Does the company even need DALPA's permission to offer a pilot early retirement program? Or is the permission needed specifically to target the 747 fleet?

The company could run a displacement bid to eliminate the 747 surpluses, convert them to a lower paying seat (A330) and then simply not ever send them to school. They could pay them A330 rates while they sit at home, vs. paying them 37 weeks of 747 pay to go early...and sit at home. The "problem" is, some of the junior most 747 Capts and F/O's are nowhere near age 65, so they have to go 'somewhere', and that's going to cause some downflow/heartburn in the A330 category.

The most junior 747 Capts. who would be displaced first can't hold the 777, so they won't be going there, fences or not.

 

Dead on.... This is exactly right! NWA had the oldest fleet in the industry at the time of the merger. The company knew that....

 

I believe they do. They cannot pay some of us more than the PWA provides without first providing for such an exception in the PWA.

I'm not sure that's true. A pilot who is displaced must be sent to training in inverse seniority order. He cannot simply be withheld by the company and left to sit at home indefinitely, unless there are simply no training facilities available, and then that "sit at home" would have to apply equally to all pilots awaiting training.

I agree with your description of the "problem."

Right. My guess is that they'll go to the 330 or the 765.

 

OK, forgive yet another newbie sched question, but I can't seem to dope this out of the PWA, LOAs/MOUs, or ALPA Scheduling Gide.

On reserve, say I get put on my 30 in 168 rest at 0030 on Monday through 0630 Tuesday. Default condition is that I begin long call again at 0630 Tuesday.

I'm assuming it would be legal to be assigned a SC period at 0630 Tuesday as long as I was informed at or before before my release for rest at 0030 on Monday.

However, if I am not assigned a follow-on activity before starting rest, when is the earliest I can be assigned either a short call start or a rotation report?

My thought is that it would be 1830 Tuesday, since contact to assign me an earlier report would violate my 30hr rest. So Scheduling could call me at 0630 and require me to report 12 hrs later.

Or is the 30 hrs treated essentially as an X day, so I could be assigned a report or SC start as soon as 10hrs, as long as it was on my schedule 9hrs prior to the end of my no-fly period?

In short, if assigned 30-in-168 without a follow-on activity, is it essentially a 40 or 42-hr break?

Thanks in advance.

 

That's it exactly. Any rest that is 24 hours or greater is defined as a non-fly-day and is therefore treated essentially as an X-day. Any you're right -- they could assign you 30 hours of rest followed immediately by a trip or short call, so long as they give you both at the same time.

 

Wow,

I guess "Its good to be King" (not referring to you Timbo) but the Whale/777 guys in general.

Why wouldn't they get treated special - what other categories got a fence? I never really understood that since the 777/Whale paid similar why the fence? All animal are equal - some are just more equal.

The company never gave a crap about displacing guys from other categories. I guess the more "mature" fleets have a disproportionate amount of clout with their 4th Floor buds.

Check said it best. We have a contract that covers this - lets try following the contract. If the contract is not sufficient here perhaps we should improve the contract?

Scoop

 

I think what is really driving this is, they are going to park all the whales sooner than they are telling us, so I can understand why the company would want to 'furlough off the top' the most old/senior 747 guys, rather than displace/train/retire them shortly, only to retrain their replacements after they go, but what about the F/O's who will be displaced?

They've got to go somewhere, assuming they are not old enough to take the early out.

Any early out program will only solve half the problem, the Captain half. Those senior F/O's will still need a place to go.

That being said, I fail to see a downside to letting 25-50 Captains go early, regardless of seniority list protections. Less displacements is good for everyone below them, right? Or how about just open the program up to any one who is over the age of 64 (or 63 or?) today, all the way down the list?

 

Thanks. Should've thought to look in the definitions, but there it is::

169. “Non-fly day” means a day or 24-hour period during which a pilot:
a. does not perform flying for the Company,
b. is not scheduled to perform flying for the Company,
c. does not participate in training, other than distributed training (including travel days),
d. does not perform an SLI duty period (including a flex day),
e. is not on Company business,
f. is not removed from his scheduled rotation for the convenience of the Company, or
g. is not on long call or short call.

And once defined as a non-fly day, the rest of the PWA verbiage in Sec 23 makes sense.

I'll figure this stuff out by about the time I retire!

Thanks again!

 

Management came to us because they needed our help. Relief. Concessions.

And we, like we always do, gave it to them.

You can like it or hate it, but pretending that management is not in a big bind with all the training coming their way is disingenuous.

 

The company obviously wants our help here, or they wouldn't even be talking to us about it, but I fail to see an early out program as a concession.

I see the loss of our highest paying jobs as a "concession". I see the Virgin code share, with them still flying 747's to the US of A, while we are parking ours, as a concession.

Now, how do we want to mitigate that concession? Do we just keep all those senior pilots, crammed down onto your equipment, perhaps displacing a lot of guys to lesser paying equipment? That would be a concession.

OR...do we let them retire early?

I don't see an early retirement program to mitigate displacements as a concession. Perhaps we should use this training waterfall leverage to help fix our JV imbalance?