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?