You can drop trips using vacation time. For example I dropped an Xmas trip that gave me the 20-27 off in December. I think guys also use it to help with hitting IMAX but not sure. If your kid is sick you can do an EO which I think is "emergency off" and I'm pretty sure use vacation for payout for that.

Also during the year the company offers additional vacation proffers and if you have unused vacation that is a time to use it.

For the senior guys who are working nine days a month they already have a ton of vacation time just built into their schedules. Also the guys (mostly LUS and LTWA) who are close to retirement but need the money would float and take the payout - they'll soon have all the vacation in the world after age 65.

An argument could be made that since senior people don't want to use their vacation, we should decrease the top award days and increase the lower level days available.

 

With family issues your CP can take you off a trip which will automatically backfill those days with your vacation days to be awarded under the next cycle. Before the end of that month you have the option ask for these days to not be used or instead use floated vacation you had made available. This is something I have used in the past though recently there has been an “uptick” in occurrences requiring me to dig a hole into future vacation days. In the end it is still about money as bills still need to be paid even if daddy can’t work.

 

It is possible that a lot junior pilots didn't float because they didn't know what it meant. Also a lot of us don't receive APA emails.

 

Correct if I am wrong: dropping a trip has nothing to do with whether you can PVD it or not. Yes, you wont get paid but you can still drop (assuming it is green). If your goal is more time at home then I dont see floating as a way to achieve that.

Either way, 13% of the pilots floated and I bet a majority of those are just greedy

 

I think floating gets you more money, not more time at home. It basically means not taking your vacation, and just getting paid for it.

 

Yeah if you don't care about getting a pay check. Mine was $700 on this last one...not many here I would bet can live on that.

 

Thats the point I was making. Sick kid or not, I dont see floating as an excuse.

 

Aah, gotcha. Yeah, I didn't float (and never would, I don't think), but never saw any union communication about it.

 

Dropping a trip has nothing to do with PVD. The system is stacked against most having the ability to drop a trip. Yes if your trip is green then you can get rid of it but more times then not that “green” trip doesn’t exist unless you are senior. Even so if I have a 82 hour month and have to get rid of my 5 day, with a trailing redeye, due to a week+ long impending hospital stay having Something to makeup a little of the 26+ hours lost might be needed.

All that said I have no doubt most who floated did it out of greed. Last time the union ask for a no float I complied and it is part of the reason I continue to have no ability to float anymore. Lastly the same group started he outcry for publicly publishing the names of those who dodnt comply. That is the wrong move. It should be up to the union to go thru each one to find out why, not the lynch mobs right for justice.

 

I'm sorry to hear your child has complicated health issues. Which insurance plan did you choose? Do you have an out of pocket limit? I just flew with someone who had a $500,000 medical bill, he was required to pay $2,000 of that half million. Have you reached out to APA for help?

It is not BS to expect our pilots to comply with union directives. If AA went on strike would you honor it? That's a 100% paycut. Taking your vacation instead of floating is just asking you to live on your industry standard hourly pay rates. That should put you in the top 10% of wage earners in the country. Hopefully this ordeal will be a wake up call to the pilot group at large that you are either with the pilot group or against us.