Ah, so basically the question is moreso if I could hold a May vacation, rather than the specific week? That sounds like a good sign. Apologies for the basic question, I am a newbie to y’all’s system (currently a CJO holder).

Ask away, ignore the haters and welcome aboard!

Congrats and welcome aboard. Generally summer vacation weeks go quite senior. Depending on the category and base, Memorial Day weekend is in a “bridge time” to summer, but still won’t likely be available to you for a while on the initial vacation bid. A vacation earlier in May, with an in-month ‘slide’ might be doable.

Keep in mind, vacation bidding starts in January for the following vacation year (Apr-Mar), and vacation will be prorated down below 2 weeks if not in property by 1 Apr. If prorated below 2 weeks, you will have to take it all in one stretch. In other words, if you get hired today, you won’t get a full 2 weeks for the 24-25 vacation year and will have to take all those days at one time.

The #1 pilot probably wouldn't be able to hold 3 weeks in the summer because of the way we bid. You could bid for 1 or 2 weeks, and buy up to 10 days to add to it though. You can only bid for 2 weeks at a time, and every other pilot gets a chance at their primary vacation before you can bid for your third week. But if you buy the extra vacation days, they are automatically approved if done before the vacation bids. Then you can stick them where you want them, with some exceptions in April/May, December, and January bid periods.

It took until above 50% in category to be able to hold a week in the summer though, so it might be a while until you can hold anything. You can always try and swap your vacation with others, but probably not very likely to get a summer one.

I’m not sure that’s true. I plopped 4 weeks down this summer via my primary. It was the end of July into August so maybe that helped?!?

85% NYC 320A. Was probably 90% or so when vacation bids went int.

5-18 JUN Vacation (late op'd into day 1, so they slid my vacation a day right that's why it's Mon-Sun vs Sun-Sat)
19-24 JUN X-Days
25 JUN PB Day (from late ops)
So I'm off 3 weeks straight, in June.

New enough that I didn't get 3 weeks of vacation in the old contract, so I can't tell you if I got 3, but I was able to get awarded 2, and bid for and get another week of X days after.

Great data point appreciate it.

We also have IVDs. Individual vacation days. You can use them on two separate occasions and can use a future vacation day to drop a trip. I’ll be doing this next month to get a week plus off. You lose some pay obviously but I can pick up in other months to average out a low month. Only real limitation is you cannt use it around certain holidays. Ie July 4th. Great tool though if you can’t get a vacation week where you want.

There is no 2 week limit. From the SRH:

IVDs are the undisputed heavyweight champion of getting the summer time you need off. The above cannot be overstated. if you want summer weeks off, use an IVD if you don’t have vacation. Bank time or work around the IVD. It’s not perfect but you can have summer vacations here without too much hassle.