Vacation slide and extension - reserve
 

New guy here,

Saw a couple post about this that are pretty old so figured I’d ask just to make sure. I have vacation starting may 7th, a few of the reserve lines I’m bidding have a 7 day gap between R-days so the 5 day slide will be short by 2 days to touch the other days. I read through the contract and it mentions a 3day extension based on 7 days of vacation. Is this accurate, I would be able to slide it 5 days and then extend it up to 3 days? Just want to make sure I understand correctly before I screw up my vacation month :(

Thanks in advance!

One more thing, does the slide / extension drop the entire block of reserve days or just the days it touches? Plus buffer

If you’re on jetflyers a great explanation was just posted.

I’m not, but I will be now. Thanks!

As far as I know, vacation expansions only apply to lineholders, not reserve lines. You can still slide 5 days either side though. If the 7 day vacation block doesn’t touch 7 R-days you can go in and request which days you would like dropped, as they will take the required R days from somewhere. You will get reserve leveling for those days from the first day of the bid period. Any unused credit (~4:45ch/Rday vs 6ch day vacation) can be bought back at the end of the year if you’re under the max buyback

Thanks for the information!

The way I think of vacation and reserve is this:
You can’t have a day off you would have had on your schedule anyway count as a vacation day.
So even if all 7 of your Vaca days fell on days off, you would still have 7 R-days removed from your schedule. Sliding or bidding a reserve schedule that conflicts with all or some of your vaca days just gives you control over what days are actually remove. Otherwise, that is up to scheduling. You can enter an input but it’s just a request. They have the ultimate decision.

Extending vacation is just a math problem resulting from the fact that a vacation day is worth 6CH and an r-day is usually 4.5-ish CH. It is done by using the actual vacation hours your Vaca is worth divided by r-day value to determine how many extra r-days you can knock out. Contract is pretty clear on now to calculate that.

Make your choice via vips during the conflict window between this afternoon and Saturday morning. Any days removed via extension are also just a request from you. Days will get removed according to the formula but may not be the ones you want removed.

To add on,
In general, for a week of vacation you can Extend (add) an additional 3 days off.

For a 19 day month, that leaves you with 9 days of reserve to sit, somewhen, somewhat at the mercy of CRS. In General, I’ve had great success with CRS honoring my requests.

Sliding/keeping/waiving buffers controls the days that CRS are prohibited from placing an R day when they reconstruct your R line during the processing window.

And, in a recent grievance win, if you keep the buffers, CRS is prohibited from moving an R day into the buffer during the flying month

Thanks everyone for the help! Definitely have a better understanding of it now, at least a tiny bit better :)

I got asked this question and couldn't find a definitive CBA reference.

Do we get paid for R-days knocked out by the 48-hour vacation buffers?

i.e.
A pilot has vacation that starts on Wed and goes for 7 days. He has 19 days of reserve starting Mon (two days before his vacation starts) and didn't waiver the buffers.

He can extend by 3 days, knocking out 10 R-days. His buffers on either end will knock out 4 more R-days. According to the contract, his vacation bank will be charged 10 x R-day value (4:46 this month), so about 47:60.

He's going to end up with 5 R-days left on his calendar. Assuming he sits reserve for those 5 days, is he going to get paid the full RLG for his reserve line?

The buffer days are just moved away from the vacation and put somewhere else in the month.

So, in my scenario, they just take the 4 R-days removed for buffers and relocate them in the month - the pilot would sit reserve for 9 days, not 5?

Yes.

Buffers are days where they may not put activities, but the buffers don’t have an intrinsic vacation CH value.

So you just request where they go back into your schedule (but it's ultimately up to skeds) just like any rebuild request associated with vacation/reserve issues?

Yes. You are then only guaranteed the calendar days off that your vacation, buffer, and vacation extension (can’t remember if the correct word with reserve vacation is extension or expansion?) occupy. The rest of the days are “requests”. CRS will not leave a single reserve day sitting by itself either.

From memory here, so someone may correct me if the 2015 CBA changed it, but they have to leave the leftover R days in place and add any back in that are needed either in a new block or attached to a leftover. In other words, if you had a week of reserve in week 1, then had the rest of Reserve in weeks 3 and 4 which your vacation killed all but 2 days that were removed due to buffer, they couldn’t reconstruct all days in week 2. They would have to leave week 1 alone, and add the two days reconstruction on either side of week 1, or the two days in week 3.

Sorry if that’s clear as mud. I know what I mean, but it’s hard to express the contorted process elegantly.

You can also waive the buffers and leave them where they are on each side of your vacation.

No - I got your meaning. Any R-days part of the original line that aren't affected by the vaca or buffers stay where they orginally were. I remember it that way too.

Good point - leaving 2 R-days dangling before vaca on the 777 is about as close as one can get to guaranteed days with pay and no work. Not a lot of 2-day trips. :D

In this scenario, the pilot would get paid for three of the four days that were knocked out by the buffer. The fourth day would be moved to somewhere else in the bid month. The three days that were knocked out by the buffer would count as the vacation extension. The most days that can be knocked out are 10.

What if you have both reserve and training in same month as vacation, and your reserve line falls on both your training and Vaca? Do you get paid for R days dropped by vaca, or since the training is on the line (and should drop the whole R line) does the whole R line drop out and you have to bid your entire RLG on the make up bid, instead of the difference between the RLG and remaining R days after vaca takes the R days out?

I looked at the CBA but couldn’t find Anything.

hmmmm
I was talking my bud through this looking at his bid processing summary. He extended to 10 days. With the buffers, that resulted in 14 days affected by the vacation. On his summary calendar grid, he had "B" over the first two R-days removed as buffer days, "V" for the 7 vaca days, "X" on the next three R-days and "B" over the last two R-days.

He gets paid for 10 R-days (the 7 "V"s and 3 "X"s) and a total of 47:40 comes out of his vacation bank (10 x R-day value).

So, I don't see how he could get paid for 3 of the 4 Buffer days when the 3 "X" days indicating extension are clearly shown as different days from the buffers.

Maybe I'm not understanding what you're saying.

Well, technically, you don't have training in your calendar yet (assuming you're talking about recurrent). You bid for that now but it's not determined.

So, you slide, extend, expand, etc your vacation and that gets set first when the CIC window closes. THEN, they'll take your recurrent training bid and process that. Whatever training bid you can hold and is legal based on what you did to your vacation will then be awarded.

Ah, thanks I thought both vaca and training bid were in the CIC. So the training bid is actually in view/add...right on thanks.

No. Recurrent bid is in CIC as well. You need to have that in by Sat morning. But they will process your vacation inputs first, once the CIC window closes. Once your vacation is not longer a variable, your training bid is processed.

If you look under "Bid Period Processsing", there's a Conflict/Input Window column and to the right of that a View/Add/Secondary Window column. Those pretty much list all the various operations that are accomplished during each corresponding window.

Thank you!

You don’t get paid or use vacation for buffer R days that are removed. The buffers simply are free of duty. The R days dropped due to buffer are restored later on in reconstruction. Also, we won a grievance and later on in the month, when the month is active, CRS can NOT use their “move an R day” option to move an R day into your buffer. It remains free of duty when constructed, and during your active month. But, YOU can take an action during the active month that puts a make up trip into your buffer, though.

I guess it's two different ways of skinning the cat. If you want to make your vacation footprint as large as you can, do what your buddy did. However, the four days that were in the buffer will show up somewhere else in the month, where ever scheduling wants to put them outside of the buffers.

You do get paid for R-Days dropped by the buffer as long as they fall within the formula for the maximum hours to be paid. I bid an R-24 line with vacation (won't do that again), and did exactly that because I wanted the R-day blocks to stay the way they were. I got paid for the days that were in conflict with the buffer.

The math for Vacation Extension is in the contract. 7.G.3.e.

7.G.3 explains pretty clearly how your bank will be administered, what days will be dropped and paid and how to reconstruct.

So I still hear different opinions on this, if the vacation or slide touch any of my RA days does it drop the entire block of days? Or just the days it touches?

Whatever the bid processing summary shows you?

Haha.. Didn’t even know that existed. Thanks!!

Glad to help, what’s the answer?

In my case it shows one RA day on each side of my vacation after the slide, extension, and buffer. So didnt drop it all :(

This has never been a possibility (at least since CBA 2006). The only thing that drops an entire block of R-days now is conflict with recurrent training. Vacation/reserve processing is either a one-for-one replacement of V and R days or the extension option. R-days removed due to buffer days are replaced during the reserve line reconstruction process.

Keep in mind, nothing you've done so far is irreversible. You can slide, unslide, extend, un-extend, waive buffers or not as many times as you want to experiment between now and close of the CIC window tomorrow.

Two dangling single R-days left on either side of the vacation may be a good thing if you're on the 777. If not, and you commute, maybe you want to re-slide, waive a buffer(s) or some other option to avoid having single R-days to commute to. The other thing is the 4 R-days removed for the buffers are going back in somewhere and that somewhere may not be the best option for you. Waive the buffers and they stay where they are.

As a commuter, maybe slide the vaca (if possible) to start on the first R-day. That way any R-days left are after your vacation in one or two blocks instead of split into singles. An added bonus is, if your vaca falls before your R-days in the month, all those vaca hours count toward leveling and push you down the list.

CBA 2015...vacation leveling is shown regardless of being before or after vacation.

Leaving R days at the beginning of the month is good since most others will have less leveling.

Applicable verbiage below....

CBA 2011 “A reserve pilot's leveling position for the remainder of the bid period shall include an R-day value for each day of vacation beginning with his first R-day following his vacation.”

CBA 2015 “A reserve pilot's leveling position shall include an R-day value for each day of vacation in the bid period, as provided in Sec-tion 4 .H .2 .”

Oops - my bad. Sorry for the bad gouge there, M. Thanks for the correction.

Thanks!! The verdict is out!

So after the window closed, those 2 RA days I had according to bid processing summary (1 day on each side) disappeared. They added one RA day later in the month on the 22nd (9 RA days total), so now I’m off for 22 days in a row which is more than I expected based on the line I had to work with. And the pay summary still shows 85.5. So hopefully I’m done with this horse!, or is there any more gotchas I should worry/need to know about?

I'm not sure I follow the inputs you made in the CIC window. Can you clarify:
What was the make-up of your original R line? Was it a single 19-day block?
Where was day one of vaca after the slide (if you did)?
Did you waive any buffers?

If you had a week of vaca and extended 3 days, ending up with 9 R-days makes sense. I'm trying to understand why you only had one R-day replaced if your entire 10-day extended vaca plus buffers left a single R-day on either end.

The reserve line was 6 on (starting 30th), 5 off, 5 on, 8 off followed by 2 blocks or 4 RA days with 3 days off in between. I didn’t waive buffer. After I slid one day and extended 3 days to the left my vacation now starts on the 4th RA day (3rd), then add the 2 day buffer to that and left me with one day reserve on the front and one day on the back end initially. I think only one RA day was moved because it now counts that 1st reserve day as vacation, maybe because some of my vacation days fell on days off? Wish I could upload a screenshot of my summary on here but getting some kinda error message :confused:

I understand what happened in general. After you slid left one from the 7th to the 6th, you had 5 days off fall under your vacation. Those 5 days had to have corresponding R-days removed. If I understand your original sked correctly, they just counted the 4 buffer days already removed and took the 15th off as well.

What I don't understand is why they moved the Apr 30th single R-day left of your first buffer day to later in the month (i.e. what part of the CBA allowed that). I was under the impression that any original R-days unaffected by vaca or buffers needed to stay in their original place. Maybe there is something about leaving a single R-day that I missed in the CBA that allows them to move it.