I feel your pain, this coverage dumpster fire has destroyed my QOL vs pay situation. I’m on the A side of my fleet so nowhere worth going to.

If I were you I’d seriously consider taking the upgrade. 35% isn’t high enough to guarantee much these days(that’s where I am as well), and being an A is awfully nice. If things gets “back to normal” I’ll bet you can still credit surf as an A somewhat (gonna have to whip out all the trip dropping tricks), and if they don’t get better at least you’ll be making A wage.

 

I keep seeing people predicting that the company will never implement QS but just drag things out into and through section 6. Personally I think that's just ridiculous. The company has motivation to get QS done in a timely manner. Yes, getting sick lookback back is one driving factor. But I think an even bigger driver is having a way to quickly and efficiently cover trips with minimal crew scheduling handling. How many flights are delayed, or even cancelled, because pilots are sitting on hold for an hour+ just to talk to a scheduler to get an IA? IA's drive probably several hundred phone calls a day (from people who eventually get the awards and from ones who miss out) that bog down the phone lines and take up crew schedulers' time. The company would love to get rid of auto-accept on slips, and this is their first bite at that apple. Plus I'm no expert but I can't imagine that QS programming would be all that extensive. It's basically a GS that pays even if under the trigger and you just remove the auto accept/auto ack options from the slip request input. I get that it's not just a simple copy/paste/tweak of the GS slip step programming but still it's not like it's a complete reinvention of the wheel. Everything I've heard points to Q2 2026 for QS, and it wouldn't surprise me to see it even towards the end of Q1.

 

despite the threats from the union, as long as this dumpster fire continues pilots are going to make deals. At this point they have too.

 

This.

Eliminates several problems in one. Gives the extra pay to the pilot who intended to fly the trip, puts it under a leveling mechanism, and prevents overlapping payments.

 

Deal making is absolutely a scam. To that there is no debate.

One pilot getting compensated for being bypassed 7 times in one day when that pilot could only have physically done one is also a scam, albeit, for now, unfortunately, contractually compliant. It is a legal scam that needs to be fixed asap. It is directly harming other pilots and stealing money they are owed and giving it to someone for absolutely no legitimate reason.

 

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

 

While contractually compliant, it is still a complete scam. It’s taking money out of the pockets of some pilots to give to others. Seniority doesn’t mean you get 7 trips in one day that’s asinine.

 

I think May was mentioned but until we have, we don't. I doubt the rush to institute it especially after section 6 opens. There's no cost savings for the company. That said, it needs to be right. Identifying the proper pilot for payment needs to be correctly automated, that's the unions call I think.

 

It’s a flawed system, but anything that a pilot can do by typing into icrew for a couple minutes is in no way a scam. It would be silly not to do it. I’d do it too if I wasn’t a low seniority reserve bidder.

calling scheduling and fishing for IAs is totally a scam.

just two entirely different animals IMO.

 

You realize the pilot who received 7 M7s in one day had no control over that, right? His/her name happened to be in the right place on the trip coverage report 7 lucky times. They simply had a blanket slip in like everyone else.

To say that pilot actually took money from other pilots is completely disingenuous and incorrect. You can slam your fists down on the table and call the contract unfair as many times as you’d like. But when you falsely accuse other pilots of scamming or stealing, you’re playing right into management’s hand by being ignorant of the contract and shooting inside the circle.