A contract is just a piece of paper. Who interprets it (mgmt) and who is willing to bend it (obvious) is where the real fight takes place.

Huh? You mean kind of like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and every law that has ever existed are just pieces of paper? How the courts interpret it is important and that's why we supposedly have these excellent lawyers at ALPA.

The move from 4.0 to the 3.75 trip rig is only part of the JAN '08 change to the pairing valuation you should be concerned with. Section 2 of the CBA - Definitions - and #6, ACH should also attract your attention. Here you will see that the value of your flight day between 8 and 10 block hours will be added to the credit value of the trip AFTER IT IS FLOWN! Take a look at these pairings as examples:
8 MEM11 09JAN - Credit Value 89:49 - after it's flown - 92:06
13 MEM11 01JAN - Credit Value 70:06 - after it's flown - 71:45
26 MEM11 07JAN - Credit Value 83:47 - after it's flown - 87:33
127 MEM11 01JAN - Credit Value 82:27 - after it's flown - 86:27

I could go on and on, and I suspect RFO trips will be impacted to an even greater degree. What happened? The Company has artificially buried value in the trip that will be paid when it's flown - but not indicated when the pairing is built. This does a couple things - but of significance - it keeps R day value down. It also allows more credit hours to be built into a pairing without having to account for it until later. Your 64 hour trip with a zit might actually have been a single departure line if the accounting wasn't skewed. And, with the 13 hour split between low and high BLG, the low can still be built to 68, but the high will end up being . . . 85+. But most significant, these buried hours could be used to build more lines - flown by more pilots.

Want to get control of the manning issue? Get the split between high and low line values back to a reasonable spread. After you've done that, show the actual credit value of the pairing . . . with the total amount greater than 8 block hours being accounted for. The only additives we should see in the ACH category after the pairing is flown should be extra duty period, FAR extension, overage . . . . etc.

Yah, but if we did that...our vacation and sick leave would be worth less!!:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

I'm evidently missing something here. Is there some benefit in this change for the crewforce? (other than the obvious getting paid more hours than the pairing shows)

There is a benefit for some of the crew force. It is what our leaders like to refer to as "hidden money". Just a little something extra for some of the guys at the expense of the rest of the guys.

The argument for vacation seems to not hold any weight - just bid around those trips with over 8 hours block during your vacation - not hard to do since those trips are generally more senior and the more senior guys have an easy time bidding around.

It would affect sick leave. I see the arguments mentioned above far outweighing the impact on sick leave - did the union just have no idea how the company would play this during negotiations? Have we actually "won" any battles on the union side vs. the company lately?

By the way - just got called by the Wilson Poll center yesterday for a 10 minute phone question bank of my feelings towards primarily the Union and secondarily the Company. Wonder if we'll see these results?

Tuck,

I guess I didn't add enough sarcasm smiles to my vacation/sick leave comment.

Here are some more.:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

So, what is the biggest factor causing us to be overmanned. I submit that it is the anticipation that we will be losing the retirements. If that is true, then the retirement eligibile pilots that stick around and cause a decrease in BLG should be ashamed. Law or no law, those pilots lived by and benefited from the old system of 60 and out - and to now fatten their slice while other's get decreased is ridiculous. The Age 65 was pushed as a consolation for those who lost their pension, let's see if only those people take advantage of it. If you lost your pension and came to FedEx at age 55, that description fits you - if you came to FedEx without the age 65 legislation in your plans and you can retire - it doesn't.

The fleet plan over the next two years calls for an increase of aircraft from 358 this year, to 370 next year, to 390 the following year. Overall, we are losing 28 3-main cockpits and gaining 60 two-man cockpits - if we use the same crew ratios we'll need 42% MORE pilots to man the fleet. If you figure that some of the gaining aircraft require RFO's, then the fleet requirement for pilots increases even more.

Yes, the pilot force is not distributed where they would like it to be right now - but the manning crisis is manufactured.

Unless, of course, you factor in the loss of retirements for 5 years. So, while the over-60 people on property may not have been directy responsible for the legislation (and we know that at least some were responsible for certain allowances in the legislation), they look to me to be largely responsible for the impending manning crisis that we are supposedly facing.

There are other factors, but maybe not as large. Utilization increases have allowed the crew ratio to decrease. The optimizer has obtained more productivity per CH, and increased spreads give the optimizer even more room to do it's work without raising overall avg BLG. Hiding CH for over 8 hr block trips also allows more efficient trips without increasing avg BLG. And, probably most important, the ability of the company to drop trips into open time and have us pick them up gives the compnay the equivalent of building more lines without having to build more crews. Even if those trips went to reserves, eventually you would have to build more reserve crews to give you the extra capacity that our system needs. No, I am not saying open time is bad, but it is a factor and this is just a consideration of all of the factors that are affecting our manning. Even with all of these factors, I still think the return of the over-60's and the potential of losing 100+ retirements/yr for 5 years is the most significant of them all.

Yup. Most good grievance chairmen will tell you that a contract is only as good as a successful grievance process.