This is coming from pilots that upgraded in less than 2 years and have come to the realization that they will be junior for a decade and a half. Their solution is to make the contract less seniority drive instead of downgrading or bidding a lower paid position.

 

I'm new, but it seems like there is plenty in the contract that makes seniority less of a spike and more of a ramp at this company. GS counters are a thing. Most people say they want SS counters. People are advocating to make 23M7 either a counter or add some provision that prevents the same 1 person from collecting all the 23M7 pay, and so on. That suggests to me the pilot group as a whole likes having a career that is good at the beginning and gets better. Seems to me that helps everyone. I know that having a system like United where only the couple guys perched at the top get to collect ALL the premium flying would suck. In any case, I'm not married to the idea, and it wouldn't really last longer than the 20th PCS run anyway. It would just let some folks lower on the list get to drop a bit of their schedule, instead of letting the 1 or 2 at the top get to drop everything.

 

Yeah I see your point but there are other things that aren't subject to a counter, like PBS where the #1 pilot gets whatever he wants before #2, #2 before #3, etc. I think having a counter for drops could be really messy to implement. How do you account for APDs and IVDs? What about someone who is burning PB days who is "dropping" a trip multiple times?

I think there are other ways to implement a system that has the potential to allow greater dropping flexibility for more junior people. I think Spirit has/had language that made it much easier for people to drop. Maybe there's a way to structure forced blue days after bid awards come out.

 

The problem isn't a PD counter it's the fact that there are hardly any blue days even in the "shoulder" months

 

Pre-BK, NWA had 5 hours/mo accrual and if you didn't call in sick for that month, you got an additional 7 hours (it was a little more complicated than that, but that's the simple version). So if you didn't call in sick all year, you had a maximum of accrual of 144 hours per year with no cap.

Folks were running into their late 50s (no age 65 yet) with 2000-2200 hours of sick time saved up. It wasn't hard to get a healthy bank. I used a regular amount of sick time, and I had over 1000 hours 10 years in. You could modulate your sick leave usage every month anywhere from 50 hours to the monthly max if you were trying stretch out your bank for some reason.

The intangible was if you had something that got pumped up and went the distance, the average pilot was on sick leave for about a year and a half before transitioning out to disability. During that time, you were still an active employee, instead of the sort of pseudo-retired, 2nd tier status pawned off on Harvey-Watt to deal with. There really wasn't a need for something like DPMA because you had effectively a year+ at full pay, although a number of people enrolled into a NWALPA only LOL plan (which ultimately got transferred to National as their LOL plan). I did participate in that, and at max benefit level, you had to get a physical to enroll.

Not pinging our current program at all, but that's probably what a replacement sick leave program would have to look like for starters, plus some "starter amount".

Yes, there was a version of GFB, but only for holidays or if you really brought attention to yourself like trying to JS or something. I don't remember anyone ever getting called about it. There was no sick lookback system at all.

 

And what happened to those banked sick hours in the merger....

I already know the answer but that's the reason I'm against this sort of system.

 

What's the argument FOR a rolling sick bank? Big paycheck at retirement, no thanks. Our system gives you 3 months at 90 hours top of scale. I call that short term disability... every year.

 

in my experience, getting out of flying while junior has been easier here than even Spirit. You just need to know how to use PCS really well with drops and swaps and strategically placed APDs and IVDs. At spirit, reserve pilots could not drop or move any days regardless of coverage.

 

Eww, that’s gross. No way that passes muster here. I agree, by and large we have a lot of tools at our disposal to manipulate our schedule. 3x per year you can drop a trip with will below blue coverage. With a little schedule flexibility you can play the worse-swap game. Ultimately someone is going to be flying the crappy trips on crappy days. Generally those are the junior REG and RES pilots. That’s the story of air line life for 100 years. I am moderately sympathetic to new hires who get stuck near the bottom for a while. I have no sympathy for someone who bids any NBA or WBB or WBA at or near the plug then complains about the facts of being junior in category.

 

The only point I’d make is that the bottom 25-30% of the list will always be on reserve. Doesn’t matter how long they’ve been here, there will always be a segment of the list that is on reserve, regardless of overall seniority. Being junior is relative.

looking at October, for example, there are ZERO blue days for 320A in ATL. Try swapping an X-day and it’s “capped reserve days.” I personally don’t care about flying weekends or holidays. That’s just fine, but I would like to be able to move a day off. There is no movement and no coverage. I’d like to see something change to mitigate that for the reserve guys at least a little.