If a guy is reasonably healthy and doesn't hate the job, flying 4 3 day trips a month for 50-60 hours a month is a pretty easy $100K+ a year PLUS private healthcare w/o subsidy is still VERY expensive so there is a big incentive to stay with the company until eligible for Medicare. Also, if you've done much real financial planning then those extra 3 years working makes the next egg calculations much, much more favorable than starting @ 62.

Vacation contract improvements
 

It's been awhile since I've posted here, but here it goes.

One quality of life contract improvement that should cost us almost nil would be travel during an awarded vacation period. How about one round trip PS for you and eligible primary pass members traveling with you. Book it within 1 month of travel and if Y class is available, you get it.

This crap of working for an airline with inaccessible pass travel needs to be addressed. It would be nice to travel on my own airline with my family once a year without having to pay for a 75% ticket.

The problem is we would probably negotiate it for all the employees like profit sharing or crew meals (remember what those were).

BD

yes yes yes yes yes

I sent an email to my rep about this exact thing. I know that officially we don't negotiate for the other employee groups however when we do negotiate an item for the pilot group and the company turns around and GIVES it to the other employee groups which then dilutes the item then it shouldn't be assessed against us for negotiation purposes.

For example at the beginning of C2012, RA said that we had this much money available for our contract. It was up to us to decide how we were going to portion off the money to each section of the contract. So say we actually did negotiate positive space vacation passes and the company puts a value of $15 million on that item then turns around and gives it to the other employee groups then we get that $15 million taken off the ledger.

Just my opinion.

I'd even go for a set of PS passes if you make it thru the year without a sick out. That's not enough to make me fly sick, but would be a nice pat on the back.

An S2 "vacation pass" used to get you on all but a couple days of the year. Now it just puts you on the top of the bumped list.

While I like the idea of rewards for not using sick time, it is a dangerous slope to head down.

I worked for Continental Express and if you didn't call in sick for the quarter you got your name in a hat for a Ford Explorer. All employees of Continental/Coex were eligible. Your chances of winning it were slim, but there were guys who would come to work sick as dogs so they could get their name in the hat for the Explorer.

A PS ticket once a year during vacation is a great idea. Let's not tie it to sick time though.

That is why the best thing that could ever happen to us as a pilot group would be for the flight attendants to vote in a union. Agents would probably be good to have unionized as well. Then they will have to negotiate what they get instead of getting what we pay for. I like how it isn't a two way street as well....I think everyone else gets holiday pay.

Of course the companies non pilot employee costs would go up substantially. We are making lots of money now but sooner or later it will change again. Be careful what you wish for!

So we are better off having them non-union so the company can make more money? Why don't we just go non-union then maybe they will have enough money to give us PS passes for vacation.

You do have to admit it would be in our best interests to have at least the FA group unionized so everything we try to negotiate like PS passes for vacation don't have to be costed out as if the FA's will get them as well.

Well if the F/A's voted in a union they would probably include industry standard caps in a contract. That would require the company to hire thousands of new flight attendants. They might also have to give them a lot more in DC money. They would probably have to award all flying by seniority and that would certainly hurt our highly profitable sports charter business. You would also have to deal with a service slowdown as the flight attendants attempt tp pressure the company in negotiations.
Of course we could go non Union. I suspect the very first thing the company would do is eliminate all caps for us. You can kiss your advancement goodbye for a long time! They will tell you it's a pay raise and for your own good!