Epic post....

People forget there are actually two aspects to FPL. What the volunteer gets paid, and what it costs to pay him.

Just looking at what the pilot makes is only half the story. The other half is the money that ALPA has to compensate the company for the FPL, which includes a %35 premium to cover benefits and other items, which can be 2 to 3 times the hourly rate (if the company had to use a IA or GS to cover the dropped trip, for instance).

Only then do you get the full picture.

Some ALPA folks don't require ALPA to compensate the company for their FPL (the 26J pilots), BUT that money still came out of the total contract package. As the apologists would say "we had to give something up to get that".

Nu

I have an idea, why don't we tell DAL to dump NWA db plan, no more monthly payments only for NWA pilots once they retire until they die, and in exchange we all, NWA and DAL, get a 3-4% bump in our DC plan. How about that for pay parity? I know those senior NWA cpts are "only" getting 10-12K a month during retirement until they die but still, that's money you and I are paying for. Would you like to know how much a DAL senior CPT is getting from the PBGC if he retires tomorrow? Yeah, I didn't think so. Anyway, that's the reason for the pay disparity.

When I was hired there was something about what I got paid that I didn't get to vote on either that I want corrected.................The loss of income from THE 5 YEAR B SCALE I had to endure! :mad:

I'm not trying to sound callous but I get the impression that you young guys think we more senior guys have never gone thru similar situations that you face now. I tell you what, you get me the money that I lost via the B scale and I will cover at least 2 of you for your loss of DC contribution!:D Then we only need one resolution to fix both problems!:)

Denny

PS. Standing by for incoming!!

I bid around the due date, but my wife went into labor 3 weeks early while I was on a layover (and a really nice one, darnit!) CPSC was fantastic. Arranged for immediate positive space home for me and took care of my next trip as well.

Ha, I am just telling you my experience on the 319. I was rather shocked. The 320 felt different than the 319

Thanks ronnie,

Can you point me to where I can find the details, like sufficent reserve coverage.

Denny,

The B-Scale was bogus and was thrust upon the junior guys by the more senior pilots - a total hose-job for sure. But you can look at our projected career's today and come to the conclusion that it will be a
De facto B-scale.

Post BK pay has senior and junior Pilot alike on B-scale type wages, and junior guys get to see a lot of potential movement outsourced to our DCI partners adding further insult to injury.

Scoop

To his credit, the bus does wiggle a lot more than the 737 or 757. I always assumed it had to do with some sort of relaxed stability to save more fuel.

If you go to your time card in iCrew you will see down at the bottom something like "APD available for use: Y (or N)"

This means you haven't used your ONE Authorized drop for this employment year. As someone else mentioned PD's are unlimited, but must have adequate reserve coverage for every day that you want to drop.

To check reserve coverage in iCrew:

Go to Open Time
Click on the bottom option; I think it's Reserve Availability or something like that

If the day is Blue, then you have adequate coverage and the drop should go through. If the required vs. available is even close you still may get it, due to the PCS churn of each run. PCS runs 2 iterations each time it runs to allow for your request to be processed to the max extent possible. For example, you want the 20th off and the coverage is currently -1. 2 more pilots want the 22nd off and they are willing to trade the 20th to get it. After the first iteration of PCS these pilots may be awarded their swap and now your day is +1 for coverage. Voila, you have the 20th off during the 2nd iteration of the same PCS run.

From personal experience I would say you want to get your most important reserve day swaps/drops in for the first PCS run of the month. I believe the 0700 run on the 20th of every month. This way you have given yourself the best chance of getting it approved.

There are many other requirements such as min days on, max off blocks, etc that play into this. If your request is not approved, you can check the status of it, via the PCS link in iCrew and it will give you a reason (albeit sometimes cryptic) as to why the trade wasn't approved.

Also, I don't know if someone mentioned it yet or not, but your ONE APD only requires 25% of the required coverage to be approved - holidays listed in the PWA are the exception.

Once again, you bring up something that is completely irrelevant to the argument. Pension retention & dissolvement was something determined ar each individual airline in their respective BK trials. A post BK new hire @ DAL or NWA had zero to do with the BK, yet a PMDL makes more then a PMNW. Worse, a newhire makes more then a PMNW post 06 hire.