oldcarpilot

I guess what I'm saying is that given the past interpretation of our contract by the company. Unless the contract actually says something like "No pilot will be required to be scheduled for any event, i.e. training, or no pilot will be required to work more than 4 days without 1 calender day off."
The company will say that because you are not on a trip they can use you for 5 days.
Honestly this is probably a moot point. They'll just DH you on day 1 and out on day 4.

RamenNoodles

I fully understand what you are saying but all of it is predicated on the way your lines are built right now. I promise you that with ASA in control of line construction, you're quality of life will decline significantly. 85% or more of our open time swaps were denied under the line bidding system because of low reserve coverage (line holders don't count in their stupid coverage formula so it was not "fluid and dynamic" at all), and you'll never see a line that has a mixture of 2 and 4 day trips, so yes, you'd have to swap the whole month if you wanted 2 days.

If XJT management were to remain in control of line construction, I'd be 100% in favor of dumping PBS. With ASA in control, line construction and open time is terrible and I'd never want to go back.

dojetdriver

And I fully understand what you're saying. But let me give you 2 examples to possible help you better understand the points;

1) After the close down of branded in Sept 08, the lines/pairings went to absolute crap. But as myself (and others) KEEP repeating is this. We could ALWAYS make our lines better via the LIW's

2) During the reign of the green lantern, same thing. I fact, he even decided to shut the scheduling chair out of the pairing construction process. As a result, the lines/pairing went to crap. Again, we could ALWAYS improve that via the LIW's

Now, lets flip that coin around. If ASA management wanted to do nothing but build crap pairings and only a fraction of the pilots get their preferences met while the rest get garbage, what recourse will there be to improve their lines? FACT, PBS eliminates open time, PERIOD.

And I'll repeat it AGAIN. Under the line bid, tons of pairings become available that weren't there in the initial bid. Whether they be 1 days, 2, days, 3 days, or 4 days.

So even if ASA built all the pairings, the pilots would STILL have the ability to improve their awards under the XJT's system. Can that be said about PBS?

RamenNoodles

My previous point is that ASA purposely makes this very concept overwhelmingly difficult and severely restricts your ability to improve your schedule once it is awarded, thus making PBS a much better tool in my opinion. Would you mind telling us about your LIW processes a bit more in depth? I'm sure our open time process was far different than yours so it would be interesting to see what your contract language is in that regard. I would never want to go back to our previous open time system, so if yours is significantly better, I'm all ears.

dojetdriver

There is literally a crap ton of information that I'll have to type out to try to explain how primary bid and ILIW, and secondary bid/ SLIW's work.

Bottom line, we don't have "red arrow" crap. We have negative coverage days that will prevent a pilot from moving days, but since guys are constantly picking up and what not it's as I've said, fluid and dynamic. Also it can be beat via our "bad day-worse day" trading language. If you are just trading same day trips for other same day trips, it just goes through.

Also, the WHOLE system is automated, the ONLY time it requires you interfacing with a scheduler has to due with an IT limitation and the software. Everything else is automatic, real time, first come first served. It's not processed in a seniority order. Let's say I have mon-thurs 4 days that I don't like. I can simply place ALL those 4 days in the left of the trade column. in the right, I can insert the 4 days I want. When the window opens, just click and it'll trade. All this of course is barring another guy that may have been quicker on the trigger and/or has a faster connection speed.

Now, as I stated in a post that got deleted for some reason. Depending on the coverage, and what's happening, I could place a 2 of my 4 days in the left column, and ONLY 1 4 day in the right section and execute the trade. If the coverage is there, it'll drop the 2 four days and give me the ONE four day I selected. I just dropped an entire 4 day trip. Guys that are fast/savvy enough can put 2 4 days in the left column, and trade them down for a day trip. In this case, the guy the dropped 7 days of work. The only limit here is that you don't trade below the "floor", which is usually set at 60 hours. At that point if you're still trying to reduce your line, simply advertise and that can take take it below 60.

And as myself, and others KEEP having to repeat. A lot of those pairings NEVER existed on the initial bid, they come from conflict, etc. Imagine how much open time where is in the ILIW when you have 500+ hard lines, IAH circa summer 2006. That's A LOT of vacation, training, transition, and attrition conflict in the open time pool for the sharks to feed on.

Nevets

Ya I think that your idea of the ILIW being the same as open time is what is confusing many. The company publishes lines. The pilots bid. The company awards the lines in seniority order and then drop any trips or portions of trips for transition, far, or vacation conflicts. They will also drop a trip or portion of a trip for training. In other words, they can only train you on days that you originally had a trip and pay protect you for the value of that trip. All these trips and portion of trips are put in the ILIW. The "coverage" is adjusted to +4 for all but 8 days of the month. The window opens for 24 hours for each base and seat for pilot to trade drop pickup to their hearts desire. Even if the company built 100% 4 day trips, there are always trips that are broken up and dropped due to the conflicts. When the window closes the company takes the left overs and figures out how many relife/conversion lines they can build to use up all thats left. They publish phase 2 with the X number of relief lines and reserve lines for the remainder of the pilots. If you are senior enough you get a relief line and get to request their preferences. Kind of like PBS. The remaining pilots are awarded reserve lines. Once those are published, the SLIW opens for any trades drops pickups. Its only in the SLIW where coverage matters. But even then, you can almost always trade trips or reserve days with our BD/WD trade provision.

oldcarpilot

The worst thing is we at ASA don't have anything called a "red arrow" in our contract either. We have "restricted days" which are supposed to be limited to 4. HOWEVER!!! (And this is why the EXACT wording in your XJT thing about not working over 4 days comes into play) ASA management created "red arrow" days which are days where reserve coverage is below whatever formula they are using. (sounds like a restricted day right?) When there is a red arrow day, the system WILL NOT allow you to swap, even day for day. They are not calling them "restricted days" and there for this is not a violation to have more than 4 of these in any month. What has been done about this??? NO IDEA. ALPA has been very quiet other than to say they are working to address the "red arrows".
So unless it is black and white, clearly written, and enforceable, ASA (Skywest) management will find a way around it.

Oh yeah... In any month there are about 3-5 days that AREN'T red arrow days.

todd1200

If you read the contract though --


Management can designate as many restricted days as they like, they just have to inform the union. As in so many other situations, our contract language is weak and open to interpretation.

I'm curious, what kind of reserve coverage does ExpressJet usually have? I would think that a system that withholds large amounts of open time, while providing increased schedule flexibility for lineholders, would need a lot of pilots to be on reserve who would normally be lineholders.

Nevets

Unfortunately our contract allows the company to manipulate the min level numbers so as to make it so that there is no coverage and prevent any trip drops. But we can always do a bad day worse day trade. In fact, when the company tried to zero out all the coverage numbers, when someone would pick up a trip, someone else would do a bad day worse day trade all their trips for a day trip on that sole positive coverage day.