I'm going to make a few leaps here without looking at the contract... (dangerous, I know), but I believe there is a restriction in PBS that prevents it from scheduling you for more than 18 days on duty. When you tell the system that you are on mil leave for 20 days, it treats each of those days as a day on duty, therefore it can't give you any more duty days. Of course, I could be wrong...

KC- I think your best course of action if you want a full line in addition to your mil time is to wait to drop your mil until after the schedules come out. I know, they want you to do it earlier, but they can't force you to do that. In fact, there really is no such thing as a request for military leave. By the law, all you have to do is tell them when you're going to take your leave. There is no reason at all to take mil leave on a scheduled day off. You are not abusing military leave if you do it this way.

Look at it from another angle as well...let's say you had six days of hard mil duty for something like a mobility exercise or some other such exhausting crap that nobody likes to do. Would you really want Delta to make you fly a full 72 hour line in addition to that? Reducing your required line value for military leave is a good deal in the long run. Might not seem like it when or if you are struggling to make ends meet on 3rd or 4th year pay.

I flew with a 757 capt. about a year ago that took the PERP. He said he couldn't take it any more and would rather farm for a living. He's been gone for several months already. He was 53.

Nwaf16dude:

Thanks for the response .. and I agree with you. I think it deducts time so you don't get slammed in any given month.

I'm just trying to maximize my paycheck by doing as much as I can in my youthful years with both DAL and USAF. I just need to use ACL's advice of using my seniority to bid around the days I need off for MLOA. And if it doesn't work out, then drop the trip.

Thanks

Denny, I think you said it best. It works exactly like a vacation pre-award but yes we aren't paid anything. It just reduces your available line by the amounts of days credited.

Thanks for telling us what it's life in the "afterlife" - many of us I think can't contemplate what it would be like to not be at an airline. I see a line of thunderstorms and either think, "crap - how my commute going to be" or "wow - glad I'm not commuting today". It would be odd to think, "huh -it's raining".

Trust me, I have felt your pain. My first three years at NWA I worked 28-29 days a month between NWA and USAFR...then I got furloughed. Just keep good records, copies of all orders, and make sure your military leadership knows what days you've taken as mil leave from Delta.

It's not that you want only one day off (because that is allowed) but it sounds like you are trying to create a new "Day off block" in the March bid period. You could move a whole block of days from another part of your schedule (say you have Mar 5-6 off) - you can move Mar 5-6 to Mar 2-3. That would work (depending on your max days on for your aircraft).

Or, if you had a single day off elsewhere in Mar (which would be a day off block) you could move that to Mar 2.

But, trying to move 1 day from a group to Mar 2 would make a new block of days off, which isn't allowed.

The scheduling ALPA committee puts out "Moving X Days" which describes all that goes on.

I agree with most of your post, but not this one part. It's always a good idea to place MLOA on your required military days even if off days. It prevents scheduling/crew tracking from rerouting or assigning you to work over those days. That protects both you and the employer.

A one line rant here! If you are sick..................DON'T FLY AND GIVE IT TO YOUR COWORKER!!!!:mad:

Denny

I guess that makes good sense... Luckily, and quite happily, I'm out of the military leave business for good.