Not that I don't want 5:15 a day, but if you took a month of vacation (which many do) that would pay 150+ hours. That seems a little out of whack as well.

Careful now. The pitchforks and torches will be out in force soon. But BOTH sides of the argument have good points.

In your case, a month of vacation pays you twice the normal rate. Do workers in other industries get paid twice their monthly salary for getting an entire month of vacation?

...On the other hand, workers in other industries only need use 20 days of vacation (five days a week times four weeks) to get 30 days off with pay. In your example you would have to burn 30 days of vacation to get that payout.

You'll pardon all of us if we don't lose sleep reading your "lament." Out of curiosity I actually went on the PBS reserve spreadsheet calculator using your particulars. I don't know your category, but I even assumed the lowest ALV of 72 hours. Between your vacation, 3 days of CQ (at 4 hours a day, a 15 minute improvement thanks to our new contract), reserve days off, and required on call days, you will receive 87 hours of pay. You will owe the company ten days of duty for those 87 hours. Granted you had to use 12 days of vacation to get there, but you aren't exactly on the train to the gulag here.

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Only 8 days off, NOT COUNTING the 12 days OFF of paid vacation?

Only in "forum-world" would vacation days be declared to be NOT days off by whiners.

Boo freekin' hoo
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Bid reserve during vacation months and CQ months. You will have a higher than normal reserve credit and fewer on call days.

https://onedrive.live.com/embed?cid=...oadButton=True

That is exactly what the poster a couple of posts prior has....and yet he complains that he has "only" 8 days off "not counting the 12 days of vacation" that he then states "isn't worth sh!t."

I went to that exact spreadsheet and determined that--even with a 72 hour ALV--his pay is 87 hours for ten days of obligation to the company (and three of those days are CQ).

Apparently that is an outrage, though I think your point was a good one.

I agree with the (our vacation isn't adequate) post. But... it's what we have and agreed to. The bid strategy is just a way to max out what we have. Usually you can PD a reserve day or two and still have a credit around the ALV. We'll get 'em next time but until then this is the best vacation scenario I've come up with. Perhaps there's a better one, I don't know.

I think you're right! (That's what we've agreed to) Those interested in improving vacation, remember that when you fill out your next contract survey.
I think there's some ways to improve vacation that everyone would agree to. There are plenty of people that don't want more credit for vacation. I think it would be nice to have the option to get credit or just pay-no-credit for the vacation hours. So, each day could be worth 4 hours, for example, and you could select in your bidding preference if you want 3-4 hours/day applied as credit. On reserve you could select if you want more days off or more credit for the lesser days off(8). I think the problem is most people would probably take the pay-no-credit and the staffing requirements would be lower. The upside, would be some people that value their time off more, would be able to do that.

If you give pilots the right to presell vacation and you can kiss years of advancement goodbye. As I have mentioned before you have a union for two reasons. To protect you from the company and to protect you from your fellow pilots.

I think we need rules to protect us from ourselves. If we are all taking a full allotment of time off for vacation the benefits would be faster seat progression. We can have the time off and increased pay but we need leadership to get us all on board.