System Bid
 

So. Since you guys got that last thread locked, how about some system bid discussion, minus the mud throwing. That's what PMs are for.......

Reserve
 

Vacancies from the system bid has it looking like reserve won’t be too long for this new guy on the 190 in BOS. That being said, Im looking at living about 60-70 miles away from Logan. Is the 2:30 short call out time from when the phone rings or do you get 15 minutes plus 2:30 to show up at the gate if you call them back 14 minutes later?

2:30 from their phone call. ( live north - I95 is good)

But it’s also 2.5 then another hour after checkin.

As in you’ve got some buffer with an hour until push back once you arrive and check in?

Gotcha thanks. I figured that was the case.

Thanks
 

You guys are now making this thread what it should be!

You have to check in within 10 minutes of show time. So 1200 call for 1430 show you have until 1440 to check in at the terminal or you’re late. Your iPad uses its GPS to confirm you’re in the terminal.

You can drive through the departures drop off area and check in and then park. But I don’t see that helping much. If you’re parking in Chelsea you’re definitely going to have a gate agent call crew services looking for you before you can get back.

But if you do the drive through check in and then park in central parking you’ll probably be fine. That costs $35/day.

More on topic though I’m curious to see how this annual system bid works in August. Will the 220 be on it?

If there are multiple effective dates will we be bidding on effective dates? Say I want Airbus CA but I don’t want to train in the summer can I bid a spring effective date? I’d imagine that’s how it would work but it’s not clear.

I have never had to deal with parking as you described it here, but have had two gate agents tell me people have gotten in trouble for doing the "drive by" check in. Reading your example, I can see why.

Thanks for the response definitely not planning on having to resort to the drive by checkin. Looking at a place 1:10 from Logan with no traffic. So I’m thinking 2.5 hours should be fine for most call outs. How long does it take on average to get from the lot in Chelsea to a random gate?

*last reserve question, I know this is the system bid thread*

The A220 won’t be on this annual bid.

It depends what parking lot you get and if the bridge goes up. The employee garage I think can take anywhere from 15-45 minutes. Pre-flight parking is 15-30 minutes as they will usually divert to an alternate route if the bridge is up. I’m not an expert on the employee garage as I’ve never parked in it.

I’m usually able to get a strong enough signal to check-in inside the Central parking garage. Seems the higher you are the better (Level 4 and up maybe)

Take a look to see how close you live in relation to one of the Logan Express stops. Everytime you drive to Chelsea to do a useless day trip on reserve, you’re losing money with gas & tolls.

I also just call and say I’m here but iPad won’t work. They have never asked me to go to the phones in the crew room.

Any idea when the training dates are supposed to come out for this bid ?

Last time, they were posted on the 5th day after awards.

Yes it will.

According to Chief Hocking a few weeks ago, he said they won’t and they will have to run a supplement bid.

We are getting (maybe) 1 A220 next year.

I dunno then i heard different.

Any supplemental bid favors the pilot.....

You know, I had a feeling you were a BOS guy...

Hahahahahahahah

How do you figure? I think the CBA is so unclear about how the annual/supplemental bids will work, I honestly can't come to that conclusion. When asked yesterday some particular questions about the annual bid, Jim didn't even have an answer (regarding effective/training dates).

This is where I see a supplemental bid not necessarily favoring the pilots (perhaps because I don't know how it will be handled).

Let's say on this upcoming Aug system bid you're a 190FO and get awarded 190CA. Your awarded training date is November 2020. In March of 2020, a supplemental bid comes out. Now you can hold 320CA. You haven't started your training yet, do you now get 320CA? Who then fills your November 190CA training, someone from the supplemental bid? What if the supplemental bid effective date is before your formerly assigned training date? Will all training/effective dates after the supplemental bid be wiped and reallocated earlier to mesh with the supplemental bid?

Same scenario, different question. Let's say you get awarded 190CA on this upcoming annual bid, with a training date of November and effective date in December of 2020. Then a supp bid comes out in March of 2020 with effective dates of June. Someone junior to you then gets 190CA. Do you keep your previous training/effective date, and he keeps his, which is 6 months earlier than yours? You are senior to him. He in theory couldn't hold, or didn't bid for, the position you were awarded. Then he gets it on a supplemental, and gets trained and gets CA pay before you. Bypass pay isn't triggered for you, because it says (same base, status, effective date, and training curriculum). If that's how it goes down, then that isn't good. If on the supplemental, you can bid for and be awarded an earlier training date than your last annual bid award gave you, that kind of fixes it, but then messes up the whole remainder of the year training dates.

With none of this addressed either in the CBA, by the company, or by the union, there are just too many questions about how this will all work. I have yet to hear one company person, one union person, or any regular line pilot be able to say exactly how this will play out. I honestly am scratching my head at how this annual bid will help the company or the pilots. I think the old system is better and more predictable for everyone, and allows the company to fine tune staffing a whole lot better than a massive annual bid in august of the prior year with supplementals sprinkled about as necessary, with overlapping effective/transfer dates. At my regional, there was a monthly system bid, with training/effective dates a month or two after the award, and that seemed to work just fine. I thought the quarterly system bids at JB with effective/training dates up to 6 months later was too infrequent with status/base changes/training dates that were too far out. I can't believe they made it even further out. I still can't see the upside to this new annual bid, for either party. I guess it in theory helps with training budgets and managing training throughput throughout the year, but I see it being a huge cluster.

I sure hope the Union will send out some guidance before this bid.

I’m sure they will have to “check their notes” from negotiations.

The only reason the company wanted an annual bid was because the union insisted (rightly so) that a pilot would keep his awarded vacation even if he later bid for a new seat mid year. That's why the annual bid is in August, and the Vaca bid is a few months later.

Even so, I don't see a huge issue with annual vacation bidding and quarterly system bidding. If keeping awarded vacation is the only issue, they could have have made a clause that said training dates and base transfers are in seniority order, but if vacation conflicts with the would-be training dates, training will occur at the next available training date after vacation, or the pilot could have the option to slide the vacation outside of the training footprint. Lots of ways to skin that cat without abrogating seniority, giving up vacation, or at least giving the pilot the choice. I don't think an annual system bid is necessary just for that.

Looking at the emails from the March System bid:

System Bid Open = 3/6/19
System Bid Award = 3/15/19
System Bid Transfer/training Dates = 3/26/19

Tex

All vacation and staffing is predicated on the annual bid. Pilots keep their vacation no matter what they bid on and when they go to training. You could double vacation in the summer as well as other key vacation slots Like December by the right people bidding training over the summer or those other choice vacation dates. How does that not favor the pilot?

plus no lock for new equipment, new base, first upgrade. In a supplemental bid you could feasibly train pilots to do stuff they bid off of before ever having done it...like SQ class.

Thanks for the correction. I went by the date I forwarded them to my personal email, not the date they sent them. Appreciate it!

Could you explain what you mean in detail?

Could be another way. This way if you bid Capt for mid year training 2020, you 2019 vaca bid will have you using your Capt seniority (relatively worse, and from the captain Vaca availability) for second half of 2020.

I'm sure you knew that, but just in case.

In some ways I see it benefiting the company, because it's less staffing compared to previous company.

Previous company, you could bid a great vaca using your FO seniority, then upgrade mid year and you kept it.

I agree, the scenario you present is good for the pilots. My point is that couldn't the same provision exist even with quarterly bids? Not knowing exactly (or even remotely) how the annual bid will work, I just see it being a little more difficult to plan from both a personal side and from the company side since I could be awarded something 14-15 months out, for example (awarded in August 2019, effective Dec 2020), but then get a whole new award in a supp bid before that. I guess I'll have to see how this bidding for effective/training dates works, because I haven't really seen that communicated. And if there are, for example, training dates spread throughout 2020, awarded/decided in 2019, but then another supp bid comes out, that just throws a wrench into that entire plan for the pilot and for the company. I'd rather just have pilots keep vacation but still have system bids every quarter. Or really, every couple months, with a closer in effective/training date than currently exists. Just seems more consistent and predictable, but again I don't have a good handle on how exactly it will work (and neither does anybody I've talked to about it).

Yep! I do the same thing, forward them to a personal account. Started after I looked for an archived message on the company server but it was magically gone.... 🤦🏻*♂️

Tex

Exactly why I do it!

Now I just gotta remember that I don't ALWAYS do it on the day it first hits the street!

Thanks again for catching my oops moment!

You seem hung up on what you would prefer or what you think would be easier for the company planning.

I get that, I'd rather a pilot just keep his awarded vacation and keep quarterly bids as well. But that system requires more captain staffing, because the company would have a steady trickle of FOs bidding summer/holiday vacations and then bidding captain. It was literally a strategy that was frequently used at my previous company. Then the company would have more captains on summer/holiday vacation than they staffed for. Good for pilots, bad for the company.

They would not tolerate that, so they did this annual bid. Is it really harder for the company to plan a year out? I suspect they will staff at the bare minimum of their future 12-16 month growth plan. Then run supplemental bids as needed. More complicated? Yep. Room to get it all dorked up with supplemental bids that have effective dates before the annual bid effective dates? Yep. Do they care? Maybe, but certainly not more than having more captains on summer/holiday vacation than they staffed for.

Just my read of the situation.

I'm not hung up on anything, nor am I looking at it from a standpoint of what I want personally...but yeah, what I think is easier for the company is part of (well really the whole crux of) the discussion, as I see it as a lose-lose, hence why I am asking for an explanation on how an annual bid (and supplementals) helps the company and/or the pilot group vice quarterly (or other more frequent) bids. I get that the vac awards are predicated on the annual bid right before the vac bid. But I don't see your scenario of bidding FO vacation then upgrading being worse for staffing than having a big annual bid with random supp bids (also with up to year out effective dates) throwing a wrench into the previous annual bid. The way it is, people could game the system knowing a supp will most likely come out between now and next August, stay FO on this annual, get FO summer vacation, then throw CA in on the supplemental. I just don't see a lot of people making CA vs FO bid decisions based on one year of awarded vacation. But again maybe I'm missing something.

Just curious, what is the industry norm for system bids? Does any other airline have an annual system bid in August projecting vacancies for the entire following calendar year? I'm not aware of any that do. Perhaps there is a reason for that? I just see it, from my standpoint, as yet another contrarian thing with no good reasoning behind it and with no benefit to either the pilot group or the company.