BunkerF16

PTOSB is a scam perpetuated by the company to artificially inflate a small percentage of pilots who can fully utilize the benefit while simultaneously ignoring the pitfalls and negative side effects.

Full disclosure: I'm one of the pilots who benefits from PTOSB. As a very senior FO, I sell back on average about 10 hrs/month which yields me about $25K extra income per year. Also, because of my seniority, I can bid around the days/weeks I want off so I don't need to bid vacation.

Great. For me.

How many people out of nearly 1700 FOs can take full advantage of the system like this?

Not many.

Oh, and God forbid I ever get sick. Bye bye benefit.

PTOSB needs to go. We need industry standard pay/vacation/sick bank systems with appropriate allocation AND distribution. Doesn't do us much good if the majority of vaca weeks are during Sep, Oct, Mar, Apr and May.

I have full confidence that our NC realizes this and will bring us a TA we will be proud of.

Std Deviation

Agreed. Because it's great coming in healthy and sitting next to a guy that's pre-pneumonia, hacking and getting infectious mucous all over the cockpit because it's more lucrative to fly sick and sell back the 9 hours to pay the alimony/college tuition.
That's the psychology of it like it or not. It's more financially beneficial to fly sick and pilots here do it. It's allergies. Sure. I'm not infectious. Sure.

Can everyone honestly say they've not nursed a cold/sore throat etc. to preserve PTO?

Std Deviation

I on the other hand, take the time off and reduce to a min schedule. The opportunity cost of being home more outweighs the 25K (imagine that, more to life than money). I have no qualms about guys selling back time. I just prefer to be here as little as possible especially with a commute. My only opinion is to enact a separate PTO/sick account (for reasons mentioned above). But that's my perspective- gained through masters work and data analysis in industrial/organizational psychology and associated work (in which I designed/evaluated employee incentive programs.)

Raptor01

Yeah....what he said!

likeitis

Yes we are far from the STD on the Airbus but on the EMB on 1/1/17 we are the STD for pay rates. So what you want us to spend time on is convincing the NMB that 190 rates we have should be higher because Jetblue uses the aircraft differently than other operators? I'd love for it to be that easy but it will cost us dearly.

BeatNavy

We are the standard for the e190, a 100 seat jet, but DAL and their 108 seat jet pays 30-40% more than our 100 seat jet? DAL's CS100 rates are $10 an hour less than their airbus rates. That's about 95% of their airbus rate. For a 108 seat jet. I'm saying we shouldn't let our payrate for 1/4th of our pilots fall further behind our peers. And that using the e190 as the comparison is idiotic, since we are the only ones who fly it besides the 20 AA ones that are getting parked. Other similar sized jets need to be used (717, cs100). It is possible to get good rates on both aircraft. Delta just did it. And let's face it, 3-4 legs a day on the 190 moves 300-400 people. 2 legs a day on an airbus moves 300 with half the landings and half the work. But bigger is better, that's how it's always been, yada yada yada.

likeitis

It's not bigger is better. It's the yield. Pilot pay is based on the profitability of the aircraft you are flying.

CaptCoolHand

To your point. The 190 had huge yields in the markets it flies.

You're selling yourself short.

The 190 falls into the category of the dc9 717 C series and 737s.

BeatNavy

That's an erroneous/fallacious argument. Bean counters price city pairs in certain ways. If someone is flying on an e190 from BUF-JFK then a 320 JFK-MCO, there isn't really a good way to break up how much profit existed from one aircraft to another when a ticket was bought from BUF-MCO. The bean counters determine profitability per flight, but that isn't an exact science since two fares aren't purchased. More so at legacies with regional feed, but still applicable to some of our 2 leg connecting flights. Also, I've heard that lately the e190 has been more profitable per flight than the 320, but I don't have access to any of that data, and I'd be surprised if many people on these boards or people I fly with have access to that. And, by that logic (profitability of a fleet is tied to pay), if jetblue wasn't profitable and each flight lost money, which happens sometimes, we don't lose pay (minus profit sharing) accordingly. Profitability of routes, aircraft serving those routes, etc is a marketing and operations function, completely irrelevant to pilot pay. Especially when you throw in maintenance cost variations, landing fee variations, etc. So much of what goes into a flight's cost/revenue is not at all related to pilot labor...and to say that pilot labor rates are tied to revenue brought in or profit is questionable at best.

Pilots don't bring in money to JetBlue. Customers buying tickets brings money to JetBlue. We are a cog in the wheel. Whether you fly 150 people once or twice a day, or 100 people 3 or 4 times a day, doesn't bring in more or less money to the company. A New York gate agent who processes 900 people in one day makes the same per hour as a podunk gate agent who processes 150 or 200 people a day...right?

The fact that so many bluejet pilots are willing to sell out 1/4 of the pilot group with those arguments is sad, when 108-110 seat jets at our peer airlines are fetching 30-40% more than our 100 seat jets. I always get a chuckle when I have a someone tell me they don't think the 190 rates should go up bc we are at the top of the industry for 190 pay. I ask who else flies them and I get this dumbfounded look. 20 190s exist in the US outside of JetBlue, and they are getting parked. They were a b scale aircraft at airways that comprised a small fraction of their total fleet and could be bid off quickly. Why compare us to something that doesn't exist and say we are at the top? We can bump both aircrafts' rates, but unfortunately I think the sentiment across the board is not shared, especially since 190s are a minority. As a pilot, I'd rather bid the type of flying I want (perhaps the 190 schedules suit me better) and not feel compelled to chase the bigger plane for bigger pay.

Lastly, does a UPS 757 pilot bring in more or less revenue/profit than a UPS 747 pilot? That's weird, their pay rate is the same. Because it doesn't matter.

wallyp34

Since when is the grid green to use PTO days? About half the month on any given month? What a great benefit. But I guess if you're senior and get off the days you want it works for you. It needs to be either eliminated or the reserve grid needs to be adjusted. I like the vacation bank idea and I will vote accordingly.