I agree. The intentional misrepresentation of information is mind blowing.

More vacation is not just about having more time off, it's about more money too. How you ask?

Think about who's sitting in the highest paying seats. The most senior guys, both seats, left and right. Give those guys more time off and you need more pilots in those categories. It's. Win-Win for us, which is why Management doesn't want it.

If I were King, all vacation (and training) would be paid same as a work day, 5:15 (and I'd like to see that upped to 6:00) both pay AND CREDIT, so you HAVE TO take more time off, so they HAVE TO UPGRADE more pilots into higher paying seats!

As our vacation/pay system is right now, we are selling back 100% of our vacations, buy picking up MORE FLYING during a vacation month!

How stupid is that?!

I understand WHY we do it, to make more money, of course, but if we weren't sill being paid 18% below 2004 rates, we wouldn't NEED to fly more days in a vacation month!

I couldn't agree more. We need rules to protect us from our selves. Much like a cap to limit flying did years ago.

The answer before to the question, what's our ________ like, was always "I don't know but it's the best out there". You can fill in the blanks.

I asked my rep about vacation increases during the original negotiating period and he said point blank that less than 5% of the pilot group had asked for an increase in vacation weeks, during the contract survey. So it was never addressed. Apparent most reps get numerous calls monthly from pilots complaining about having to take vacation. Just food for thought.

I believe it, they would rather fly a green slip than have to take a week off. That's because our pay rates are still so bad, 18% below 2004, without inflation, and the stagnation caused by age 65 and the lost decade, and the lost wide body jobs, but hey, look at all those snappy new 717 Captain seats available to you!:rolleyes:.

And you just passed on some E190 Captain seats??

What were you thinking??:eek:.

But hey, we can code share all our international wide body jobs away to Air France and KLM and their A380's, and Virgin's 747's while we park all of ours.

No worries... these same guys will complain they aren't moving up into higher paying seats, while flying 100 hours a month!:rolleyes:

We don't need more vacation weeks.

We need more value per vacation day.

There was zero education from an ALPA administration in bed with management.

Quality of life was extremely high on our wish list.

Nothing impacts quality of life more than vacation. It's all in the way the questions are asked.

We can easily assume our pilots want to be on par with Alaska (162 hours).

We are the most profitable air line and we need a contract that reflects that.

Even before all those pay hits you mention, pilots were eagerly trashing their QOL for green slips. Of course, pilots senior to them would do the same thing, and so just about everyone lost money in the long run. Lots of academic studies have been done on the "tragedy of the commons". :(

Ah, I think you hit it perfectly. I don think it was on the radar because of all the ways to make money. And really, when Santa gives you 240 hours a year, some see it completely different......

Even if we don't get an extra week this time, the value of a vacation day needs to increase by more than a mere 15 minutes of pay only - decoupling pay and credit for vacation is a bad precedent in a PBS world where credit is king.