​​​​The vacancy bid "wait-list" is longest for ANC and PDX, they're the smallest based and have a bunch of FOs and Captains commuting until they can get back home. SEA is the easiest commute for both of those locations so for those waiting they bid for SEA next. Big population of pilots live in PNW so they want SEA. Commuters from other locations take SEA because it has the most flights. That leaves SFO and LAX. Trick with SFO is that it's a tough commute and anyone who lives there has the United option. So SFO is at the bottom of the wish list unless someone lives there, but then there are other options to consider.

My two cents.

Only for the months of March and April due to a short term LOA that offered incentive lines. They have been able to pick up since the new contract was signed and will be able to again in May.

It does look like the company wants to grow Portland now. Portland growth plans were put on hold to beef up SEA to compete with Delta, then Covid, etc. SEA is now basically at capacity gate wise and they are ready to get things going in PDX.

From a company press release earlier this month:
"Alaska Airlines is ramping up our growth in Portland to provide our guests with more choice and convenience. We’ve added more than 20 daily departures starting this summer to sought-after destinations from the Rose City. Our capacity has increased by 25%, improving connectivity and providing additional travel options."

If you came to Alaska and wanted to live in PDX you would probably get based in SFO to start with. Can do long call reserve from PDX to SFO to start. About 10 flights a day between all the airplines PDX-SFO. Next most junior base is SEA which has a drivable long call commute. Junior FO in PDX with the June 2024 bid effective date was hired in March of 2023. Would probably guess a year or two to get into PDX after getting hired.

For now...

The no pick up restriction applied to May as well until a couple of weeks ago. Likely someone did the math on what would happen during the first month of live PBS bidding...

If it isn't part of the CBA it can be taken away at any time. The MEC seems to support that. So this income simply can't be counted on. Unless you are a fool it should not be included in a budget.

Don't really know what the MEC supports on this but you do realize that pilots working on reserve days off helps the company right? It allows the company to do less upgrades and less hiring.

No, that trip would have been assigned to a reserve pilot. We are overstaffed and a lot of reserves are just sitting around not getting called much.

The justification as explained to me was that suspending the reserves right to pick up on days off was to stop the company from downgrading captains. So yes the MEC supported it.

How pilots decide to budget is up to them. Even if it were in the contract the prospect of picking up open time on your days off is not guaranteed.

I was just providing context to a statement that had pertinent facts omitted. It’s fine not to like the fact that the provision is a LOA (I would like for it to be codified in the contract as well) but I think it’s important to share the whole picture. I’m sure any future incentive lines will also come with this caveat.

Are you one of the 3% who didn't bother to mock bid PBS?

Do you really think that I didn’t bid? I’m pretty sure that anyone who reads and posts on Internet forums absolutely bid in the practice round.

I just try to think of this stuff without emotion. Also people who don’t work here read these boards and just like when I was on the outside looking in accurate information was appreciated. Sometimes when certain aspects of something are omitted it makes things sound worse than they are. Maybe it’s intentional, maybe it isn’t, doesn’t really matter.

Open time is never an assured source of income, I've seen periods of years where there was essentially zero OT (post 2008).

Your basic life expenses should be budgeted based on guarantee (or LTD if you don't have adequate alternate employment skills). Nice-to-have spending should be on top of that, and of a flexible nature (ie you can stop spending, unload the boat quickly, etc).

Assuming one cares to be fiscally prudent.

If you participated in the PBS bidding and looked at the results you'd realize there is no longer a meaningful amount of open time left in the system. There is effectively zero to pick up. March and April were the last meaninful months to pick up on days off.

I agree it would be important for potential new hires to know what life is like at AS. It would be pretty important to know how you'll be treated on reserve no? Since there won't be any meaningful growth due to 737 issues. A new hire knowing that they will be sent to the most expensive base in the system that is also difficult to commute to with no sure way to raise extra funds I think is very important.

My man, aren’t you a breath of fresh air…
Get outside, take a walk, find something fun to do it will help with malaise you suffer from.

Personal attacks are fine. I don't really care. I've been asking friends at other airlines what the pick up policy is for reserves for the last month or so and I've compiled a lot of interesting data.

I'll stick to facts for now thanks.

You are throwing a fit like a child. Many of us spent years & years not being able to pick up open time on reserve. It was given to you, and now you are throwing a fit about it temporarily going away for a couple months while we are overstaffed in the slow months. Enjoy life and flying a little leas for a couple months and move on…

More personal attacks. Cool.

What is the outlook for open time pickup in May? As far as I can tell it's near zero.

may? My brother in Christ we don’t even have Aprils bid packet yet

Maybe a better idea would have been to furlough reserves for 2 months to allow other reserves to pick up from 79 hours to 90 hours. Wasn't the issue that not enough people took the unpaid LOAs offered earlier so they offered incentive lines instead?

Seems like the open time that was left over in my base is about what it always is after OF lines are awarded. There really hasn’t been much to pickup in the last two months. Pretty sure come summer things will be descent again. Maybe not like last year but should still be ok.

Not a personal attack at all, just an observation…

My bad. I meant Feburary. I keep mixing it up the live PBS start date with our mock bid for February.

There is near zero open time for SEA in the last mock bid which of course was for February. Not May. Whoops.

Furloughs? Is that cost effective? Can it be done when UA and DAL are still hiring? How would that impact AS hiring going forward? I think we both know the answer to all that.

I'm not sure we are looking at the same report? Scroll to the bottom of the award and it is listed at the bottom of the report as Open time 1. 14 hours total in open for CA and 10 for FOs, in SEA.

I’m not in Seattle so we aren’t looking at the same report.

Just wondering which report you were looking at?? Or are you just making stuff up because no one here seems to try to seek out factual information before they just believe someone that "open time that was left over in my base is about what it always is after OF lines are awarded"? I know a lot of AS pilots on the internal forum got away with making recession forecasts that still haven't come to fruition almost 2 years after we voted and no one seems to care. However I feel it's pretty sad that not onlywhat you claim needs to be corrected but few would bother to check to see if it is absolutely false or not. So I checked for everyone reading:


Open Time




ANC:

CA 3 trips 32.5

FO 4 trips 60.5


LAX:


CA 12 trips 100hrs

FO 6 trips 45hrs

PDX

CA 2 trips 27 hrs

FO 0 trips 0 hrs

SEA


CA 2 trips 14 hrs

FO 1 trip 10.5 hrs

SFO

CA 0 trips 0 hrs

FO 4 trips 34 hrs

No, furloughs aren’t cost effective for 2 months. What seems to be cost effective is allowing pilots to take paid time off and pay reserves guarantee which they most likely won’t fly up to. I’d say even more cost effective than a scenario of a senior pilot bidding reserve and being able to credit 110 hours while only flying 40 hours.

Yep, you got it. In my base it’s about the same as it has been for a while. We have an abundance of FO’s so a lot of the leftover trips after step trading have been going into open flying lines. Open time usually starts with 3 or 4 garbage trips. Eventually things get going though as people drop a few things. So not false?

I don't know what your base is but I know that for SEA it's dramatically less.

I don't know the base you are talking about and the only base I regularly check is my own, SEA. The open time remaining in my base under PBS is vastly different than months past.

I spoke about this issue with a PBS volunteer at length and they didn't seem to be concerned. Although they were senior enough it wouldn't affect them.

Feb is also the low point for the amount of flying we have. I don’t feel like Feb will be representative of the remaining months, especially summer.

Agreed. It's also why we aren't seeing any unstacking. We also don't know how the unstacking levels will work. Is it 50% if you have a holiday day on your schedule or if there are holidays in the month?

With holiday pay now a factor it seems like people wanting to work on holidays isn’t the issue it once was. Have you sent a Dart with some of these questions? Info on how the system functions could help some craft their bids.

I sent a DART during round 1, partial paraphrased reaponse:

LOA 23-10 Sec I.2-3. p13 -- it says that no lineholder above the 70% level (or 50% level in holiday months) will be subject to unstacking.

Thanks. The letter specifies the pilot. It would certainly change how people bid for holidays. First month we get to try it out will be July.

If you are a PDX commuter, do you typically pay for a crashpad?

I was thinking about finding the largest empty vacation home and just squatting. Any leads on one of those?

just check Airbnb. Look for the most open dates in a large block and boom you’re set. 😎