CIC seems to be your "soapbox" issue, and you like to refer to yourself as a peon, I guess that is a code word for junior, so let me reply.

In the November bidpacks the MEM, 727, MD11, and A300 have a total of 374 reserve lines. Excluding SIBA reserve lines, nine lines have greater than 4 carryover R Days. With a whopping R-Day guarantee of aprox. 4 hours and a 6 hour buildup that doesn't approach the numbers you are talking about. Are the 9 lines, roughly 3% of all the reserve lines, with excessive R-Days, making you life unbearable, you claim you are slumming.

The leveling issue you continually bring up is ridiculous. For one it is applied different every month. Some months you get leveled for CIA trips before you fly them some months you don't. I called the "Union" to clarify this discrepancy and they were of no help. The contract is a little unclear, go figure. But let me offer this, CIC trips should be leveled at the beginning of the month. Why? Because somewhere you traded days, willingly or not, R-days that you would have been setting home waiting for a call, for days you are responsible for flying. You will do that flying or it will be taken out of your sick bank. To ease you suffering I would be willing to have those R-Days moved to other days instead of "having" to pick up a trip to make up for "lost" days.

Why a priority for open time trips before the general open time window? Because you are picking up pay that has been "lost". You have lost days that were initially awarded due to a conflict. Some conflicts are self-induced others are not. Some see this only as a pay issue, but those who opt for quality of life, and are senior and smart enough, have additional reasons.

Your one statement in particular shows your true colors, "Get rid of CIC and let the guys who want to fly 140 hours a month bid for open time on thursday night like the rest of us.". The handful of "clown's" flying that amount of overtime are an infinitesimally small percentage of the 4500+ pilots and have little or no life outside of flying. Yet you advocate changing the "system" because of so very few, in order that thing will be more fair. Fair for who? The guys with the bot programs? Pilots who have friends in the scheduling community? Pilots who have the fastest internet connections? Pilots willing to set at a computer all day and fish for open time? Give it a break. Your not upset about CIC, your upset that you are not yet able to be one of those guys with their head in the trough, you just can't get enough at those thursday night feeding frenzy's, you clam to attend.

4.A.2.b has put this pilot group in a position of weakness and division, this is not the time to be making wholesale changes to provisions of the contract that received little or no attention prior the implementation of 4.A.2.b.. Let's concentrate on the problem 4.A.2.b, not the "pet peeves" of the vociferous few who are taking advantage of a bad situation to further their own agenda.