It should not actually have that effect because as you pull time from a category for a VB you also must remove a equivalent number of pilots. The kicker will be if they are junior or senior to a specific pilot. If you have a bunch of senior pilots living in MCO who bid a MCO VB the pilots still in Atlanta would move up in relative seniority. If all junior people bid it they move down. In the end it should average out.

Not necessarily. It's safe to assume the company wants this to reduce credit time. So if they build 10 lines for VBs, it could remove 12 lines from the bid package. But it will happen in such a way you won't be able to tell what happened. Like Brakechatter said, he'll just gradually find himself flying weekends.

You know that's not the forum way. C'mon man!

Overall domestic credit is around 6%. If a VB were wildely successful and cut that rate in half to 3% your looking at the loss of one line out of 30.

Well said my fellow Herk flyer.

If it's a negative for 80% of us, great deal for 5%, and 15% are keeping the dream alive they may get to use it soon, most of the calls to the reps will be from the 20%.

Once this is in, it won't be taken down. And the company will want to modify it to include international legs, because that's where the big credit can be saved. This is getting the camel's nose under the tent.

I think you can also expect some reduction to manning (not lines) with the contractual changes to OOB Greens and Yellows.

Within a year the company will ask to include international ops.

>>If you have a bunch of senior pilots living in MCO who bid a MCO VB the pilots still in Atlanta would move up in relative seniority. If all junior people bid it they move down. In the end it should average out.<<

Except for the loss of jobs (substantiated by our own EFA experts), right? You alluded to that in a subsequent post.

All coming out of of the same airplane's time, probably. The more junior it goes, the worse it is for the senior. The more senior it goes, the worse for the junior. Regardless, it will reduce the positions in category, which is always a bad thing from a standpoint of variety. Say what you will about the -88, but it is a large category which in and of itself allows flexibilities and variety not available on fleets with smaller numbers.

...and folks, this isn't a "panties in a wad" thing. Pretty discouraging to see the dismissiveness of a constructive thread discussion on one factors of the TA. The destructive attitudes within the union are not limited to DPA zealots or the people who always vote no. Combine this with the sick loss of voluntary verification, OOB yellow slips on days off, [I]merit[I] based extra vacation, alv change and a host of others--there are plenty of "no" issues in the agreement. They are not sufficient to warrant a no vote on my end and put at risk that which was achieved IMO, especially if VB gets killed immediately. At the same time, I can certainly respect an informed no vote without having to denigrate the voter.

Thug behavior...doesn't just exist with DPA supporters :rolleyes:

FIIG,

That street goes both ways. As in, we came to the company, too. We wanted increased pay AND credit for vacation. We wanted increased training pay AND credit, too.

The one thing that has been constant is that the company has a staffing problem. Some people might not see how severe it is, because it doesn't affect their fleet, but look around.

This past summer it was the 717 fleet. Summer before that, 7er fleet. Before that, it was the MD89 and before that it was the 320's.

With the retirements we have coming up and the airplanes we have that are yet to be delivered, their problem is only going to get worse.

I admit, it is THEIR problem. But, we need to understand that the company isn't going to agree to anything that exacerbates that problem.

This VB concept is a concession. It's a tradeoff for gains we achieve in staffing in other parts of the TA and there are two things that are good about it for us:

1.). It might actually be helpful for some pilots, &

2.) If we don't like the way it's being used (i.e., too many positions are being lost), we can give notice and back out. There is no such provision for the company to back out of our credit for vacation and training.

Think about it. If the company "acts up," we could back out and have a net gain of positions from this.

As a guy on the bottom of the list in NYC, I recognize that VB's will probably adversely affect me, but it doesn't change my assessment for us as a group:


..because we can back out, this part of the TA is either a push, or a win.