If you are on reserve, by definition they cannot inverse assign you.

If it takes them wasting manpower to do jetway assignments to reserves/regular line holders going into off days, so be it! (How many got that reference!):)

Denny

Sure they can. They can catch you on your last day or two on reserve and inverse assign you into your off days. They nailed guys that way left and right during the no overtime campaign. Getting you in the jetway is not hard also. They send a message to the gate agent working the flight. 727 guys once escaped using the airstairs. Hard to do these days.

The only time I ever got to ride in the "Beep-Beep" cart.:D

This exactly. Why take away both our flexibility and our earning power?

...now trip "parking" and selling the primo trips to your junior bud still sucks and should stop!

Some guys don't realize that the current movement will not continue forever. We hired 4000 in the last four years - in two more years we will probably hire another 2000.

So 6000 guys in a six year span - this will really slow down any upward movement for those that are at the tail end of this movement, even if we still hire steadily for retirements.

It will be interesting to see how many of those guys would like to enable some Pilots to fly up to 100 hrs a month so they can have "flexibility."

It may take a while but when the movement slows more will become aware of the phenomenon referred to as the "tragedy of the commons." :cool:

Scoop

Exactly. The Union has a duty to protect you from your fellow pilots....and from yourself. ;)

The idea that a limit to manipulating a schedule is a good thing and necessary is completely wrong. WS are limited not allowing additional time. If a swap is the only way to get the schedule you want/need those limited instances are acceptable to me. I don't think many pilots are exceeding the limit by this technique with the intent to work more.

My opinion is there is no need for a fix. I think learning to use your seniority effectively is an art. Changing the rules to limit flexibility is not the way to go. I would say trip breaking is the answer, scheduling does it all the time, why shouldn't pilots be allowed?

Philosophically I am against stopping pilots from working as much as they want. I am also against restricting pilots from dropping their whole month and picking up a different one, if they didn't like what happened after PBS. I am always surprised how much pilots want to control their piers in terms of productivity to justify their version of how the job should go. If someone wants to white slip I say do it. If they want to white slip out of base do that too. If the company wants to staff in a leaner fashion since we have a bunch of hungry pilots that want to work hard let them do that. At the end of the day staffing won't change much and profit gets chopped up at the end of the year and less pilots means more individual profit.

Staffing would change dramatically. When we eliminated the hard cap for pay purposes we lost a large number of jobs and pilot productivity soared. Average number of days worked per month also soared. We are flying about 25% more block per pilot than 20 years ago. Back then 600 hours of block was about the yearly average. Now it's about 800. Go back to 600 and we need 3500+ additional pilots. Go up to 900 hours and we can cease all hiring for a year or more and can displace 700 CA's back to FO.