Deviation Bank
 

We are discussing your new TA at the Delta Chitchat Forum. The subject of Deviation Bank was raised.

Can someone give us a simple explanation of a deviation bank? I'd like to cut an paste it.

Thanks,

Company uses negotiated fares to get you from your assigned domicile to whatever city they need you in. Same in reverse back to your domicile. When a commuter elects to "Deviate" from his pairing and fly from his/her hometown they can. If they can buy a ticket to get to work for less than company fare your golden. If it costs more for you to get there, that's fine, you just owe company the difference. Look it's pretty involved but that's it in a nutshell

I'd add that under the current contract, unused funds get returned to the company at the end of the month.

The deviation bank is the total $ amount for a pilots' scheduled dead heads for the month. He can deviate from the scheduled transportation and use our corporate travel office (or make arrangements on his own, but must save the receipts) to buy a different ticket for travel to or from the trip. There are some rules obviously, i.e. the travel has to be within 3 days of an operational trip, etc.
At the end of the month when the pilot files his expense report, the the scheduled travel $ amount is his deviation bank, as long as his deviation travel tickets don't exceed his bank amount, he owes the company nothing; if they do exceed then he must pay the difference.

Would be nice if the bank was at least quarterly instead of monthly. Rumor has it that this was addressed in our new TA.

You can also use bank money to pay for taxis, parking, subway fares, etc... As long as it is work travel related.

3 days prior to training assignment as well

Thanks for the explanation. The term is a complete mystery in the passenger world.

I'm hopeful that your new TA will prove to be a good one. Good luck.

Think of it as a poor mans home basing. Domestically we like it when Fred has to buy us a ticket on Delta, generally you guys charge him more. At least my experience.

Thanks! I'm going to bet 58-62 % approval. Not good for home team. IMHO only!!!!!!

I'm not sure how the concept would work at a passenger airline? Why wouldn't your airline just book you seats on YOUR airline?

Our contract says they can't schedule us on company jumpseats for trips that don't start or end at your base. So ... they have to buy us tickets on the pax carriers (our old contract also said that over 5 hours would be booked in FIRST CLASS, we have many International deadheads over 5 hours). FIRST CLASS tickets sometimes cost as much as $10,000 one way. I've never had the company question ticket prices as long as you stayed within your deviation bank (one of our few restrictions was we couldn't take the Concorde).

Because the company buys so many commercial tickets they negotiate corporate discounts with many of the airlines. At the end of the month they add up what they would have paid for your (discounted) tickets. You can spend that money to travel from your home to the deadhead city, or your home to your base.

The paperwork is a bit of a MAJOR hassle but if you don't live in domicile it can be a good deal. Some senior pilots bid all deadhead trips and only go to MEM for recurrent training (you can jumpseat or use your deviation bank for that).

Some airlines let us accumulate frequent flyer miles. For several years as a senior international f/o I was earning 250,000 ff miles/yr.

It's generally viewed as a good deal. One of the few problems in recent years is that the company has been "exaggerating" (pants on fire?) how cheap they could buy commercial tickets. Hopefully they fixed that in our latest TA?