Are there currently any restrictions on how much flying you can pick up or drop from your schedule? Could you drop your entire schedule for a month? Or pick up so much that you hit your monthly max?

Thanks

The only restriction I'm aware of is when you're on Reserve. The system will only allow you to pick up a little bit of flying in between your Reserve blocks inorder to assure that you're legal to fly if called. I suppose you could drop your entire month if you were able to find another pilot to fly the trips. Some FA's are notorious for doing this. They'll work a couple trips A YEAR in order to retain health benefits and maintain the minimum currency. They're usually the senior mamas who can give away everything.

Slim pickings as far as open time goes

You can't "drop" trips at SWA, you can only post them in "giveaway" and hope that someone else picks them up.

The only "drop" option is military or call in sick.

However, you can giveaway all you want as long as someone will take it.

We can also trip-trade with the company (ELITT-Electronic line improvement trip trade), but you can only trade trips of approx same # of days.

You're always free to work as much as you're legal for. 30/7 is usually the rule that is most restrictive to adding to your schedule.

I've been watching open time at CAL, and for the whole month there's only been around nine or ten trips for 737 CA's. The sad (I mean REAL sad) thing is that the lines are being built around 72-75 hours, and yet I've seen some pilots with line values over 108 HOURS!!!! This means they are grabbing everything they can to line their pockets. Why our union REFUSES to call these scumbags on the carpet and tell them they are hurting everyone (mostly the 147 furloughed pilots) is beyond me. Hopefully the pilots at SWA handle this a bit more stearnly..........

1) I think it has been said before that the RLA forbids unions from advocating "not working" in any form. I don't know that for fact, but it would make sense.

2) Are you saying that SWA pilots should not be picking up open time, so as to bring the guys out of the pool quicker? With this economy, and if there's no one on furlough (which there isn't), that idea would be a tough sell to most pilots.

Not anymore. Have you seen the Net Zero in MDW? 13 for the FO lines. That never happens. However, the productivity limit still applies.

Nobody is giving hardly anything away, or atleast where I'm at.

Would you care to translate that for those of us that don't quite speak the language just yet? Does this somehow end up relating to being over/under staffed?

Just trying to learn.

328 dude is just saying that any vehicle we use as SWA for adding or trading trips is pretty thin right now due to our over-manning.

There was a lot that you could have picked up right after the lines came out (at least in Phx) but you only had a day or two to do it.

It's not too hard to give away a turn or a weekday 2-day trip right now.

I'm doing my part by doing a lot of mil. Only done a couple of trips in the last couple of months.

Last summer you couldn't give anything away. Now there's almost nothing to pick up.

ELITT is our web page for trading open time with the company. "net-zero" and "productivity limits" are numbers that the company uses to make sure that you can only make trades that at least break even for the company. Certain days may be blocked out if there's too many "duties to cover".

Isn't there some SWA trip-trading thing where you can drop a line, then pick up someone else's line at a better pay rate because it is "open time"?

I overheard a SWA FO talking to someone else about it at a bar, but never heard the details.

He sounded like it was something a lot of guys did to offset 1st year pay.