This section about R day line re-construction may be some help explaining why CRS did not meet your requests?


d. A reserve line awarded to a pilot with a scheduled vacation
in the bid period shall be reconstructed as follows:
i. A pilot’s reconstructed line shall contain the originally
scheduled blocks of R-days that did not conflict with
vacation (or the vacation buffer), unless the number of
R-days in those block(s) plus the number of vacation
days exceeds the number of R-days in the bid period
(i.e., the pilot’s vacation conflicts with fewer R-days
than the number of vacation days). In that case, the line
shall be reconstructed preserving the greatest number
of originally scheduled R-day blocks as possible

 

Nope, that section was not a factor at all.

 

R days are looked at as a block of reserve and not individual days. You can not have just 1 R day. Look at how they treat training and R days, if you have training in the middle of a block of R days, the entire block gets dropped. I believe this works with the carry over days as well. The carry over days needed to be dropped during the phase in conflict for the January bid month because it effected a block awarded in the January bid month, not February. Another way to look at this is if you had RA for Jan that carrired over into Feb and were awarded a RB line that conflicted with Jan's carry over, you would stand the RA carry over and the RB days would be put into make-up.

 

I agree with you that you have to slide the month prior to knock out a TRIP with vacation. And I agree with you that you should have been able to slide your vacation days to the left and knock out the carryover R days.

But, it sounds like you elected not to do that, which is a choice. From the company's perspective, they want the carry over R days to allow trip assignment from the Sunday prior. So, what you effectively requested is an un-ueseable R day on that Sunday, or an R day they'd wind up paying overage on if they did use you.

To me, sounds like you kind of wanted the time off at the beginning of the month, but, the time in the middle of the month was the priority. And, I understand your irritation at not having your request honored. But, there is nothing that requires the company to honor your request.
And, again, the company built the JAN R day C/O lines with the expectation of a trip being assigned to carryover into FEB. So, really shouldn't be surprised that CRS has guidance to protect that interest

 

In a somewhat similar case, grievance 02-12, the arbitrator's ruling in part was based on this:

"As the Association acknowledged, the CBA gives the company discretion in reconstructing the line. The company could have honored xxxxxx's request but it did not have to do so provided that the alternative selected was 1) consistent with the CBA and 2) not the result of an arbitrary and capricious decision"

I feel that in the specifics of my case, the decision to not follow my request was inconsistent with the CBA and both arbitrary and capricious.

 

"But, there is nothing that requires the company to honor your request."

See my previous entry re honoring requests.

"And, again, the company built the JAN R day C/O lines with the expectation of a trip being assigned to carryover into FEB. So, really shouldn't be surprised that CRS has guidance to protect that interest"

Where is the contractual guidance/justification to do so?

 

I may have missed it, but why didn't you slide left 5 days and buffer the front end?

 

I wanted to be absolutely sure to have off certain days. I had no clue that the carryover R days would not be dropped. I'm new to this practice of taking vacation on a reserve line and therefore learning by my mistakes. Believe me, I won't give skeds a chance to pork me again. And I don't get even, I get ahead.

 

As to your comment of effectively requesting an unusable R day, please rethink that. Any trip that ends on Sunday would use that R day. E.G. trip that starts Sat pm, lays over and returns Sun am. The last day of any block, no matter what day of the week, is unusable for an afternoon departure with a layover, but is perfectly usable for any trip that returns on that last R day.

 

However, the reason they have carry over reserve lines is to cover those carry over trips. If you had slid and expanded your vacation during the conflict window for Jan, the company could have built a VTO to cover what you knocked out. That is the reason why trips and reserve line that carry over into the next bid month must be conflicted during the previous bid month.