I see,,,,,,,

I was just wondering how that worked, because I did not know. Now when you say that you are also gone the other two weeks, what do you mean by that? As you well see, this is a new language///world for me, so I am going to be asking a bunch of questions to help me understand.

What about: "Things is we have guys that are working for overtime whle we are in the middle of negotiating a contract."
Are they volunteering for this overtime or is Fed forcing them to take it? Is overtime more or the same for the hourly rates?

Well I have put in for 5 trip trades in the last 24 hours for xtra pairings worth 20hrs to 38hrs. All went to earlier time stamp and all went to guys flying some kind of make up. None of them dropped or traded trips for them, just added them on to their already full lines. With pilots fighting over straight make up pay and flying 20+ days a month I'm not sure VLT or DFT is even an issue. No wonder nothing good is happening at the table. I guess for these guys, 2 years isn't long enough. Color me discouraged, disgusted and dumbfounded. With so many players like these, maybe we will get what they deserve even if the rest of us don't..

Nice...memtrash..whats with the new name..what are u trying to hide...get a harley and join the club...see you on the t-box

FDD, I would really like to argue with you and say you full of crap. But after 10 years here, I've come to realize there is a certain percentage of our guys that don't give a damn about anything but the size of thier NEXT paycheck and stroking thier own ego. What percentage of guys do this? Enough to suck every trip out of open time every month. And thats what the company counts on. We need to convince SOME of these guys that maybe spending some more time with family would be good for them in the long run.

Not to justify all trip pickups (obviously you checked these trips out and it appears that these particular folks are just flying as much as they can) however, there are other reasons to pick up trips with out trading off trips. Some people may be dropping R days for trips. (not sure if scheduling is allowing this since I don't sit reserve). But for me I just got taken off a nice trip Friday and got a lousy sub trip. I turned down sub and went home. Now I'll have to go into OTP next month to make up the hours lost. Can't afford to lose the pay.

Overnight fr8, Nobody minds guys making up trips for an averag BLG. I'm just amazed that Fed Ex pilots want to work 2-4 extra days a month(even during delaying tactics by the company). Let's take a number between 1-9 and look at the BLG for that VTO line holder in a couple of seats. Let's use 8 because of your user name. Another random choice for seats but maybe your seat and my seat for a sampling. Neither pilot has min days off. They both are requesting to work overtime at staight time. Astonishing

What the heck are you talking about!

wrong thread... how do you delete a post????

You don’t understand?
Do this…
Log on to Vips
Choose Monthly bids from the left column
Under Bid Period Processing: Display secondary Lines
Choose your base and position from the lists.
Pick the VTO line you want to see.
Count the days off.
(Doesn't work all the time - only when the bid is finished, after VTO's have been awarded, before the next bid is open.)

However – in fairness to the VTO line holders with big calendars, this might NOT be the line they actually fly, or ever intended to fly. Sometimes guys will not choose min days protection – which gives them the ability to drop trips of their choosing instead of leaving it in the scheduler’s hands. This doesn’t work well at all from LAX MD-11 trips when 90% of the pairings are at least a week long.

The point I'm trying to make is: We (FedEx pilots) fly an average of 2-4 extra days a month at straight time by choice. And, I don't think we should be doing it during negotiations. BLG stands for Bid Line Guaurantee or the number of hours on our paychecks. Guys and gals can increase it by a few methods. One way is trip trading up to 12 hours above your BLG and thats what Overnitefr8 was talking about. The use of Secondary(VTO) lines is another. VTO is an old acronym and now the company calls them secondary lines. Secondary lines are one of the easiest ways to protect carryover trips and that is what I was talking about. By protecting carryover you can fly more days at straight time. If guys didn't do it so much, the company would have to pay overtime to cover all this extra flying. The overtime cost would put some economic pressure on the company for negotiations and show that we're not happy with the status quo.