Todays class; understanding monthly time card
 

So, I'm confused (surprise) about how my credit works while on reserve. I looked at my monthly time card and it doesn't seem right. I'll get to that in a second; here is the current months situation;

-RSV Guarantee for this month is 72 hours or 4.5 hours/day
-I had 2 days of MLOA so my credit went down to 63
-Had to use my APD for 2 additional days making my credit 54
-I was assigned 2 trips this month so far, one for a credit of 21:41, the other 10:53
-I have an additional 8 days of RSV this month, at 4.5 hours that should be 36 hours
-My time card shows the following; CREDIT 32:34+RES GUAR 26:19=58:53 TTL CREDIT
According to my calculations CREDIT 32:34+RES GUAR 36=68:34 TTL CREDIT

My time card says differently, so I'm obviously mistaken as to how credit is calculated on Reserve, no?

Second question; At the bottom of the timecard it says
"NBR Payback days available for use:5"
I don't know why this would be, is it a default entry? I've never been flown into days off and never picked up a GS. The only thing I think it could possibly be is during my wait for OE and/or my OE schedule, but that was about 1.5 years ago.

Thanks for any help with this!

Your daily credit is not truly prorated on reserve. You can have 71 hours of credit (out of 72) with 8 days of reserve left and still only get paid the guarantee of 72 at the end of the month. In fact, you could theoretically be in short call 4 more days and never get called but still get nothing extra. The hours you fly cannot be taken away from you, but each time you fly, the days you have left in reserve become less valuable in terms of hours of credit.

But, on the other hand, if you fly above your guarantee and get 'FULL,' you will get the rest of your reserve days off.

Do the numbers I posted for my current time card make sense?

1 800 usa alpa...ask for skeds

Yes.

When you drop a day of reserve after your schedule is posted, you lose a pro-rated amount of your reserve guarantee. (If you did it before the month, it will actually change the value of he proration. Use John Bell's reserve calc to help because it's a mess to figure out on your own).

That sets the reserve guarantee that you will get paid this month. Now, forget all about proration. It no longer matters.

Now if you work ZERO hours, you will get the reserve guarantee. If you fly the exact number of hours your reserve guarantee listed, you would still get paid that same amount. If you fly any amount in between, you get the same amount. If it takes you 4 days to fly 20 hours, or 3 days, it still counts as 20 hours toward your reserve guarantee. You still owe all of your reserve days the rest of the month.

The only time you are going to affect your pay now after you have set your reserve guarantee is if you work more hours than you were actually guaranteed (or green slip, but that's a separate difficult concept for many new guys on reserve). If your reserve guarantee is down to 65 hours for the month, and you have worked 25 hours, it will say that you have 25 hours of credit and 40 hours of reserve guarantee. It doesn't matter how many days of work you have left in the month. If you keep getting assigned flying or volunteer to fly a lot, you can actually get your flight time up above the reserve guarantee. Then your time card will say you have 70 hours of credit and 0 reserve guarantee.

The reserve guarantee is just a pot of money that you will get at the end of the month whether you work or not. On reserve, you win if your reserve guarantee is high and your credit is low. If you want to earn more than the reserve guarantee, though, you will have to volunteer to get used for flying. Then, after you fill up, you can still yellow slip for more flying if you desire. If you desire to fly a lot, being on reserve is a very bad way to do it, though. You have very little control over what kinds of flying you can get, and you will see most of the good trips being swapped or white slipped while you get what is left over.

I get that you may not have an option to bid a line yet. Good luck. If you want to work a lot, bid a line as soon as possible. If you are in a well-manned category and like to avoid work, bid reserve.

PM me if you have a specific question that I didn't hit here.

Holy.......What a convoluted way of doing it. Obviously, my mind was in a much simpler place when I worked my math. Thanks for the information on how that works; it was another lesson from HKU!

Any idea about the payback days? I'm thinking if I have these, I could have used them instead of my no credit APD, no?

>>Any idea about the payback days? I'm thinking if I have these, I could have used them instead of my no credit APD, no?<<

Possibly if there was adequate reserve coverage. If you can hold a schedule, you can also use them to drop trips, where they will likely be worth more than dropping a reserve day.

There are other options detailed in 23.S.16. of the contract. Basically there are varying ways to convert Payback Days into vacation. Many guys think of this as less desirable though since vacation pays less per day than dropping a trip or even a day of reserve.

There is also some information in the Scheduling reference Handbook around page 87-- here's an excerpt:

Q: Can I use payback days in a regular line month to drop a trip? How will I be paid?
A: Yes, by mutual agreement with Crew Scheduling. You may enter your request in PCS
under “Leave Requests” by selecting “Payback Days.” Your pay will depend on the number
of payback days available for use. If the number of days available are sufficient to cover
the entire rotation, that number of days will be used and you will be paid for the entire
rotation. If the number of days is not sufficient to cover the entire rotation, all available
payback days will be placed on the days of the rotation, beginning with the first of such
days, and you will be paid the value of those days only. You will forfeit any pay or
guarantee for the remainder of the rotation. Note that credit resulting from application of
duty rigs is always tied to the last duty period of the rotation.
Q: Can I use a payback day to drop a reserve on call day? How will I be paid?
A: Yes, by mutual agreement with Crew Scheduling. You may enter your request in PCS
under “Leave Requests” by selecting “Payback Days.” Your reserve guarantee will not be
affected by the days awarded. You will be credited a reserve pro rata share for each on
call day dropped.
Q: Can I have payback days added to my current year vacation? How will I be paid?
A: Yes, by mutual agreement with Vacation Planning. Make this request by contacting the
Vacation Planning Office. Your vacation bank will be increased by 3:15 per day added, and
the days will subsequently be paid as any other vacation days are paid.
Q: What happens to my payback days if they are not used in the current year?
A: If the days have not been used prior to January 1, they will automatically be converted
to supplemental (SUPP) vacation days to be used in the subsequent vacation year. If you
wish to use the days in January, February, or March, you may enter a request for a
personal drop, and then contact a Crew Scheduling supervisor to have the days of the
personal drop converted to payback days, if desired.

Like climb said above, if the reserve coverage was good enough, you could have used the PB day and kept your pay the same.

BUT, that is a terrible use for a PB day on a macro scale. Save PB days for when you are a line holder and use them to drop high-time trips. Then, instead of being worth 4ish hours per day, they could be used for 6,7,8 hours per day. I saved a couple of PB days for 1 day trips worth almost hours that I pulled off the swap board. Almost double what they were worth as reserve days.

You're probably correct about the OE timing (particularly if you're certain that you've never earned one otherwise). That timeframe covers the period that DALPA successfully argued the company was illegally working new hires on X days without PB days--and, guys affected got the appropriate number of PB days added to their bank. I think this was finalized in June, so if you look back you can probably identify when those days were added. If you look back to your OE schedule, you will presumably find 5 X days on which you worked (but were not awarded PB days, as you should have been).



In principle, I agree--but, that assumes you can hold a line before March. After Dec, you can't just use a PB day(s), you have to get Crew Scheds to place the PB(s) on your line after you've already dropped a trip (PD or APD). After Mar, they become vacation days (and pay at the vacation rate, still less than what BtoA suggests). If you think you'll be RES through Mar, you may or may not want to use them to drop other days (think like putting a PB day on day 3 of a 5-day stretch on call--which may be more valuable to you, in a non-financial sense, than keeping them for when you have a line, anyway).

Concur. Obviously there are many reasons to use PDs.