Substitution
 

Looking for sub advice... I’ve been extended on a trip which puts me into sub for a different trip. Is it better to define sub or just wait and see?

Thanks in advance for any help.

K.

If you are thinking of declining and you don’t think they will use you, just sit sub at home. Decline an assignment if you don’t wanna do it. Then pick something up if you want to at 125% (pending how many hours of sub you’d have) or try and shoot the moon and get something VLT or AVA if it’s open on your seat. Play around with the sub flow chart on FDX alpa webpage. That’s just my 2 cents.

Do nothing, Keep the sub hours, lose the trip overage.

Decline sub, Keep the trip overage, sub hours go to OTP.

Calculate which one makes you more money and choose that option.
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It depends on how long they extended you. If they extended you so that the overage is more than the sub trip, decline the sub. If the extension is less than the credit hours for the sub and they can't give you a sub assignment within 4 hours of the original show, keep the sub and get paid for the trip you didn't fly. If you don't know how long the extension will last, you can wait until you get back to base to decide. You have to do it within 30 minutes of block in (I think that is the time limit). The down side with waiting to decide is that if you do end up declining the sub once you get back to base, you won't get OTP for declining sub. Those hours will go into your makeup bank though. On the bright side, you will get the overage for the extension.

Thanks for all the info. Good stuff!

How do you make the calculation?

To be more accurate, you lose the overage that overlaps with your next trip (the one in conflict with your extension). If you had two days between the trips, the extension that covers the time between trips free of duty still gets paid as overage.

To do that calculation, you determine the overage until the trip extension hits the report time of your next trip in conflict. Then calculate the rest of the overage that overlaps your trip in conflict. Compare that portion of the overage with the SUB guarantee. Pick the option that pays more.

If both options are the same or close, then maybe you decide to decline the SUB and take OTP for those future trips pick-up options if you're not on a fleet with easy AVA grabs. If AVA is all but guaranteed, then don't bother with the OTP and the negative pay summary 3-bid periods in the future. Just drop the trip in conflict as if it wasn't there. Take the full overage and AVA whatever you want without the credit hour pay back BS in the future.

Great advice
 

This is some really good advice.

Yes it is.
And if AVA\VLT is a player for you.
If you decline SUB earlier, prior to the beginning of your IAP, you can do AVA\VLT over the footprint of your SUB trip as if it was never there. (25.H.8.c)

You can outright Decline SUB without OTP hours, but why not go for the OTP anyways. AVA is great, when it's being approved. OTP is a sure thing, just have to remember that with OTP you're being paid Twice for one days work and FedEx will eventually recoup that money. Just don't spend all of the bonus bucks you'll get March 15th

Are you sure about this? If so, how do you do it?

I know you can essentially do this (drop the trip in conflict with no OTP) in the conflict scenario the OP described. I'm asking about a situation where you just get put in SUB for a trip cancellation or some other stand alone reason.