yes it is. For instance I know one category a guy just posted somewhere else he was number 190 on the list in arcos. you tell me how a trip 3 hours out is supposed to get covered with a GS 5 people at a time when all the people that are at the top now have a blanket slip in with no intention of taking a trip? It's impossible and that's why they go to IA.

 

If only we hired 6,900 pilots the last 2.69 years…you would think the NB categories would actually have some positive Res Days…maybe even have the appropriate number of people on SC…SC can definitely make the airport in 3 hrs.

If only Flt Ops would push back against network when they present a schedule we know we don’t have the bodies to actually execute.

 

i agree somewhat, but there will always be trips covered by premium pay-it's just part of the business. the question is do we want a system where these can be covered correctly, or do we want them to rely on IA and reroutes like they've been doing out of necessity?

 

Cover it with the IA and auto-pay the guy that was bypassed at whatever step of the coverage ladder.

Why are we trying to solve this problem for them?

And more importantly why aren’t they paying the affected pilot every single time, whether asked or ACE’d? Solve this piece first (ie honoring your deal$) then we can talk about a quid for fixing the batch size.

 

why do you want a system where one person who probably wouldn't fly it anyway is getting paid? that's what is happening. also did you know that if you're above ALV or a reserve on a golden day you aren't even eligible for IA. So many people aren't even eligible for premium pay the way things are now. It's a problem to solve because it harms us more than it harms them. maybe you like getting rerouted all the time, but most people don't.

 

Your first paragraph just incentivizes senior pilots to put in blanket GS requests without any intent to work. It would become a grift and take away premium opportunities from lower seniority pilots who actually wish to fly

 

While that is A (legitimate) question, I don’t think it is THE question.

THE question for me is - Do we want a system where you can PD, move X days, fly the rotations you bid, occasionally get an extra X day on reserve, very rarely get rerouted, fly less on reserve than as a lineholder, preserve sick leave for when you’re sick and hold weekends and holidays off when you’re senior in your category? Or do we want to have to bid min credit every month because you can’t drop anything later, burn your APD early in the year, steal vacation from your future self to drop trips, fly to full every month on 17 or 18 days of actual reserve duty, get unstacked in the top 15%, delay upgrade because your QOL at 30% still won’t be good enough to see your kids?

The number of people affected negatively by an over-extended operation probably exceeds the number of folks being harmed by 23M7 by a factor of 10 to 1. Sadly the latter issue consumes the oxygen in the room. Don’t take your eye off the ball; ARCOS and batch sizes and blanket green slips aren’t what is ruining this career for those of us who want to work to live.

The company can fix just about all things with proper reserve manning. That tide will lift almost every boat, not to mention it’ll keep our airline as a passenger favorite and preserve our revenue premium long-term. The company’s addiction to revenue has the potential to ruin not just your career long-term, but our standing amongst our peers. That standing is what generates your profit sharing and your job security. Normalization of this scheduling chaos endangers a lot of goodness. “Fixing” how we pay pilots to execute glove saves should be both extremely expensive for the company and temporary.

Signed, someone who isn’t addicted to nor reliant on premium pay.

 

what if I told you that these premium trips can actually make you work a lot less? But yes I agree all that other stuff you said is great but you’ll never find an excess of reserves lying around like we had in covid. It doesn’t make financial sense to the company

 

As a scheduling committee member, we really prefer the pilot do as much as they can to advocate on their own behalf if they believe they have experienced a contractual violation before submitting an ACE Report.

Wait for your rotation to show closed on your time card. Contact crew scheduling and bring up how you were harmed and ask for a remedy. If unhappy with the answer, either politely end the call or escalate to a supervisor. If CS is unhelpful, your CPO if a great resource that has contacts they can reach out to at the company. PWA 18.B can be referenced with your CPO to start the formal grievance process yourself.

If all of that is unsuccessful, then submit an ACE report. Ideally, attaching any timeline information about your contact with the company.

ACE Report is the easy button, but ideally a pilot will take some initiative on their end.

In the 4000+ reports in the queue, there are countless simple issues a pilot could have fixed with a call to CS. (Rotation guarantee adjustment, PB day calculations, etc.)

Additionally, if CS and CPO received dozens or hundreds of calls every day about contractual violations, issues might get escalated and fixed quicker.

 

We all appreciate the work that you do. I’m all for doing as much as possible on our end to lessen your burden before filing an ACE.

However, aside from taking the company’s answer at face value, how are we supposed to verify that the proper pilots were paid in a 23M7, reroute, or batch violation scenario? Without having the same read-only access to DBMS that ALPA has, we have no way to verify proper payment of everyone involved in those cases.

I have notified CS of those issues occurring, but I also follow up with an ACE every time. I don’t trust that the company is competent or honest enough to pay the affected pilot(s) properly simply because I brought it to their attention.

Without making trip coverage reports and other resources accessible to the entire pilot group (which SHOULD happen for transparency), we lack the visibility into most of these issues that ALPA has.