This just isn't an "or" situation. No reason we should not have an industry STANDARD contract provision, and no way to truly quantify whatever provision you want in exchange for it to ensure its value. We should have BOTH industry standard profit sharing and amazing QOL provisions, especially right now when we hold the keys to the single operating certificate...

AND... Many of our peers enjoy significant QOL improvement knowing their profit sharing check can help them cover college tuition or fund a great family vacation, or two, or three. Ask them!

The problem with an "intangible" like you sorta describe is what we got last time, "industry leading pairings"... Great, how'd that work out for us?

I would rather us keep our scope intact than open us up to AA. Ok 50 or so (whatever the number is) pilots have to wait an extra year to upgrade. After the first year of the NEA, we owed AA 200 million dollars. They increased their capacity more than us due to them adding widebodies, while we couldn't and still can't even get our order book fulfilled to add capacity. Just the delay on Airbus would have us still owing AA yearly unless we start taking even more planes away from FLL and MCO.

They were generous enough to only take 27 million and put a cap on the pay out. They had the power to drain us by 200 million, why would we want to continue such agreement? How did that benefit us? Getting slots while AA drain us?

Imho, I believe the NEA (while it helped us get started) handicaps us over time. At no quarterly earnings has the company ever mentioned or hinted to the idea that we were making great money through the NEA. It was always "it was doing ok" type of energy. Covid is gone, we need our planes back for our routes.

What in particular do you guys like about the work rules at JB? What comes across on this board is mostly how bad/fatiguing your pairing have become. I'm at NK and I'm sure everybody heard about our schedule flexibility, dropping to zero provisions. Would be great to learn about good parts of your work rules for a change!

These are the parts I like and have made me a lot of money:
- max 2 reassignments (reroutes) in a year, they pay 150% for any added legs
- EPS if you get back to base on a different flight number more than 2 hours late, you get an extra 10 hours of pay
- ADG if you duty off at or after 0100L the next day after the end of your pairing (surprise it isn’t hard to be delayed on go home leg to NY)
- cancellation pay for legs not flown

Parts that are lacking:
- as a senior reserve bidder, you get your choice of RAP but the RAP start is assigned chronologically in order of seniority so if you’re senior you’re likely to be called first
- redeye turns are allowed
​​​​​​- multiple circadian swaps are allowed
- reserve grid complexity to drop trips
- I’m not a commuter so I wouldn’t benefit from this but LCR to SCR conversions IMO should come with the choice of a company paid hotel room or $100 instead of just $100 which it is now

Debatable: Our VDA system (voluntary short call outs on days off) is purely seniority based so the top 10-20% in base can reliably credit 150-200 hours if they wanted to while barely flying. I benefit from this personally but I think a system that is seniority based at the start of the month and has a pilot placed at the bottom after each call out would be more equitable.

I think that should be "start of the year", else atleast half of who's listed on VDA could still not get a piece of the pie. Better staffed bases like FLL and MCO has very little premium opportunities unless a very significant wx system passes through.

Reassignment/disrupted pairing language (25.X) is one of the better sections. I have no desire to go back to the regional days of getting extensions beyond the original pairing. I know this is even a problem at the legacies as well.

Section 12 is pretty good as well (Hours of Service). 14hrs duty max, 16hrs if it ends with a DH. 12hrs duty if it touches a redeye (0100-0500 base local time), 14hrs into redeye if it ends with a DH.

Yep - yearly works great. That is how X/Y list (premium) flying works at Spirit and everyone seems to be quite happy with their premium flying opportunities.

Some thoughts after reading the NK CBA section 25 (it's on the JBALPA merger resource page):

25.B.3 bid package doesn't have to contain any reserve or relief lines? What happens in that case? Some bases just dont have reserves?

25.B.3.i.3 Is is possible to construct a RSV line with less than 3 days off in a row? Say 6 days on, 1 day off, 3 days on.

25.B.3.i.4 Movable reserve days? GTFO

Transition Open Time seems cumbersome, I would be surprised if month-to-month conflicts were allowed to exist in a new JCBA. If it stays then it better get some pay protection.

25.G.1.h.4 Dropping an R day means no assignment allowed on that day except junior assignment. I assume that means no X/Y list on those days?

25.G.1.k Section no greater than 25% of Reserve grid to be red 👍

25.G.2 Can a regular/relief line holder pick up a trip that reports within 2 calendar days? It seems like they can't, which is a big change compared to JB where line holders can pick up/swap anything until 3.5hrs to report time.

25.G.2.a What happens when a trip sits in OT, the 3hrs til report time passes, company realizes they forgot to assign it, and then give it to a Group B RSV going into a movable day off. Does this happen? It will with JB.

25.G.7 I like that Reserve days can be picked up by regular/relief/reserve pilots, but no premium pay and the trip assigned could go outside the block of R days. We have RSA days here at JB that pay 4:12 @ 150% rate, 175% if you actually fly. And the trip needs to finish within that RSA block.

25.I.2.c Pilot can be required to stay at airport up to 2hrs after block in to a layover for rescheduling purposes. Does this happen often?

25.I.6 Can Reserve pilots be rescheduled 4hrs past their last day of a block? EOTHP+4?

25.I.15 Crew move up, seems pretty good, but what defines a move-up trip?

25.I.16 I assume this is mainly displaced for training type of stuff, which is a step down from JB system.

25.J.1 Junior assignments, seems like if you dont answer the phone you can't be involuntarily JA'd

25.J.4 X/Y list stuff, very nicely done

I'll continue later

I’ll tentatively respond to a few of these as I don’t have our CBA in front of me.

You can waive down the four days off between reserve blocks, but that cannot happen via PBS if you don’t. The only exception is the 4 days off doesn’t apply during transition.

When you are awarded a reserve line, 8 days are designated as Golden Days Off, these GDO’s cannot be moved.

We don’t really have relief lines, though in some bases there may be a handful of “lower limit lines”

Scheduling owns trips inside 12:01pm two days before, you cannot pick up, swap, or drop trips that fall inside that window.

Move up pay is given if you are able and accept a departure time that falls inside the 3 hour window, and you are paid 1.5 hours above guarantee for each duty period of the trip. It’s per duty period, not number of days the trip touches.

No trip can be forced onto your schedule if you do not answer your phone. X-list can be turned down, Y-list or JA cannot, however if you place yourself on both X and Y list on the same day/s and get a call, you cannot know before answering which list they are calling you from.

If the grid is “red” meaning the number of available reserves has fallen below the designated minimum for that day when the grid was originally published, they must go to the x or y list as applicable before burning another reserve pilot.

Personally I’ve only been required to remain the 2 hours after block in for rescheduling purposes during a severe meltdown a couple years ago.

Thanks for the info. I do like flexibility in building a RSV schedule to go down to a min of 1 day off or stacking all 17 RSV days in a row too. I really dont care for the movable reserve days off (25.k.5.m), no F-in way to that. Lineholders losing access to open time within two calendar days from report time is a huge loss as well, that won't fly.

Reading further I am super impressed with the language in 25.K (Reserve). I dont think it is one sided favoring the pilots or company, but those who wrote this section had a great understanding of 117 regs and how they function. I truly hope whoever negotiated this section is at the table when we are revisiting it during the JCBA. The JB Reserve section is an abomination and I dont think the company nor the union negotiators had a good grasp on 117 Reserve regs when writing it. The way NK handled RAP assignments by month (25.K.1), monthly bidding/assignment of RAPs (25.K.1.a.1), early release from RAP (25.K.1.a.4-5), shifting RAPs (25.K.1.b) , matching RSV assignments (25.K.1.c) are all very well written. I hound our company and union trying to fight what I think are questionable practices at best here, but would all be solved with these sections.

25.K.5.n LCR/SCR assignments based on a fly first/last list is a great QOL improvement, at low/no cost to the company and NK has this already codified.

Do SCR assignments in a non-domicile city happen frequently? (25.K.5.h)

25.K.3.a requiring RSVs to contact CS to be released at the end of a pairing is poopy, that should go away