Merry Christmas to all of my DAL brothers! Prayers and wishes for a safe and joyous holiday. I've especially enjoyed our fNWA bros joining the team. You are all great guys to fly with! Let's kick some ass in 2012.

Buzz

 

Just a quick question for reserve guys - if you put in a PCS YS for a specific trip did it work or did you have to call to help ensure it was done right?

 

Merry Christmas to all from the Tundra!

 

Merry Christmas!

And in honor of the Christmas Story, who wants to join me at an always open Chinese Buffet for Christmas?

 

My experience has mostly been unfavorable. As it is currently set up, to me it's worse than a crap shoot. Once, when I had a trip listed that I wanted and instead got another trip, yet the next guy got the trip I wanted I called them to inquire what was going on. After being put on hold for 10 mins the answer was basically, "Oops, sorry." Yeah, maybe I could have gotten the supervisor to change it, but the difference wasn't that big between the two trips. The take-a-way for me from that experience and other is that it's a 50-50 shot at getting what you want, yet you're having to hang it out there to get hit with an assignment.

 

If they assigned you a trip outside the contractual requirements you are do assignment pay for that trip. You should have called contract admin and requested they investigate the trip coverage. I get paid every time they make a error. If you accept it they will just keep doing it.

 

You too Buzz! Enjoy your time at home! I know I am.

 

Like I said, the difference between the trips wasn't much; I think it may have been a matter of layover locations. Pay? No difference--I'm on reserve; I never break guarantee. In fact, technically, I get paid more (MD-90) when I don't fly (MD-88). My call was more out of curiosity...as in, why the hell put something in there if they're not even going to look at it. To make an argument that you are the one who should get the trip means, IMO, that you have to lose it to someone who as a higher raw score and who has the same number of days available. Otherwise, they can say they gave it to the other guy because he had more/less days available and it worked better for scheduling to assign it to the other pilot. Meanwhile, another trip pops up that you don't want, but because you put in a YS you get nailed with it. The problem with the system is you put yourself out there for picking up something you don't want in hopes of possibly getting what you want (especially when it comes to just wanting a specific length (e.g. 3 day or 4 day) trip. That's been my experience; others' may be different.

 

Which is good- unless the trips are near identical in pay and pay wasn't the purpose of the request.

I've flat out been told before "sorry, I didn't look [at PCS requests]..." So it's one thing for SC which can be fixed but another for actual trip assignments.

To me if they're too busy they just blow it off. And you go from #1 with the lowest raw score requesting a specific trip on Christmas to #1 getting a trip that is 180 degrees from what you want and nobody was assigned any trips via a discernible contractual reason.

The schedulers simply go, #1 pilot gets first trip, #2 pilot gets second trip and so on. So being #1 means you get the earliest show.

It'd be nice if it was 100% computerized.

Now you can call ahead but I guess they've lost control over there because it's never a pleasant experience to call them anymore. "WE DON'T RUN THE RUO UNTIL 8AM AND WE'LL LOOK AT IT THEN!!!"

Very RJ like schedulers these days.

 

Merry Christmas!