How about before some of you jump up and down screaming about single days off and involuntary TDY wait until you read the document tonight. These issues are addressed in it. It's not perfect...far from it unfortunately, but it provides limits to how often they can TDY into a base, changes how TDY assignments are assigned, and plenty of other things.

Read it first.

 

I have been reading through the last 6 months or so of postings on this forum and had a couple of questions that I could not clearly answer. If it is not too much trouble, I would appreciate some input on the following.

1. How hard is AVL to get out of training as your base. (I currently live near PBI but am wanting to move back to my native NC Mountains.) Is FLL quicker?

2. Does the company provide lodging during training? I believe that I read that you currently get reserve pay during training (70 hours per month).

I realize that currently there is a TA to be voted upon and that could change some of the answers to my questions however, whatever you currently know to be true would be great.

Thanks and Blue Skies.

 

Anyone have a copy of the scope section they can post?

That is the number one item of importance to any contract and I can see giving a yes vote if that section is absolutely rock solid. However, from the outside looking in this thing is pretty disappointing for any duration longer than two years. To be stuck with this for 5-10 years would be painful considering the direction the industry is going.

 

AVL is a small newer base so really hard to read as a first officer probably be easier to get depends on growth how long upgrade could be our other smaller base BLI is almost impossible to upgrade in. I think FLL is the longer to get in Florida but a lot of movement on FO side makes bases fairly easy to change and get.

Currently paid hotels in training. I believe they went to 70 hour min pay for training vs the old 2000 a month.

TA reserve min is 72 pay 53.80

 

The contract with the scope will not be out tell later tonight

 

It would not have been impossible to limit the company in how many single days off the company can make a pilot take. We get that the company says it needs that flexibility to run the company. Fine. But LIMIT how much of it they can do that per person, per month. The bottom line is to give people more block days off requires more pilots. Just about every pilot I've talked to would take a slight cut in the pay to have more pilots to staff per seat to allow more days off. To me it looks like the contract feigns that they care and want to give you 6 block days off, but then they take it back by putting in there that during peak travel they are going to screw you anyways by taking away a minimum day off from you. Come on, man! The Union signed off on that! :-/

The company and the Union are gambling that the single day issue will not be a show stopper. It just might be. The vote will dictate if they were right or not.

 

That is exactly correct! I'm not seeing anyone who expects that single days off will disappear. However; there should be a specific limit to how many single days off a pilot will receive in a calendar year, semi year; quarter; or something. If we were to hold out and limit single days off to 2-3(max) per month, or 24 per year, or ?? then this would not be an issue for so many pilots. If the single day off issue was taken care of, my vote may change. If not....then no for me. I think this is one item (as is scope) that we can not accept for the next 10 possible years.

 

I know if they were to fix that issue right there... limit to say 2 to 4 single days off a month total... the vote would probably pass by a land slide. It does not benefit either side if the TA should fail, you'd think the Company would want it to pass too.

:-/

 

You've been here a while (I think) and you've probably seen how LAS works. People that pass through LAS on Saturdays think the airline has shut down. There are no flights, yet Fridays and Sundays are the busiest days of the week. With no flights on Saturdays, how do you limit single days off to 2-3? You can't. You have to have language for at least 5 a month. The only way to get around this is to send all the airplanes out of Vegas on Friday night, fly outside turns on Saturday, then fly back to Vegas on Sunday morning. You get to spend a nice 3-day every weekend in North Bumfuq, Idaho but hey, you don't have to do single days off. There's only so many flights to work with, which do you want - single days off or 3 day trips every weekend?

 

There are ways around 3 day trips every weekend, but to answer your question...if that 3 day trip was followed by 4 days off, I'll take the 3 day trip. I like being home every night, but I'd be willing to do a couple overnights a month to avoid single days off.

They could fix it if they want to. The company doesn't want to bother to try.