gderek

Hey guys,
A quick question. I made the mistake of having vacation and training in the same month. I managed to get a good line for my vacation. I expanded it and essentially took out 3 weeks, leaving me only one week for training.

I know that the company can't involuntarily assign training on an expanded vacation but the instruction sheet says that it can be assigned during an expansion period if bid by the pilot. There is one slot that I would do that touches my expansion.

I'm afraid if I bid that one slot then I open up other slots during the expansion which I can't do. Does anyone have experience with this. I can find nothing in the contract. I may be reading too much into this. Thanks

MalteseX

Yes. That happened to me. Vacation and training same month. The interpretation is that you have "bid" during the expansion period if any bid touches the expansion. At least that is what the crew planning guy SAID his interpretation/instructions were--he IMPLIED that the rest of the expansion that the "bid" touched "could be fair game" (his words)--don't know if he was correct, but that was what he said the marching orders were (let me inject here that this was also early in the new contract implementation period).

But what ACTUALLY happened---after speaking with him, I withdrew my training bid during the expansion. They could not or did not assign me a slot during the week I didn't have vacation/expansion. I bid a slot or 2 during that time, but I was not senior enough to get them. They just slid the training into the grace month (ie the next bid period). And I kept my original line flying that week.

gderek

MalteseX,

Thanks so much for the reply. That is what I was afraid of. I'm just going to play it safe and not touch my expansion and if I go into my grace month, no big deal.

Haywood JB

You could also call/email your ACP and ask to move your training to next month(your grace month), and deal with it then...and enjoy your time off this month.

FDX28

That happen to me in Mar. I bid plenty of options for training that wasn't in my expansion. After I had already been removed from a trip and my vacation bank had been charged, training scheduling placed my PT on the first couple days of my expansion. I called and finally got it removed and it was placed in my grace month.