Your point about the concession in max reserve is well taken, but your specifics are a bit exaggerated.

In C2012, max reserve went from ALV to ALV +15. Assuming that the company uses the max ALV possible in the summer time, the worst-case scenario is that we've gone from a max reserve of 82 (the old ALV limit) to a max reserve of 99 (15 hours above the new ALV limit of 84), for a 21% increase.

Hrk,
you can do two things to get accurate current info on this:
1. Deltanet, Scheduling/Crew Resources, PBS Bid & Award Info, on that page on the left side is "PBS Line Counts" which shows estimated then after the fact actual line-holder & reserve counts for every category, each month.

You can look at the nums and see what the absolute percentage is (if everyone bids a line) and see what it takes to hold a line in each category. It changes a bit each month, but you can look back quite a ways and I used to copy/save that page each month for exactly this.

2. You can pull up the wide-reports for various cats you're interested in and see roughly where guys get a line. This definitely changes a lot based on the season, quite often the last guy in a category can get a line during low months, as senior guys bid reserve for low work. This is getting progressively less gucci though as the reserves are "right sized" due to more attrition than inflow into most categories.

Good luck.

You can say what you want Sailing. The fact for many of us domestic guys is that we work more than we used to. I do not chase $$$ and year after year I continue to fly more despite my "Min Credit" bids. Guess if I was more senior that bid line might work.

Living the dream and on track to fly 800 hours this year. Just keep telling me my qol is getting better.

Good point there Alan, I wanted to put a number in there rather than leave it completely vague, I was thinking the min-pay for reserve. Since the major effect of this happens during the summer, using 82 is correct. I'll modify my talking points to this more accurate 21% next time I have to repost this standard rebuttal to sailing's clouding-attempts.
Thanks for your consistent use of data and sound logic to make your points... if there's one guy I'd wish was in charge of writing the ALPA Talking Paper to send out to the pilots for Pro/Con for contract 2015 TA, it would be you.

ah screw it

The fact that you are working more is probably do to the fact that we went from a airline with a large staffing surplus in the FO categories to properly staffed. There are however techniques to minimize time you fly. 67 hours a month does not seem that bad but talk to the PBS guys and use every option including the swap board to drop trips.

[QUOTE=Roadkill;1713364]Herman and Sailingfun two posts above... poor logic.
The fact that senior guys can now make out well on reserve (and thus bid it) has nothing to do whatever with the fact there was a concession that cost pilot jobs. You (sailing) seem to constantly attempt to use rhetoric to misguide and obfuscate the conversation, and attempt to drive home an agenda of "Everything is awesome, there were no concessions whatsoever".

1. It is a fact the airline used to have to be staffed heavier for summer flying, because you couldn't force guys to fly above 72ish hours.
2. It is a fact that failures in staffing during IROPS and at the LIMITS of requirements when things went wrong, are what drove min required pilots.
3. It is a fact that NOW the company INSTANTLY CAN PLAN ON 99ish hours from their reserves WHEN NEEDED FOR IROPS/BAD TIMES.
4. While this high use of reserves is seldom used, almost never, and while the AVERAGE reserve time for guys is much much less than this upper limit...It is still a fact that the company's ABILITY TO GO TO THIS UPPER LIMIT gives them a new LIMITING FACTOR worst-case planning limit that is about 43% more productive than what they had.
5. It is a fact that this seldom-used ability to force guys up towards 99 hours when needed is a huge scheduling/staffing boon to the company, and it allows them to essentially staff the airline for winter flying levels and boost up when rarely needed for summer/irop/bad-times flying.

Either you are much much less intelligent than I have been led to believe from your writing, OR... you are knowingly trying to guide attention away from this and misguide folks with your unending parroting of "Very few folks have been flying to 99 hours, so therefore it wasn't a concession!".

Again, I'll play and jump in to remind you, and all the others reading this that you're trying to misguide and bamboozle, the concession wasn't how many folks ACTUALLY end up flying 99 hours... it's the fact the company can staff for that uncommon summer weekend/irop need now with much fewer pilots.[/QUOTE


Road kill,

I agree with you that these are two separate issues. The fact that reserve goes more senior system wide basically means reserve is now perceived to be better. This does not mean that the ALV+15 was not a concession - it was, but I have to agree with Sailing on this issue, I think it is a relatively minor concession.

For one thing many categories are often short on reserves in the beginning and middle of the month, not to mention the IROP issue which you bring up and that can occur anytime during the month- ALV+15 provides no help here at all and might even make things worse. If the company tries to carry fewer reserves thinking they will fly more hours they may run out of reserves more often earlier in the month.

Second, as Sailing mentioned there were some offsets that help to minimize hours flown.

Finally, as I have repeatedly stated this concession only affects a small portion of Reserve Pilots, themselves a small portion of all Pilots.

Where we really got our clock cleaned was the 30 day summer months. If you want to talk staffing, this in my opinion is the 800 lb gorilla in the room. Using 3.3% of only 10,000 pilots was and is an instant 330 pilot concession on our most demanding staffing months.

It amazes me how many guys are more concerned about ALV +15 which in my opinion is not even the same league as the 30 day months when it comes to staffing concessions.

FWIW I am a 73N FO and I bounce back and forth from line to reserve quite a bit.

Additionally I think the 5:15/day and paying the reserves the same as line holders will also help out.

In summary: I agree that ALV 15 is a concession albeit a minor one.

Just my opinion.

Scoop :)

Agree. The total staffing concessions from C12 were around 125-150 positions, including ALV+15 and 30 day summers.

LOA 14-01's ADG increase to 5:15 will increase the staffing formula by about 125-150.

It's a wash (as of November bid period), and the increase for reserves "filling up" faster will be a good thing.

We need to keep up the momentum. ADG of 5:30-6:00 for C15 anyone?
(and apply it to trng and vac too?)

To be fair, a lot of that has to do with the decision not to hire in 2013. Quite a few understaffed categories, rolling thunder easily attainable for even middle-seniority reserve bidders. You look at the senior reserve bidders, and everyone has the first 2 weeks of the month off. They're not planning on sitting a single day of actual reserve.

That said, I agree with Scoop that ALV+15 wasn't nearly the concession that 30 vs 31 day summer months were.

Roadkill,

Exactly what I was looking for, thanks. The title "Line Counts" isn't particularly descriptive so I never looked at those files.

Do you know any place where the company tells us how big and how quickly they intend to grow a category?