If you are on reserve and it’s your primary vacation, you will get the whole reserve day removed the day before and the day after. For non-primary, you will be released by noon the day before your vacation begins.

It’s all in the contract:

“ Primary Vacation
A pilot awarded a primary vacation will be entitled to drop any trip (in its entirety) that is scheduled to operate on a day that falls within his awarded vacation period (i.e., Sunday through Saturday). A primary vacation will entitle a reserve pilot to drop one (1) reserve day immediately prior to his vacation start date and one (1) reserve day immediately after his vacation period ends (if reserve duty is scheduled on either or both of those days). For example, if a reserve pilot has a scheduled reserve day on the Saturday prior to his vacation, and a reserve day scheduled on the Sunday following his vacation, those two reserve days will be dropped.”

ahh, yeah, my mistake. Sorry I haven’t been on reserve in a few years…that all changes shortly though.

If you’re a line holder and the trip drops due to trip touching, are you paid for that trip in addition to your vacation?or it drops out without pay?

drops without pay. You can go below MMG in a vacation month, but anything you pick up will be at 150% unless it’s CTL.

That fact drove me nuts talking to some of the senior pilots about PBS.

“We’d lose trip touching!”

“it’s cool that you can string together 35 days off in a row but I can’t afford two months of 30 hours pay AND to do anything fun with that time off”

I’d rather get a better schedule every month than a schedule I can’t afford once a year.

NO!!! If you want to work, pick the same trip up for 150%.

No, I want to have a reasonable amount of time/a few days I want every month. “Vacation” in this case would just mean getting an extra 20 hours and no real time off. With line bidding it is theoretically possible to never get off two single days you need off in a month, even if you’re #1 on the list.

The one bonus month/year you get if you’ve been here under 5 years does not beat out actually having some schedule flexibility 12 months/year.

Even at my best seniority here my more junior friends at other airlines were absolutely smoking my schedules every month, both in credit and days off, although our other work rules and aggressive pickups made my paycheck noticeably bigger.

On a personal basis, line bidding works out outrageously great if you’ve been here a long time and can drop vacation every other month to get the days off you want and pretty crummy if you haven’t and/or are junior in your seat.

on a collective basis line bidding results in much more inefficient scheduling, which requires more pilots. There are definitely perks and it’s good enough that I don’t see a need to try to push PBS, but I don’t understand the absolute rabid hatred anytime it gets discussed.

This is absolutely wrong. Your removed trips for vacation will not drop you below garuntee. Stop spreading misinformation, and read the damn contact.

This is not true.

I can show you my “damn” paystub from my primary vacation last month….
this was confirmed by the head of payroll when I spoke to her directly. Show me in the contract why you think I’m wrong.