iaflyer

I'm sorry.. was the Special Incentive Lines a "good thing" we got from the negotiations? I must of missed seeing all the pilots taking them.

Herkflyr

You missed all the pilots taking them because Ed nixed the idea almost as soon as they were agreed to by the company negotiators--"optics" to the non-cons and all that. You know, the move that almost everyone on these boards (correctly) vilified? Have you already forgotten? Kind of an important thing to remember.

Iceberg

We had sick time, but the LOA negated it’s use, as well as the look back, for Covid related absence. Pilots with at-risk family were given a way to stay home. The SILs were a joke, and that language awful. The mil pilots were given a period of time to take MLOA without it counting towards the 5 year cap. I’ll take the FRB improvements in writing vs. a past practice scenario. Hard to say we got nothing from the LOA.

sailingfun

I doubt the nuisance sick leave was a relief for the company. The program was costly. The changes to the MLOA program were above and beyond what USERRA requires so USERRA was not a factor. The FRB was a big improvement in the entire process.

iaflyer

No, I remember it well - I was bringing it up to Sailing to point out that the "SIL win" from that LOA never happened. I know he cut and pasted but he should of noted that the SIL never happened.

I think the pilots correctly saw that the slowdown in flying would be temporary and SIL would help a lot more than a huge displacement, training and reinstatement.

theUpsideDown

What's a SIL?

OHHHH I don't miss 2020

Iceberg

Amen. Amen.

sailingfun

Lets not give 60 days of SIL’s mythical status. It was a fairly small cost saving and the union specifically stated the company was allowed to post them at the companies discretion. As it turned out the company not offering SIL’s during that 60 days was probably a good thing for the pilot group as the flying collapsed far faster than predicted and a large number of pilots sat home and got full pay and in many cases above full pay as they picked up trips that never operated. It certainly provided nice checks for a lot of pilots me included.

iaflyer

About ten years ago we used to have SILs posted somewhat regularly in the winter for wide bodies. Like you said, it provided some cost savings - maybe not tons but some. A year ago it the company was trying to save every penny as refunds rushed out the door. Why not take the cost savings and tell the other departments "we need every penny" and focus on their departments for cost savings too?

Optics be dammed - we needed to save money. And SIL would have been voluntary and saved money. What's not to like about it? You could have not taken a SIL and still had your nice check. Also, it would of provided a intermediate solution between PLOA and a full paycheck for those who wanted some time off but didn't want to lose their whole paycheck.

In the end, Ed torpedoed it and ended up paying a lot of pilots to sit around, only to spend MORE money to displace them, train some of them, and reinstate them. Now we've got maybe 1500 NQAT (150 from the old AE and all the UNA) pilots ALL being paid to sit around while the seriously overwhelmed training department tries and figures it out.

sailingfun

SIL’s for those 60 days would have had little or no impact on current training. Even if we extended the SIL program it would have had a very minor impact. It’s not likely SIL’s would have been a player at all after the cares act passed. Delta’s training load stems from two things. A very generous and over subscribed early out program. The take rate caught the company by surprise. The second thing was the complete elimination of the 777 and MD88/90 categories along with a restructuring of the 7ER category. We can debate how smart the attempt to restructure a massive part of the airlines fleet overnight was but regardless the restructuring and early out are driving 95% of the training load. Just the ER program probably resulted in over 9000 training events using 5 events per pilot removed from the top. I don’t see many posters busting the company over not restricting the early out program to a smaller number of pilots.