Your a smart man. If you backload one month then bidding reserve the next month can be a excellent strategy. If you have vacation near the end of the month it gets even better.

 

Exactly. The contract actually doesn't require you to check at 1500 and never has. They could notify you of a rotation or SC 9 hours prior (1500) to the start of your first day of being on call. You are then required to acknowledge anything placed on your schedule by 1500 by 0200. You were required to ack that stuff by 0200 because you could ack rotations 3 hours prior to report and the earliest report you could get on your first day was 0500. Clear as mud??

So they can place anything they want on your schedule by 1500 and say they have notified you, but you are not contractually required to ack that trip until 0200. You then need 10 hours of rest because they required you to do that so it cannot start before 1200. Once you are past your first day you then just have to ack anything 3 hours prior to be in compliance.

 

Just to change the subject...

I had the pleasure of riding the aft 757 F/A jumpseat home this morning, with a crew of new hire F/A's!! Three of the 4 were on their FIRST TRIP! And the Senior Mama was hired last October!

What a great time I had talking with them. So full of excitement, and youth, and hope, with smiles all over their faces. So young, so pretty, so thin and so happy to be there!

Oh to be a 26yr. old new hire pilot again!!

I have not seen four F/A's like that on the same airplane in about 20+ years!

I'm seriously thinking of bidding back to Domestic!

Let me look at those 717 trips again....oh...wait.

 

Walking through the training center this month is the same as your flight.

Don't bid domestic yet...fly a ATL-LAS or ATL-LAX where the FAs do a turn... You'll be thinking "werent you just on my last DXB trip?"

On the last ATL-LAX I flew the >junior< FA has a seniority # under 1000.

 

So you're saying I should give my F/O's all the landings, so I'll have to go back to the training center every 90 days?

Preferably on a Friday afternoon...

 

Maybe I do not follow your point, because I agree that a pilot is responsible for compliance with the FAR's and the contract. I am not sure a pilot can waive the contract, in as much as the pilot does not actually represent himself (ALPA does) and technically is not able to amend the PWA unilaterally. Of course we know there is a great deal of looking the other way that makes any relationship function, but I think you were making a technical distinction, so, if we are getting all technical ... yes regulation can modify a PWA.

Contracts exist under the law. No contract is enforceable to the extent that it violates regulation. Regulation always supercedes a contract. In this case the regulation is more limiting than the contract and the contract triggers a response to the regulation.

Jump down to the last line of this article.

contract legal definition of contract. contract synonyms by the Free Online Law Dictionary.

Not the best explanation, but about as good as anyone is going to get this time of day

 

Wait, now I'm just getting confused.

I thought I just read that the contract stands as written? We must check our schedules on our day off.

 

No. We never have been required to check our schedules on a day off and we are not required to now...nothing there has changed. Before 117 it was smart to check it at 1500 and get a time stamp if there was nothing there. That way they couldn't sneak a SC or rotation on your schedule later in the day. 1500 was the cutoff they had to put something on your schedule for the following day, but we were not required to check at 1500, we were just required to acknowledge anything that was on there at 1500 by 0200.

Most of us just checked and acknowledged stuff on our day off because it was easier that way and if it was there at 1500 you were doing it. Now it doesn't matter if it's there at 1500, you aren't doing it unless it starts later than noon, then you are doing it. I think we all thought the 1500 check was mandatory until 117. I never even knew about the 0200 deal until 117.

 

Okay, I'm with you. That's what I originally thought.

 

An insight into the upcoming A319/320 cabin refresh. Slick! Apparently all 69 320s are getting it... that bodes well for the oldest ones' retirement being delayed. You can see the change to the aft galley that they are doing, too. Interesting. I hear the 319s will now seat around 132, which will shift the 320s in the same manner to 156. Those aft lavs look pretty tiny, though.

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