Max pickup
 

I thought I understood max pickup but now I am in doubt as I don't do this very often. Bottomline, I did not think that picking up trips off of the swap board reduced max pickup. I picked one up tonight and noticed that my max pickup had been reduced by it leaving me 8 hours and change. Now I cannot WS anything else this month other than a one day. Is this correct? I called scheduling to confirm and we went in circles not understanding one another.

You can swap above max pickup, but are still limited in WS pickups by that time cap.

Also IB the parade of people telling you that you’re hurting yourself

Max pickup is the limit you can WS.

If you take a trip off the swap board, you're not limited by max pickup.

Now that you've taken a trip off the swap board, that credit is on your line and reduces your max pickup, as you've seen.

Therefore, yes, all you can WS now is a 1-day trip, as long as it's under 8 hours and change.

Edit - what OOfff said, both comments

You can, however, pick up another trip off the swap board to exceed the max pickup.

EVERY trip you pick up on the swap board goes towards your MAX pick up time. The ONLY difference is open time has a cap (max pick up) and the swap board does not.

What about swap with the pot? If you have only a couple hours remaining in your WS Pickup limit, can you do a SWP into a trip that increases your credit by, say, 10 hours?

IMHO the pick up limit should apply to everything, including swap with pot, swap board, swaps between pilots, etc. All this pick up above the limits is costing jobs and advancement.

Vacation should also be pay and credit!

I’ve heard this a lot but I don’t know what it means. Can someone please explain?

I never pick up additional flying so I’m lost on these nuances.

Think of all the jobs and advancement we could create if the monthly cap was 65 ! And NO flying above !!

Yea, that's the ticket ..."we need to protect us from ourselves" !

"It will help more pilots therefore, it must be good"!

"Free market be damned...socialism for all" !!

"Equal pay for all pilots"!!

"I don't want to work any more", therefore I WILL try to restrict you from working more so that I can feather my nest with no extra effort due to more rapid progression, and restrict your unbridled ambition to seek the bestest for your family thru extra work.

"Get the placards out let's march in true union fashion.....get the inflatable rat"

You should consult for EB himself.

Yes it should be.

Why not just get rid of the Union??

I’m not against having a fair pick up limit. If you think the ALV plus 15 is too low, fine. But the limit should be the limit. There should not be loopholes around it.

News flash. Unions are the antithesis of the free market...for a reason. Next time you see a DPJ pilot, pick their brain about their working conditions and pay. Then imagine that but at mainline.

You misunderstand,

This in not against the union at all. In fact it is the opposite. I fully support the union and the collective bargaining agreement that was membership ratified....You know , the one that has allowed us to fly back vacation and swap with the pot above ALV+15. It has been the status quo (because it has been in effect since around PBS intro....so a lot of years) for a long, long time.

So, if the membership wants to tweak provisions that materially effects bidding seniority, I have no problem....just allow at least 2 years prior to implementation so I can bid to a category that pays much more hourly because my category super seniority will be worth much less.

I'm always thankful that there is a way for me to easily dump a trip on the swap board when there isn't reserve coverage, as well as the ability to pick a trip up


The bit about the union is in reference to bygone era's (stories from my dad) where the employees would go down to the union hall and get all spooled up and then take a strike vote based on emotion and beer....you know...kinda like the mindless drivel and angst about the union "studying", "exploring" ways to increase retirement income and then it gets bastardized into something unrecognizable here on the forum. My union would be negligent NOT to at least explore opportunities for more and present them to us in an impartial manner.

Wow. Sounds like the trough is empty. Or his/her scotch glass.

Pay...you get paid for your vacation:D

Credit....you don't get credit so you can WS those hours back and increase your pay...see above!:cool:

example...80 hours cap....25 hours vacation...55 hours credit/80 hours pay....pick up 25 more hours...get paid 105:eek:

Ah got it, thanks. That sounds like a lot of work.

Yes. Swap with the pot DOES NOT have a cap.
i.e. You have a 2 day. your P/U Max is 3 hours. You can swap your 2 day for a 5 day and increase your pay by 15:45 even though you MAX P/U was only 3hrs because there is no cap on Swap with the pot.

It’s the same amount of work you’d have in any 80 hour month

As with most PWA issues there are trade-offs. I bet some of the guys who were recently displaced from various categories might have a different philosophy about some guys flying 90+ hours each month. :cool:

Then again many Pilots can't seem to see a connection between these two issues.

Scoop

Or they see the correlation and acknowledge that it s already baked in due to long standing status quo

It appears that the naive pilot that bids the very bottom of the list to try to increase hits revenue, and then wants to change the rules, is complicit in trying to gore someone else's ox to line their pocket(who's being greedy now)?

It is only the new hire that is at the bottom of a category list thru no fault of their own....all(mostly) other have chosen their poison.

Scoop, I know, I know....the union needs to protect us from ourselves. Let's start with 12 hours bottle to throttle! Slippery slope, isn't it? I mean that would be for the good of all pilots wouldn't it?

True, except you've basically nullified your vacation. Guess that's no a huge deal since the vacation "week" is usually only 4 days but still.

Let's get rid of all work rules and FAR's for that matter, and let the go-getters fly to whatever "IMSAFE" standards they want, for great success.

I don’t know about that Scoop- When I was furloughed I seem to recall my “union” telling me and my fellow furloughees that flying high-time has NO EFFECT on pilot staffing... Were they incorrect about that?

So, if I fly a 13 day trip that is a spill over trip and block in on the the first day of the new bid month with 35 hours of credit for the 1 day in the month....and I have 2 weeks vacation worth 49 hours starting on the 18th...my total pay time is 84 hours. Just how many days off do I need in that month...i have 29 days off...worked 1 day, and somehow that offends your sensibilities that I fly back that vacation time in the next 17 days. If that is working too hard, then stay home. Just don't try to insinuate that I am depriving other's of faster advancement because I am the one who is greedy.

I bid a base/equipment/position based on a lot of factors. When you want to change the game...fine. As I said before, just allow a couple of years for pilots to account for the paradigm shift and get positioned into their new utopia

Are you seriously suggesting that the max pickup limit is a result of a search for safety?

My initial gut feeling is to agree with this. As I've said before, if we're talking about exceeding max pickup via swap board, it's flexibility that is completely controlled by the pilot. If we're talking about the C2012 gem of reserve assignment to ALV+15, we're talking about flexibility allowing more productivity completely controlled by the company. Which is worse? Scoop's going to come on here and say "but no one get's assigned to 99 hours on reserve". While that's debatable, the fact that the company can (and has been regularly) assigning reserve guys to ANYTHING above ALV - even one minute - should be a huge problem for people. But senior guys who have a choice of line or reserve, can't see that argument unless it affects their pay check.

All the guys finding ways to crank out way over max pick up, I sure hope aren’t also complaining about slow upgrades!

Dirtdiver,
"complaining about slow upgrades!"

What the eff you talking bout Willis?

I'll bet there are more complaints coming from guys that have upgraded to junior captain and don't see more junior guys showing up below them on the list.

What do you think?

Scoop

why could we not have our max pickup be based off flight time instead of the credit? In my case for this month I'm unable to pick up any more trips because even a 1 day (5:15) is too much yet my actual flight time is way less. If we could make total time be the factor and not credit that would allow me to pick up a lot more. Don't misunerstand Im not advocation eliminating credit, which is awesome, just removing credit as the limitation for max pickup.thoughts?

You don't want to remove credit... just jobs?

Excuse my newbie ignorance and feel free to correct me, but why should there be a cap on picking up from the swap board? Aren't those just trips posted by other pilots, so the entire transaction is pilot-to-pilot and of no benefit to the company? The only beneficiaries are the pilot getting rid of the trip and the pilot picking up the trip, correct?

Thats not what I said and I don't like what you are implying.
I specifically said I don't want credit removed for pay purposes but if the system looked at my rotations flight time I would be able to pick up more trips. I don't want credit removed. Im at 86-ish hours of credit yet I'm not flying anywhere near that in actual flight time. So, if you think having me willingly pick up another 15 or so hours of flight time is somehow destroying the industry so we can simply just have bodies on the seniority list for the sake of having more bodies on the seniority list than you and I see things rather differently regarding how business operates efficiently. Adequate staffing is critical but just having more people on the list is not cost effective and actually hurts us. Workers comp, insurance, medicare, social security etc. are all costs an employer has to take on for every employee. So while I'm all for adequate staffing don't tell me that if I want to work a little more that I can't so we can simply hire more people.

That would be correct. But what happens is guys posting a trip on the swap board because there is no reserve coverage to just straight drop. After someone picks it up from the swap board, the pilot will go shop for better trips on open time with his new “free time”.
So in essence everyone is flying more and less staffing is needed. Some argue that QOL decreases since everyone is flying more.
We have 14,500 different opinions here at Delta. If it’s in the contract, do it as you please and don’t worry what people say. If you enjoy time at home, then post on the swap board. If you like extra $$, then pick up whatever you want and enjoy the $$.
You will always hear both sides of this argument. Everyone is different. Do what works best for you and your family as long as you are following the PWA.

Any chance you're new to the industry?

You don't seem to grasp what jobs loss means. It's not just adding people behind you. It's needing fewer WB captains too (I'm making an educated guess you aren't yet a widebody captain...I could be wrong).

You know all those retirements that you're expecting, and all that upward movement you see on the near horizon? Productivity concessions like those you're proposing will delay and slow your own movement into those slots. Depending on the severity of the productivity concession, the company could replace 100 retiring pilots with only 90 pilots AEing into those jobs. See how that works?

If you're busting your budget on 86 hours per month, you might just be living above your means. Maybe think about a different side job instead of diluting the rest of ours? If it's not about the money and you just want to fly more, maybe you could jump seat some place exotic?

So I'm not telling you can't fly more "so we can hire more people." And I can't tell you how to vote. I encourage you to chat with your reps and let them know how you feel - we do better as a union when folks communicate their wishes up the chain. But please do some deeper thinking about how the changes you seek will affect you now, your long-term future, and the future of your union brethren. There are reasons the hard cap (75 hours?) of old was a good thing... that wasn't just to have more bubbas at our PUB events.

If you want Delta to be more efficient and only pay you 86 hours for actually flying them, you'll find unlimited friendship on the 4th floor!

In a simple way, what I put in bold above, is the overall goal. Maximizing credit while keeping actual flight time to an overall minimum.

I certainly don't bemoan you for wanting to pick up an extra 10-15 hours, but I think what you need to keep in mind is that if MAX Pick Up was based on actual flight time, a good degree (in my opinion) of pilots would be picking up that extra 10-20 hours of flight time each month. Undoubtedly that would have adverse effect on the seniority list.

It wasn't too long ago when pilots were trip parking as a workaround to MAX Pick Up. I'm not a particular fan of being allowed to pick up flying over vacation either (glad to see it's not allowed).

If it's in the contract have at it, no complaints here, but we need to be careful about all these "productivity" flying opportunities in search of a few extra hours each month.

Not sure if your new or now, but most of us realize that extra 10-15 hours means a lot more to someone getting by on first year salary as opposed to someone who's on the 12 year pay scale.

Many years ago had a new hire engineer complaining ALPA was hurting his family. I asked why. He said the hard cap we had prevented him from flying more. I asked how much he would fly with no cap. He replied with credit hit could hit 120 hours a month. I asked him how much he would make at 120 a month. He said 4800. I replied that he was incorrect as his pay would be zero because he would be on the street furloughed. I don’t think he got it.
You have a union for two reasons, to protect you from the company and to protect you from your fellow pilots.

Yup, that just about sums it up.

We can be our own worst enemies.