biigD

I'm a junior line holder and don't like to fly more than 10 days per month. Since I'm too junior in my seat to build a good schedule with PBS, my MO is to drop down to as little flying as I can, then pick up a trip here and there to get me to where I want to be. It's been pretty nice, actually. Obviously all that is going to come to an end for me, and I think I'll likely go back to bidding reserve and combine that with judicious use of sick-if-needed. But to your point, I do agree that we'll never see a contract as long as the company can fly the schedule and train the newhires. I don't begrudge premium either, but between even our hardcore union guys gobbling up all they can and all the folks stepping up to get abused as check airmen, why would the company give us anything more than what we have?

I was at one of those crew room TTS training/Q&A thingies yesterday and they said it was true. If you want to reduce your schedule, it has to be done during the batch process. With all the premium out there, I don't see a lot of folks trying to trade into bigger trips for straight time, so I have a feeling that I won't have much luck going smaller.

Andrew_VT

You and everyone else (the tricks to drop a schedule to zero have been widely known for awhile). The company hates this because then they have to offer lots of premium.

It's no wonder the company wants to change systems. Lucky for them APA gave this to them in 2013 in the name of 'honoring seniority'.

I'm actually amazed that the company never managed to fix the TTOT glitch that people use to do this.

Setspeed

Fix the glitch?? The company software is built on glitches.

biigD

I didn't realize it was a glitch. N4TL gives me a list of trips I can trade a trip with. I select one. Some are fewer days of work than the trip I'm trading out of. I never knew it wasn't supposed to be that way. Can't pilots at other airlines do the same thing?

A third of the list was hired after 2013. I don't claim to be the sharpest tool in the shed, but I can't be the only one being caught flat-footed by something the APA apparently gave away a decade ago.

Armyguy

Fellow schedule dropper here. You say "If you want to reduce your schedule, it has to be done during the batch process". Can you explain? What is the "batch"process?

Arado 234

My trips are always Redder. Not much to trade with even at the Master Base. Bottom line Holder seniority CA DFW D.
Not once have I read where this d@mn red/redder crap has been addressed by APA. I guess they are just too busy picking up premium trips.

biigD

Probably using the wrong terminology, but I just mean the twice a day TTS run that's currently in place. It'll allow trades into trips of fewer days, but I think that's predicated on the trip you're trying to trade falling into someone else's preferences on their ballot. It's the realtime implementation of TTS that'll prohibit such a trade altogether, and what I'm mostly worried about - as TTOT has been my tool of choice in making junior lineholder life more bearable.

biigD

No kidding!

Armyguy

I agree. Staying in a senior base because I am
scared of no TTOT. Management can go to h@ll

thrust

Who is “you”? Pretty much nobody expects a TA any time soon, mostly because of the clowns at AA mgmt, more so than the clowns at APA.