If the Company knows about them, then they go in th regular bid package for the month. On the 737 there was a Captain who loved flying charters, so he'd try to talk the pilots on the trips to swap, which he sometimes could do since his normal lines were senior to the charter stuff.

So you can (1) bid for them, and (2) try to swap for them if you have something good to trade and are not afraid of making someone angry when you randomly call them from the dbms info. If you try method #2, have something good to trade. Option #3 is sit reserve. Often these things pop up a couple of days out.

Charters typically run odd hours from odd parts of the airport and sometimes get unwelcome attention. The food is good, but the hassle is not my thing. If I had one, I'd surely let you have it.

 

Well, today I think we would have a hard time convincing the Pilot Group, let alone the Company, to go back to a flat 75 hr. cap.

I believe it was the Comapany's idea to go to the Flexible Cap, in bankruptcy, under the "get more efficient and reduce training and save money, yada, yada, yada" plan. Of course there were plenty of pilots who wanted to fly (only to get paid) 85-90, after the 42% pay cuts. Remember, on Sept. 10, 2001, DL South had 10,400 pilots. I think we got all the way down to just over 7,000 before the merger. Some of the jobs lost were due to parking 3 pilot airplanes in favor of 2 pilots (loss of L10-11 and 727 engineers) but a lot of that was also due to all the remaining pilots flying more every month, with the "new rules" and PBS, etc.

I think beginning with the 96 contract we were then able to sell back up to half of our vacation, I couldn't believe how many guys did that! And that was a long time before Bankruptcy! Finally we got rid of that, but now it's no better, as you can white slip to fill up to ALV +15 in a vacation month, they back out the 21 hours of vacation, so it's basically the same as selling it.

So, it is what it is, I don't like it, I prefer my time off to flying "extra", I'm just one of the 29% who voted against it.

Obviously the Majority likes it, so you'll have to convince the 71% that they need to fly less -and- get paid more, not just fly more to get paid more.

Still, you'll have a lot of guys with no life, no wife, no kids, etc. who are happy to fly 21 days a month...or more, if there's a green slip involved! But I'd rather be sailing on my "off days", not flying, unless it's in a Pitts off a grass strip.

 

You're speaking my language now! Good times!

 

Peruse through the bid package and look for the 88xx or 89xx flight numbers. Those be the charters, but it takes some research to figure out who you're flying.

My last day on the 737 this weekend is an NCAAF charter for a team that our auburn boys on the board here love to hate. You get fed GOOD.

If you're on the 737, be careful with trying to snag the braves charters as there is a legendary guy that is horrible to fly with that loves to do those.

 

That happened in PDX on the MD11 and yes the company was up in arms.

 

No day off and, as far as he can tell, no pay on top of guarantee, for him.

This guy was still at home when he got the cancellation call, and guys were signed in at the airport, so maybe that's the difference.

 

I don't say this to many guys but...

Nice Beaver!

 

When we had a real cap your pay in a month could not exceed the cap unless you had a GS. If the cap was 75 hours and your actual credit for the month ended up being 82 hours you only got paid for 75. The 7 extra hours rolled over into next month. When you reached a point where they could drop the shortest trip on your line in a month and not put you below the cap then that drop was mandatory and automatic. So if you carried in 12 hours in bow wave and your line was 74 hours with a 10 hour two day as one of the trips you were now projected at 86 with the bow wave. The two day trip would have to be dropped and you would then have 76 hours. This automatic trip drop also applied in the current month to reroutes ect.. that generated extra time. I once had a 1 day trip turn into 7 days. All the credit caused the rest of my trips that month to be dropped.
In conjunction with Bow Wave we had spillback. If you had a month you did not feel like working a lot you could take any trip in the following month departing before the 10th and spill it back to the previous month to fill that month up. You could then pick up more that month. A nice feature when you wanted to build some big off time blocks.
The beauty of bow waves is that it removed all incentive to try and work more unless it was a GS. Back then we used 14 to 15 pilots per narrow body aircraft. Today its 11 to 12 and the aircraft utilization is up. Jobs are way down.

 

I took my wife to SEA for our anniversary last month and went by Kenmore Air's Lake Union terminal. While watching them launch out I told her "I just love Beavers"............... She just rolled her eyes!

 

Nice!

I used to walk up there on my SEA layovers just to watch them come and go. The turbine ones were cool but I just love the sound of a radial.

SEA was always one of my favorite layovers but I haven't been there in years. I would also take a bus over the bridge to the Freemont area, to a really nice acoustic guitar store called Dusty Strings, they let me play with their toys, which was fun, and right across the street there was a very good pub called, The Red Door (if I remember correctly). Is that place still there? It's where I had my first Red Hook brew.