This is a liitle ground school for everyone who snapps up open time as fast as it appears. When FedEx buys back vacation, AVA is available for the whole bid month. This means you get paid 150% for every trip you fly on your days off. Not the 100% pay you are getting for all that make up you are flying as you snapp up open time as quickly as it appears. Think about it guys. NO ONE should be flying a straight time above BLG or RLG in months AVA is available. Nobody should be flying carryover in AVA months. Sometime I wonder about the brain power being used here....... We could be making more $$$. I can already anticipate the responses. "The company won't approve my AVA assignment." They don't need to as long as we have brainiacs snapping up every open trip at straight time. If we all could get together on the thinking here, you would be making 150% pay. Think about it.

 

that does not matter...they have been offering AVA in the bus left seat for about a year...noone ever gets any because they have too many reserves...they will just assign a trip to a reserve..open time goes to make-up mostly

 

During AVA you should not make-up anything until you have waited to be denied the AVA, then have at it.

 

I flew with an A300 F/O that was on AVA. They put an AVA request in for the trip, immediately followed by a make-up request for the same trip. Amazingly, CRS honored the 1st request and gave it to them as AVA.

I thought that was a pretty good idea. Don't know if it would always work, though.

 

Oxymoron = AVA offered during vacation sell back. When pilots sell back vacation that creates greater manning=less trips in open time? Maybe. If max open is above a certain threshold your AVA request will be denied due to sufficient reserves on hand. Oh gee I wonder why? Maybe because everyone sold back their frikin vacation, thus more manning. Maybe that is why trips are snapped up at m/u. Look at max open, if the numbers are less than 9 usually on weekends your AVA request has chance. Better yet stop selling your vacation in the first place. One gets a much better deal when the company cnx your vacation. From the great Gordon Gecko--"Greed is Good"

 

Better yet stop selling your vacation in the first place. One gets a much better deal when the company cnx your vacation. From the great Gordon Gecko--"Greed is Good" [/QUOTE]
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Canyonman is absolutely correct! If we could make the Co. take our vacations, instead of just volunteering to sell them back, we would ALL be much better off. Considering that even at the height of negotiations the Co. never had to take anyones vacation (we fell over each other to sell them back), don't see that happening anytime soon.

On the AVA issue, from FCIF:
"until the number of trips in
open time is equal to the forecasted Reserve availability. Reserve
availability is calculated by the Reserve Forecast Modeling software"

Anyone know how the Reserve Forcast Modeling Software is programed?
Is it open trips equal max open? Open trips equals half max open?
How do we know?????

 

"On the AVA issue, from FCIF:
"until the number of trips in
open time is equal to the forecasted Reserve availability. Reserve
availability is calculated by the Reserve Forecast Modeling software"

Anyone know how the Reserve Forcast Modeling Software is programed?
Is it open trips equal max open? Open trips equals half max open?
How do we know?????"

Yep,

It's programmed to say NO....You can't do anything to your line to improve your life...

 

Have to agree. Try to drop a trip-denied insufficient reserves. AVA a trip denied max open not exceeded etc.... The same for moving R-days and stby pairings. Sometimes I do get lucky on an AVA or R-day move. The joys of a junior WB captain

 

It's my understanding that vacation buy-back (vbb), when offered by the company, is done in seniority (there's that seniority stuff again) order. So even if they announce vbb for a particular month and a particular seat, they will only buy it back from the most senior guy to the least senior guy until they have met their goals for crew staffing. In effect, most guys who put in for vbb will probably not have their request honored. As well, I can't remember when the company has ever canceled someones vacation, unless for some reason such as it interfering with training. It just doesn't happen very often.

Advance volunteer is done on a first-come, first-served (earlier time stamp) basis, however, you must go by the rules for advance volunteer or the computer will simply kick your request out. You can't put in for AV until 7 days prior to one hour prior to show for the trip you want. In other words, if you're trying to AV for a trip on the 10th of the month, where the show time for the trip is 1000 LBT (as an example), you can't submit for that trip until 0900 LBT, on the 3rd of the month.

So if you really need/want to get that particular trip, the best way still might be to pick it up in a make-up status. A lot of times if you are waiting to pick up a trip AV, and are just monitoring VIPS open time, you'll see it disappear as someone has either trip-traded into it, or picked it up in some other status. That goes double for the really good trips. Personally, I don't sell back vacation, nor do I ever do a make-up trip. Especially for things like MUS (make-up sick). But it's certainly within the contract and as such I have no problem with guys doing that. However, AV is a good thing, both for the company and for the individual pilot. The pilot makes time and a half, and the company gets someone to fly that trip, without having to use a reserve guy on it, thereby giving them additional flexibility. A win-win situation, except it could be argued that by picking up these extra trips, you deprive another pilot from getting hired here. But (IMHO) as has been the norm in this industry, no one really cares about guys not already on the property.

 

I've had it explained to me by several schedulers on different occassions. The best I can explain from what I think I know from what I think they said (enough qualifiers yet?) is that they look at every trip in Open Time and identify 2 Reserve pilots that could fly it. This would depend on the period (RA, RA+, etc.) that the pilot is covering, and the number of days of availabilty he has. If there are 2 pilots for every trip, they're covered. If there are fewer than 2, you will not be able to drop an R-day. If there are more than 2, you will not be able to pick up a trip at AVA.


And then there's the exceptions.






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