I understand the perils of being able to sell back vacation. However, with kids in school having vacation weeks available in October or February doesn't really allow for using the vacation to go anywhere, or do anything vacation-like at home with them. Of course, there are pilots without kids or kids out of the house that can utilize vacations at less popular times of the year, but I'm sure they like vacationing in the summer too.

It's what it is. That's why PD, APD, IVD are all great mechanisms for getting the time off when you want.

 

News Flash- Your kids don't care if you a Capt or FO, they dont care what you fly, But they do care if you make it to their track meet, soccer game, scout camping trip, school play, star student award ceremony (dont ask), class trip, birthday party, hockey tournament, etc etc etc. Everything has a price. Do your due diligence and live with your decision.

 

I agree with you. I won't even consider bidding anything below 40 percent in category until my kids don't care anymore. Life is too short to live at work. A divorce will wipe out all your extra earnings anyway. You don't have to miss everything as an airline pilot. That's a choice when we're hiring 1000 per year. All that being said, 12 years later, I'm a narrow body first officer who has never been to Europe.

 

So I just want to make sure I understand how IVD's work (gosh that's too close to IUD's...)

If I use two IVD's to drop, say, a 4 day, I get paid 7.5 hrs (7 hrs, depending on how many vacation days I have) and nothing else? I can't pull from any other vacation days to recoup the pay lost from that rotation?

 

Correct. It's really just an extra APD, and you are shifting vacation pay from a future date to the present. But still, it's a very powerful tool and was one of the better things to come out of our last contract.

 

No. You have up to 4 days and 2 opportunities. Normally they will pull days and time from a latter vacation block. At your request, you can use vacation bank time to cover the pay and credit of the dropped trip of any length. This is an alternative and must be requested through crew scheduling. This is the same process as using vacation bank time to cover APD and PD at the pilots request.

 

Europe will still be there when you are ready to do it.

 

Trying to remember... If you're single IVD dropping a 4 day, does only the IVD day require 25% required staffing for the entire trip to drop? Or does the entire trip require full coverage?

 

I look at IVD's just like an APD..If I'm not mistaken, you can go back and buy the vacation day back after you use it for an IVD. It basically gives you 3 APD's per year.

 

At the risk of giving advice to someone who may be senior to me, you don't need to be 40% to have a life outside of Delta. As a 12yr FO, I've been to Europe, Asia and South America more than ATL. It's not because I prefer international, it's because a junior WB FO has a better schedule than a senior NB FO. Life can be pretty good at 80% on a WB. I've also been to countless events for band, football, birthdays, holidays, etc... I've eaten Turkey on Thanksgiving day and opened presents with my children on 12/25 for most of the last decade. We even have several great NYE memories combined with great summer vacations. Proper staffing and minimal optimizer impact, combined with above average PBS and PCS skills will give you plenty of options.


When your daily average credit is 6+ hours instead of 5:15, you work less days for the same hours. An 80 hour month is 13 days vs 15, so you are already two days ahead. That one week of summer vacation you paid for with 40% seniority comes for free when you are working 2-3 days less every month of the summer. When your pay rate is 10-20% higher, you can cut back on the number of hours. The WB fleets are staffed so that you can generally drop trips. If that isn't an option, the P2P drops work well. Keeping a buffer in the FSB can even out the cashflow if that is a concern.