Thanks for providing a clearer explanation than I did. Well said.

 

Wasn't there questions on the survey about returning to the bow wave system? I'm sure the company would balk at that but our staffing in every category would increase wouldn't it? It'd be a lot of movement, at least I think it would be.

I'm sure they'd give back scope before they'd allow manning to increase. Manning to increase. Manning. Sorry Tim, I don't mean to say Manning.

 

Holy sh!t...that puts it into perspective. Thanks for explaining, guys.
Is there a way to identify those who are doing this?
Time to go to work with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch.

 

Here's an illustration.

 

I guess the next question is...can DALPA do anything to "save us from ourselves" as FTB put it. even a simple memo explaining the calculus...

Sorry, sinkrate, had to work that acronym in somewhere.

 

I agee with your intent, to eliminate trip parking, but I use the Swap Board lots of times in a -legitimate- way. Usually, I use it to move a trip a day or two over, so I'll put up a same-trip swap, just a day or two different, because Mamma threw something at me last minute, after bids closed, and now I need a different day off.

In the 'before time', we could swap trips, same trip only, no time diff. on your line, pilot to pilot, but we first had to call the other pilot on the phone, get him to agree to it, then call crew scheds, they would manually swap the trips (same time only, not higer/lower time trips) and sometimes they would even call the other pilot to be sure it was legit.

So it was a huge PITA, but nobody was parking trips to get 110 hour lines. Oh, and we had a monthly cap, anything above 75 or so, went into your bow wave for next month's bidding, or you could put it in your 'bank', to be taken out at your leisure.

 

According to one of the ATL Capt. LEC reps, there is a fix 'in the works'. He didn't say exactly what it was, or when it would take effect.

 

It's cool. I guess the problem here is that pilots probably overwhelmingly say in their surveys that they want to retain the swap board. So the union has to be careful about to approach this: do they simply get us wha we want, or what we should want.

In this case, I think I agree with what you wrote. I think there are some issues where pilots vote in the original survey that deserve a debate. If the MEC Chairman was to put out a couple of topics that he thinks we're getting wrong, make a case, then resubmit a survey on those points to see if we agree, I think it would be time well spent. I think I'd like to see a couple more feedback loops in the survey process.

Would you be agreeable to something like that, or would you howl that your expectations are being managed?

 

Manning! Ha Ha Ha! You beeeg funny boy! You so beeg!

I put it in my survey, but not sure how many others did. I guess we'll know when we see the opener.

 

There is no reason we couldn't have a single source for all open time, into which we could trade trips, as long as we respected max pick-up, if the Reserves Required were not manipulated as they once were. In that case, you could do everything you describe above. Throw in a decent interface, and you could pull trips from PBS that met certain parameters, and show what trips you might be willing to accept instead, and the pot could probably be used as giant, tarnsparent, trip exchange.

The reason guys want the sawp board, is because they didn't have a good means to effect an honest transaction, and can't trust Swap with the Pot (for good cause). If guys had an easy way to input trips they might be willing to give up, and what they would give them up for, it could match the guy looking to be on the other side of the trade. You wouldn't even have to look up the guy you need to trade with, or waste your time scanning through boards, only to find someone willing to give up a GEO for an ATH.

The current system for assigning/trading open time is archaic, hard to use, and detrimental to the pilot group. It needs to be gutted, then torched, the ashes need to be burried, and the ground it's in needs to be launched out of earth orbit.