Agreed all around. Mesabah's logic in where the 900 CA's would work out on a seniority list is..... not.

 

Sorry Buzz, I took off for a while. What they said a few pages ago!!

Denny

 

Denny-
You are correct. Sorry if I was not clear.
I have no problem with DBMS "Swap with the pot". The problem is the swap with friends and/or pick-up board. That little jewel is what allows the trip parking and schedule manipulation outside the contractual protections.

If there's a way to fix it that would allow the swap scenario you described while preventing the unethical contract violating aspects, then I would be in favor.

Until then- it is an abomination. I can hardly believe that DALPA has allowed it for this long. There must be a good reason our union wants to reduce manning but I can't think of what that would be. Why don't we go back to "vacation selling"? That's the ticket. We should have a "Sell your vacation" board.That's another real money-maker for those guys flying 140 hours a month. No more of that pesky time off to worry about.

 

Well it's true that a CRJ900 A would be below a DC9 A. The part that wouldn't happen is that it's a regional A in the A seat. But now that the regional A is at mainline, they get to fly a wide assortment of high paying airplanes, at some point, to include the DC9, MD88, A320, 737, 757, 767, 764, A330, 777, 747 and I guess CRJ900.

 

You know what else you can do with trip parking? Time out at the end of the year. So all year long staffing as been sufficient right til the end then it's horribly insufficient and becomes the responsibility of everyone else to cover.

 

Removed...............

 

FTB, I removed the quote but I'll still comment!

I'm not sure you could do this (time out with a 1000 hours before the end of the year). There is another term called "PBS Block Limit." I may be wrong but I don't think trip parking will allow you to exceed the Block Limit. The way guys are getting 120+ hour months is to have alot of credit time and that doesn't count towards block limit.

Denny

 

80 you're thinking as a pilot and are forgetting the management side of the equation as well as the legal side of it.

We pilots assign a hierarchy to our profession, that being:
student -> private -> commercial -> flight instructor -> regional -> mainline -> astronaut -> NewK

However, the legal system and management don't see it that way. All they see are:
Current rates of pay -> career expectations

The problem lies in the career expectations, since management can tweak this in favor of the regional pilots if they want leverage against mainline pilots.

Imagine I was management at Delta and wanted to get concessions out of your group. All I have to do is say I will merge you guys with Comair and you are pretty much forced into those concessions. However, as management I can't overstep to the point you guys start voting with your feet.

Merging with Comair might not seem as bad as it sounds, but remember as management I still have 76 seat scope relief so after all is said and done I can send their planes to Skywest. However, before I do that I set Comair's contract rates to $500 an hour, which doesn't matter since the planes are going away. But this puts them in a position to have all of Delta stapled below them in a SLI. This is since both their current rates and career expectations are now way above that of any mainline pilot.

 

Odd - it was only a short time ago when you guys were stating that wages didn't count in an integration. This is getting interesting. Go on.

 

Oooh. Didn't think of that.

That Denny Crane, he knows all.