You can't deny Delta employee travel for friends and family has gotten pretty out of control, coach or not. Things have recently seemed to go well beyond cost neutral for employee travel...it seems the company is making money off the employees for something that at one time was completely free.

We use the first come first served call in system for jumpseat. Most guys seem to be ok with that system. I'm not sure it wouldn't be a good system for standby. Perhaps what is good for the goose is good for the gander.

Um no...I think this is what sailing was referring to:

A regular pilot may not be rerouted.....
into a flight segment(s) that commences after arrival of the last flight segment of his
rotation, (i.e., a tag
on flight segment) as the rotation then exists.
Exception:
A
pilot may be rerouted into flying that was
previously removed from
his rotation due to a reroute.

Family and friends. I only give them to family I don't want to ever see and friends I hate. It costs $50.00 for my family to travel all year. If my sisters or their husbands wanna fly Delta, ticket prices are low enough. I'd rather the company make money on revenue passengers rather than freeloading family members.

FCFS works well for the jumpseat, we're talking a pool of 11000+ using it. Trying to beat 80,000 other employees out for a seat would seem onerous in my opinion. Besides, good luck getting the senior cat ranchers to bite off on that proposal.

FWIW, it hasn't always been free. It used to cost $15.00 a flight segment to nonrev and there was no jumpseat at all.

The title says it all!

We will have to agree to disagree. Of course eveybodies situation is different and you don't mind the mileage based system that has gone through the roof. FYI, the Alaska pilots buddy passes come in roughly half of what Delta charges (don't bother telling me to go work there for the buddy pass benefits).

Those friends and family members who understand how the system works have really appreciated it when I could hook them up in the past and I am happy to do so. One thing we can all agree on, Delta needs to make more money at the cost of everything else. Certainly let's not see about improving travel benefits and a host of other areas because the company needs to make more money.:rolleyes:

No. You can't APD any day that touches one of the aptly-named "No APD Days", from 2 days prior to one day after (4 days total "no APD").

From the contract, 23i, "Personal Drop":

8. An APD request will be granted if, at the time of processing, the:
43 a. number of reserves available in the category is at least 25% of the number of reserves
44 required (as determined by the reserves required formula under Section 23 W., and as
45 shown in DBMS),
Section 23 - Scheduling
23-19
Exception: An APD request m 1 ay be denied regardless of the number of reserves
2 available during the period commencing two days before and ending one day after the
3 following:
4 1) New Year’s Day
5 2) Super Bowl Sunday
6 3) Good Friday
7 4) Easter
8 5) Memorial Day
9 6) Independence Day
10 7) Labor Day
11 8) Thanksgiving Day
12 9) Christmas Day
13 and
14 b. pilot has not been granted an APD since the first day of the bid period containing the
15 last anniversary of his date of hire, and
16 c. pilot has requested to drop:
17 1) a single rotation of any length,
18 2) multiple rotations totaling no more than four consecutive days,
19 3) no more than four consecutive reserve on-call days, or
20 4) a combination of rotations and reserve on-call days totaling no more than four
21 consecutive days.

It's not that I mind or don't mind. I don't EVER give out buddy passes, EVER. When we used to get the actual paper ones, I shredded them on the spot. I didn't come to Delta for the travel benefits. Personally, they don't enter the equation for me. So, as for improving the travel benefits, unless they are going to upgrade them to giving us some PS passes, I'd rather not waste what capital and leverage we have. Restore my lost pay rates and work rules, and I can afford to buy an actual ticket and never non rev again.

I understand if the benefits are more important to you, I just think we got bigger fish to gut in 2015.

We can agree (seriously this time) on your point of restoring pay. That is long overdue. The travel benefits are nowhere near the top of my list. I just see a general decline across the board for everything that use to be a perk to this career errr job.

With the airlines in a position to be wildly profitable, I just don't see where we have to horse trade every single thing. After a decade of watching everything get gutted, why not start raising benefits across the board even if every line item there doesn't necessarily benefit each of us personally?

A point of clarification. You can APD any day of the year you just can't use the APD's advantage of lowering the reserves required on the days listed. IF reserve coverage is positive you CAN use an APD to drop the day. The advantage to using an APD on those days is that APD's are run prior to regular PD's so you would be able to drop a holiday before someone senior to you that has a normal PD in the system if reserve coverage is positive.

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