know when the schedulers will get in a bind. The ideal would be for you to not pick up any make-up and enjoy the time with your family. Fly the make-up later at a 20% pay increase. Stopping the freight will be the only way to get their attention. When right now our last TA "offer" was in my opinion way below where I was hoping to end the negotiations, I'm not very conciliatory.

But protecting min days off would solve all these issues quickly. I've heard 30% of our total flying is done with overtime flying (Draft, Vol, VAC, Carryover, flex, training, Mgt). I don't know if that's correct but I'm sure it is a big number. After the Tallahassee crash, Cheever told a crew while jump seating that the company crunched the numbers for the NTSB and if they eliminated all extra flying then we would have to hire over 1500 more pilots. Don't know how accurate that is but..