Very good post! On a normal work day for me I know I often come across as a compainer. Usually though, once a captain realizes that I'm a reserve FO in our most junior domicile in my 5th year with the company most captains have an awakening. Especially since the PBS they gave the company has had 3 and 4 FO's junior to me with lines the last 2 months respectively. I didn't get to vote on the PBS agreement because I was furloughed, though I knew it would go through because of experience flying with senior guys. I usually don't even bring up my 18 months of furlough, though I am a memeber of the first and only group ever furloughed in my airlines some 30 years.

What I am getting at is that I love your brain freeze analogy. Ofcourse I would not have gotten into this if I knew it was going to be a perpetual brain freeze. Hopefully this brain freeze will be over soon. But there are very few at my company that have any idea what that brain freeze can feel like at the level and extent that I have.

 

You are the definition of a a jag bag... but good gawd. The numbers speak for themselves. How many times do we go out late for a missing crew member. Honestly... I've never seen it unless it was for some sort of situation. If it ain't broke don't fix it. Check in as early as you'd like but if the flight is operated on time who gives a ****.

 

Wow. That sucks. Let me see if I get this straight.

You were hired 5 years ago, got furloughed (I'm assuming from the ERJ side?). Got recalled to the CRJ side but didn't take the switch back to the ERJ side when the recall was offered (because you didn't know at the time all the hiring that was going to hot the ERJ side?).

And are still on reserve whereas on the ERJ side you'd be a lineholder with weekends off. Man, that is one string of bad luck.

I thought the PBS over there was strictly seniority based? How can someone junior to you have a line with you on reserve? The more I hear about the super-PBS the more I don't want anything to do with it.

 

I can think of four scenarios where this can happen:

#1 - You want weekends off, July 4th, etc and you intentionally bid reserve.

#2 - The person junior has vacation and bids vacation low - during the summer, you would have to get four four-day trips whereas they would only have to get two four-day trips. Unfortunately, the only way to fix this one would be to get rid of vacation low!

#3 - You have training and it conflicts with trips you could be assigned but the junior pilot has no conflicts. We currently only get 4 hours of credit per day of training meaning yearly recurrent is only worth 16 hours when you bid. This one honestly should have been negotiated to include the CBT credit (~4 hours) or with the option for a higher virtual credit.

#4 - Either you have a carry over pairing that causes conflicts or they have a carry over pairing that gives just enough credit. I honestly think there should be a union controlled over-ride on this one.

 

Duty rigs. That would be a step in the right direction. I'd bet all those scheduled 4h:53min sits would instantly dissapear. As for checking in, It was negotiated OUT of the contract, We gave up something to get this! So NO we are not going to just roll over and let them have it back! I cannot believe how some of you think WE should just give away something that was fought for! Drink the cool-aid much? When they just added it into our FOM it was a giant slap to the face. So basically, NOT gonna happen without a fight. If you want to keep taking the company's side on important issues then you have to look no further then the mirror to see why contract talks are not going well.

 

No, I can think of at least two ways off the top of my head to keep this from happening, and also in #3 and 4. One of which is to allow these people to have the option of getting a line worth less than MMG.

Don't believe all the propaganda. There are always other ways to solve these types of problems. Its like talking about state budgets. Everyone says that if they don't borrow the money, they will have to cut firefighters, policeman, and teachers. But no one even mentions cutting any of the hundreds of agencies, bureaucracies, commissions, and special committees. There is always another way! If someone tells you otherwise it's because they have another agenda.

 

I don't know what is there to fix in this case. Vacation low brings down minimum credit hour required to get a line in your vacation months. This helps everyone from top to bottom in their vacation months. Some people towards the bottom getting a line is a by product. I have had a situation where I didn't get a line in my vacation month because of a bad luck, but people junior to me did. But I certainly wasn't bitter about it, because vacation low helps everyone across the board almost every case.

 

So, contrary to the most adamant cheerleaders, it's NOT a 100% seniority system, is that correct? And it does, in fact, use a form of globalization in some cases?


That's cool of your not bitter about it, but if you were senior to them, shouldn't you have held a line? Isn't the system 100% seniority based? Again, the most adamant cheerleaders on this board, AND others like to shout that the CRJ PBS is 100% seniority based. As well as the ERJ side doesn't care about seniority. But reading the two posts I quoted, I wonder if certain CRJ pilots (NOT you two) fully understand the CRJ PBS system as it currently operates.

Myth, the regional provider DOESN'T get to set the schedules. So all regional management sees with a duty rig is a crew cost increase, NOT an incentive to make the crews utilization more efficient. Having crews sit around, able to fly the bank systems with 2-3-4+ hour sits is an efficiency for THEM, and that's how they like it.

 

Yes and no. If upon didn't have a vacation and didn't get a line, you weren't going to have one anyway. Might as well people junior to you let have the crumbs (not enough to build you a line) and enjoy their vacation. For the record, both with vacation, obviously the senior person gets a line first. Both without vacation is the same.

 

I'm definitely not a cheerleader, but our PBS doesn't use any kind of globalization (personally, I don't have a big problem with globalization if it's only used to sort pairings within a given preference), the system builds a complete schedule for the most senior pilot, closes it, and then moves on to the number two guy, etc. The system doesn't have the capability to look ahead. Nothing anyone junior to me does has any effect on my schedule -- my schedule is done and closed before the system looks at anyone junior to me.