Yeah, I mean dropping trips down to a 65 hour line, then picking up out of open time at time and a half, every single month. Yeah, that blows......

 

Right .... Because the SAP was the big carrot to get your pilot group to vote in a concessionary deal?

 

Not my pilot group, but my point is Mr JT8D's contention that it's bottom end pay, work rules, QOL, etc, is specious at best.

 

We had the SAP before the concessionary LOA..We got the SAP on our contract we voted in in 2013.

 

Whether most of you agree or not, I know for a fact that PSA pilots probably make the most money among regionals. I've had a few people I know from there explain the SAP to me. It's complex, but in short, most of the hours they get are paid at 1.5 the hourly rate. So a $70 an hour captain is really earning $105. No other regional can touch that.

I see management trying to come after this SAP in future negotiations. Even mainline doesn't have this sort of thing.

 

Uhm, how much would you care to wager? My base rate is higher than your 1.5 times rate of $105.

 

If you're over $105, you're at top of scale or at a major. So, to compare apples to apples, a senior PSA pilot at $100 an hour is effectively making $150 an hour. No regional on earth pays that rate, other than PSA pilots with the SAP.

 

Not at a major, we used to get double time regularly, and currently have been getting time and a half.

 

As awesome as the SAP is this is not entirely true. No one is getting ALL their flying at 150%. I know some high speed lines were but I think the company shadily nixed that method.

Mostly what's happening is people are ending the SAP with anywhere between 17-20 days off and then picking up flying from there that gets credited at 150%. So those couple 4 days that are left on your schedule you aren't getting 150% for. Also the system is slightly different as of this month and should benefit us even more as staffing gets tighter for the summer. Now you actually can, in theory, get all your flying at 150% but you need to be johnny on the spot on the open time. It also might not be fully sustainable every single month to get a bunch of 150% stuff. For the forseeable future though people are going to be making some serious money.

 

That SAP system sounds very nice. I would imagine you're going to have to fight tooth and nail with management to keep it. It's amazing to me they agreed to it in the first place.