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?

A great thing about this deviation bank, orvil, is that it doesn't have to be used just for going back and forth from home to work. If it is within three days of a trip, you can use it to go anywhere, for any reason. You can use the bank to go to Europe, Hawaii, the Far East, wherever, and that is completely within the contractual rules. Plane, train, boat, taxi, whatever.

However, this works well for the company. Since many of us live outside of Memphis, we generally go well below our deviation banks, and I'm sure they make millions of dollars out of the deal. Win/win, as long as they get the bogus deviation ticket fares fixed.

Has anyone used their bank to claim tips for the maid or the driver?

You've always been able to use your bank for tips for the driver for a deviation (though if you go much above 15%, occasionally they will deny the excess tip). Never tried it for just a tip, for scheduled transportation, though.

Tips for the maid? Can't imagine being able to claim that unless she provided transportation (and has a taxi license).

I'm certain that riding the maid would not be an allowable expense. I would pay cash, anyway. So as not to leave a trail.

And safer than Ashley Madison.

Seriously I thought I remembered Jet Jock claiming the dollar he tipped the maid and the dollar he tipped the driver once as an out of pocket expense. I figured I might start tipping more than the refund fee on empty beer bottles if we could do that.

For the maid, in Subic, at the Grand Seasons.;) Three times.....No, Four.

I just knew someone was going to go down that road....:D

I usually include a tip in the "total fare" line on my taxi/limo credit card receipt. I really didn't care how the driver records the fare/tip percentages after I take my copy of the receipt.

Just to be technically correct anything over 5 hours requires a "higher class of service" up to 16 hours (IIRC) which then requires FC.

If you deviate then you just have to qualify for a higher class of service.....then your bank determines if you ride Biz or FC.

Deviation bank can be used +/- 3 days of ANY scheduled activity. Sim, RSV, Trip, STBY, etc...If it is on your calendar (except SCK, VAC, MED, MLA, etc) then you can tag an expense to the deviation bank. The key word is ANY scheduled activity.

(one of our few restrictions was we couldn't take the Concorde)


Not true, you could book on Concorde, we didn't get discount so it was cost prohibitive. Cheapest I ever saw was one way on Air France for just under 6K, that was in 99.

I think the best deal ever was when one of our crewmembers got approval for a ticket and passage on The Queen Elizabeth II (QE2). They stopped that after realizing that the trip took a week from England to New York.

I'll use this thread to get a word out to my FedEx bros... BEWARE ticket prices when deviating through the system. Take screen shots of your transactions.

Recently I deviated- as normal through the system. Original ticket price $XXX. Deviated ticket price $XXX minus $500. Invoice received $XXX PLUS $300!!!

I painstakingly double check what I'm doing when deviating. I always take notes of the numbers. I had the new ticket price to the penny. Where the invoice price came from I have no idea!

I had a screenshot of this transaction, just not of the whole page which showed the new ($XXX-500) ticket price. Take screenshots of everything!

was the email the higher price or did it show up later?

I got the normal invoice and itinerary emails. I didn't look at them until the day of the flight. The invoice price was the higher. I can always make mistakes, but I am 99.9% sure the price was $XXX-500 the day I deviated.

why do you buy your ticket on line through the system? I look at prices to see what's available and then call corp travel. You don't have to deviate at that time doing it this way also.

One possibility I've seen when calling corp travel is a different class of ticket available. For example, on line the price shown was for a Y class ticket but when I called corp travel they showed a cheaper L class ticket available at cheaper cost, so they had to book that if I wanted to fly that flight.

Maybe in the time you clicked on the purchase different classes of tickets were no longer available.

I always do all 3. But in this case, it brought up the flight I was looking for right through the system. Easy peasy, so why not? Trust me, the price for that ticket I got was great. The process I used or exact amounts aren't the issue or point. I'm saying I had a screen showing me I just deviated and purchased ticket Y at price Z, then I got an invoice for $800 dollars more!

Did you ever consider that maybe Global Travel just fat fingered something and hit the wrong button? Did you call Global Travel to see why the ticket was so much more? The reason I ask is because this exact same thing has happened to me. I called Global Travel and it was fixed in seconds.

I called them immediately when I noticed the difference. They just quoted the new price, matter-of-factly. However, she did cancel the pricey ticket and reissue me a non-refundable which was VERY close to the original discounted price. Not ideal but fixed the issue at hand, especially as I was riding in the upscale ground transpo to the airport I use when I have excess deviation bank!

Without the screen shot proving my initial purchase I didn't have much leverage. Hence, my initial point/suggestion.

Another thing to watch out for. Just this past week I received an email invoice and itinerary for my deadhead from HLN to KIX. Looked at it and got the locator number and went to the carrier website to choose my seat. The more I looked the more I realized something was off. Checked more closely and realized that Corp Travel had the ticket booked on the wrong day. If I had just let it go, thinking that the ticket had been booked correctly, I would have been a "no show" for the ticket that was booked and not had a ticket when I showed up at the airport for my deadhead. Take a look at those emails as soon as you get them. When I called to have it corrected there was only one seat left in FC for the flight I needed.

Yikes! Are the global travel folks making more mistakes recently (it seems)?

I think it's more of an international date line thing combined with Zulu vs local times :confused:. Had the same type thing happen to me some time back. Took forever to convince the girl that they had me leaving Hong Kong and arriving in Frankfort 24hours early. Yeah, that eastbound multiple time zone thing messes them up too :eek:.

They have these new gadgets called computers and the Internet (in an emergency you can figure it out in your head).

If that's really the problem then we need to do more training in the Global Travel Department!*?

:confused:

Before you crap on them too hard consider doing all your booking with the computer program they have in there now. Its on par with FOX for begin flexible.

Here's what I do with corp travel….I QC the dates and seats, and try to say "thanks". As a 13 year commuter I can honestly say these ladies have gone out of their way many times to help me find a way to get where I need, stay under budget, and make it happen.

They ain't perfect some days. They do make a mistake here and there. They live in MEM and work in a cubicle. I'd slit my own throat if I had to do that. And I'll bet they are having do a lot more with a lot less based on everything else I've seen in flight ops the last five years...

I think the women (and men) who work at corporate travel do a great job. I don't fault them for any of the errors that happen, I assume it's some sort of computer issue. In all the years I've worked here, I think I can only blame them one or two times for a ticket that was incorrectly scheduled. And I always check the ticket online, at the airline website, to make sure it looks good. There have been some issues with fares, but since I pay attention to it, I have always gotten reimbursed.

Question on the deviation bank / commuting?
Since most of FDX pilots commute (read 65+% somewhere), does everyone have a passenger seat to get to base? (Of those that commute)
Example 1, pilot lives in ZZZ and is MEM based. Has a MEM-anywhere trip, does Fred pay to have pilot get to MEM from ZZZ/Home?
Example 2, pilot lives in YYY and is other based but has a trip starting in VVV, Fred pays to send pilot from ZZZ/Home to VVV and back?

Thanks
(Long time reader, first time poster; great info on here everyone)

Yikes! WWW TTT FFF :D

Example 1 - answer is No. I can't answer Example 2.

I think the simplest way to explain is this: No matter where a pilot is based, some trips start or end (or both) in a city other than his domicile.

When that is the case, the trip is built with a deadhead between domicile and that city and the company buys an appropriate airline ticket.

If the pilot chooses, he can cancel that ticket and use the allotted money to get to/from that city on his own. If there is money leftover (or he already lives in that city - and spends nothing to get there), he can use those funds in the same month as the DH to travel elsewhere (domicile/other city for a different trip, vacation, etc.) as long as the travel occurs with 3 days of a trip/R-day/recurrent.

As of our current contract, any unused money evaporates at the end of the bid month.

Thanks for the answer(s) / info.

It was a late night and a lot of reading recently before I had to ask for some clarification.

And to add, FedEx will pay for all transportation within three days before or after a trip, with a few restrictions. From anywhere, to anywhere, but if you go over your deviation bank for the month, you have to reimburse. Your deviation bank is based upon the value of your deadhead tickets for the month.