Seems obvious you are right. The collaborative/constructive engagement with the company has ceased to exist.

Get ready for a long section 6

That is an exaggeration, and you know it.

That is incorrect.

Who gives the CP the list? ALPA, or an over zealous manager on the 4th floor? Why should a CP's complaint about stupid things they are forced to do be a concern of ours?

Are you suggesting that each pilot has no say or accountability in their sick calls? Really? ALPA doesn't issue our Medicals. The FAA does. If you don't meet the medical requirements, call in sick. If Delta won't pay you for it, contact ALPA. Unless you are suggesting that no employee has ever called in sick when they weren't actually sick, then perhaps this would be a good time to acknowledge that employers have the right to verify some sick call occurrences - at this airline, and at others.

Can you post which FAR guarantees our pay when we call in sick? If Delta is making you fly after you tell them you are sick, that might be a good time to call the FAA. But if you believe you should be calling the FAA because Delta is making you verify a sick call, or because Delta is not paying you for sick time, you might not fully understand the FAA's role in this.

As you touched on, the contract also states that you do not have to acknowledge an assignment until 3 hours prior to report. So by requiring that we acknowledge within 2 hours, they would be in violation of the contract as well.

Insisting on compliance with the contract on one part, ignoring it on another. Is the 3 hour prior part going to be defended by us or at minimum changed retaining benefit for us? Why would we have no leverage here? They are violating the 3 hour prior clause of the contract. Why do we have to give that up, and they keep their part?

As some other posters mentioned some pages ago, one way the FAR and "our" part of the contract can be complied with is by getting an assignment, having 9 hours to respond, then getting the the required 10 hours rest. Yes, this turns long call into a 19 hour deal, but one way that could be compensated for is by increasing the number of reserve pilots (hiring more), so they can have more on short call on any given day. Or another possible way is long call can be extended to say, 15 hours, allowing a time greater than 2 hours to respond. Of course they want to insist on implementing it per the sd letter for their benefit, which is to be expected.

Are we going to defend our part of the contract they want to ignore?

It appears from the case law that somebody posted pages back that an increase in costs due to regulatory change is not a valid reason for ignoring a contract (if I am remembering correctly). That seems like a good place to start on our part.

The problem is, which is more restrictive? If you follow 23.S.5 (able to report) then you will, by default, meet the less restrictive acknowledgement requirements. If you follow JUST the acknowledgement requirements you could possible be in violation of the "able to report" requirement.

This contractual disconnect could be a MAJOR problem going forward with a bunch of pilots possibly being caught in the crossfire. SD's letter is not mandatory reading. I'm sure there are tons of guys out there who have been on reserve for years and who feel that they completely understand the nuances of their contractual requirements. If they didn't get/read/understand SD's email they could get burned.

Define "secure enough."

Andoid is just a Linux distro.

Linux is secure enough to operate the International Space Station and is the basis for most (if not all) of the military use secure network infrastructure except for some that runs wild stuff like Intel iAPX 432. A big topic of conversation among security experts at the moment is whether any new hardware is secure. There is a lot of paranoia about the largest spying agency of them all, the US Government, having exploits that become systemic vulnerabilities once bad guys figure out how to employ them. That whole conversation goes over my head very quickly and I'm not sure the US Government could have people forcing chip makers to install vulnerabilities ... but then again, if someone had told me in the late 1960's that the US Government cared about who Martin Luther King got blow jobs from, I'd have thought them a bit nuts.

Anyway, anything is more secure than a Delta jet full of $10 an hour non english speaking outsourced employees with questionable credentials. If they can steal the candy (FA treats) out of my zipped shut bag down in my FO cubby hole, there isn't anything on that jet which is all that secure.

If it were me, I'd care less about EFB security and just build the thing so it was a push device with no PHP access back into the servers on the operations side. Use a screen with revision dates and let pilots verify, just as we do now. Delta's wanting to make this thing a lot more complicated than it need be to sell upper level management on the concept that it is not a "toy." Meanwhile, we build a 45 function Swiss Army Knife out of Unobtanium (which RT on ARM will be) when a butter knife is sufficient for buttering our bread.

Just my opinion and I'm uneducated on the status of the EFB program. Can't recall who posted that was working on the device. I'd would love to hear their opinion of MS's funeral notices for RT.

Frankly, something like this could do the job very cheaply and effectively. Good alternative to a cloud based software distribution. With this, the distribution gets a lot easier. Then it's just as easy as an enhanced BYOD.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...-20&ascsubtag=

True, but the contract doesn't say that you have to acknowledge AT three hours prior to report - just that you have UNTIL three hours prior. You still "must be able to report for an assigned rotation which reports no earlier than 12 hours from the first attempted contact by Crew Scheduling."

Again, they are leaning on the "able to report" requirement (also contractual). Being "able to report" includes, among other things, that you are legal to report. By not acknowledging an assignment outside the 10 hour window, YOU are making yourself illegal for the rotation - and therefore, "unable to report." That puts you in violation of the contract. They don't have to unilaterally change the contract to REQUIRE a 2 hour acknowledgment window - the "able to report" clause along with FAR 117 requirements, takes care of it for them.

And, yes, I did change my tune from some of my earlier posts. I'm not sure we have the leverage that I once thought - but I really, really hope I'm wrong.

The regs are changing. Delta probably feels like they are getting punished by the government. That is their problem.

They obviously believe that ALPA agreed with them that reserves have 18 days on call, with 2 different "leashes". The new regs could result in reserves having less than 18 days on call.

If we agreed to 18 days, we should work with them to come up with a notification requirement that eliminates the contractual disconnects you mention. If we believe this is a huge windfall, and reserves should be able to shave off 3-4 days of on call because of the new regs, then the flt operations policy will lead us to an arbitration that we might win or lose, depending on how an arbitrator reads the contractual disconnects you mention.

Since ALPA signed it into the contract, fuhgeddaboutit.

I don't use much sick leave (knock on wood) and none since the new contract. Is the harassment really that prevalent or is this more of a forum phenomenon?

I see you're back to posting bad information again. There is no 30 minute buffer. It's closer to 20 minutes as there are a number of days on the 320 and 737 that approach 8:40. Atl-las is a turn next month on the 737, and on the 320 there are piles of 3 leg days approaching 8:40.

Far west coast is out of the question still out of Atl,but it opens up a lot of the Caribbean and Central America that was once double crewed... As well as longer 3 and 4 leg days.

Imho The only real way to sharpshoot on your last off day prior to reserve day is to do your sked check as close to 1500 as you can, and remember that you have no further obligation to check you schedule or be contactable for the rest of the day. At 12:01, they can assign you a trip or SC, and if legal (per fars and contract), you are obligated. That part has always been that way. We will see what happnes in the future.

You may want to get in the habit of taking a screen shot or printing your schedule when you do your check.


There are times when they will call after you have done your sked check on your last day off to try and change what you had (LC to trip, SC to trip, etc,). A fishing expedition to see if they can get someone/or someone wants to acknowledge and report for something they would not have had to per their original assignment. There are times when they are indeed just giving you a heads up so that you don't have to be disturbed at 12 in the morning if you don't want to, but sometimes it is the fishing expedition.