just wanting to know how some other airlines work with base trading or basically just moving bases?

At RAH if we do not have any vacancies then the only way to change a base is via a base trade which gets posted for all the company to see and then if someone senior to you in your current base, wants to take your position in the swap then they can, and you get to stay where you are at, and hope to find someone else to try and trade with again.

so how does it work where you are at?

At Piedmont, we have to wait for the company to post a permanent bid which will show openings in the bases. This usually only happens if they are doing CA upgrades, CA downgrades or getting new hires. We have gone over a year without being able to move bases. Right now we have had a couple in the last few months. On our website, we can put our bases in order of preference. So for Piedmont, if my base choices are LGA, MDT, ROA, CHO, SBY, and EWN....and my seniority could only hold ROA...everytime there is a new permanent bid, it would automatically try to get me either MDT or LGA but never anything below what I have now. If we are forced move out of our base, the company has to pay for our moving expenses.

At Eagle we get something like this popping up every month or two:

Everyone can then update their standing bid ballot for whatever position they want to transfer to and the company closes the bidding on 30jan11 and processes the requests.

Where it says "we will not backfill the first 6 nfe" means that if 6 LGA FO ERJ pilots bid for something else then the company wont replace those pilots. If 7 LGA FO ERJ pilots leave, then 1 new pilot will be awarded a slot.

If the company doesnt get enough people bidding for ORD FO CRJ then they cant force anyone into that position, they will most likely offer it to the newhire classes.

We can only change equipment when we are transferring to a higher payscale (Prop FO to Jet FO, ERJ CA to CRJ CA). If you are ORD ERJ FO you can transfer to DFW ERJ FO whenever a vacancy opens up since it would be the same equipment.


There is also a system completely separate from the above that is run by ALPA and allows two pilots to swap bases if there arent any posted vacancies.

XJT used to be like you mentioned...

1. find someone to trade with.
2. post the trade intentions for 30 days
3. if someone senior "objects" they take the junior persons place on the trade (without resetting the 30 days).
4. At the end of the 30 days, trade is completed and you move bases in the following bid period.

NOW, however, it is somewhat better...

1. Send an e-mail to planning with your base trade request (name, current base, desired base, etc.) [This is COMPLETELY independent of the perm bid.]
2. On the 14th (i think....) of every month, planning will post a "spreadsheet" of everyone that submitted requests.
3. If mutual trades are requested (i.e. someone wants IAH-ORD and someone wants ORD-IAH) then all trades are granted in seniority order.

Example:
IAH-ORD (#200 Joe Smoe, # 204 Julie Smoe)
ORD-IAH (#122 Jack Smack, #466 Sue Blue, #477 John Doe)
IAH-EWR (#54 Billy Joe)
EWR-IAH (None)

In this example both IAH-ORD's will get their trade, and Jack and Sue will get ORD-IAH... John and Billy will have to try again next month. All done only by sending a simple e-mail to planning.

Make sense?

This prevents you from having to do a lot of leg work hunting down someone to trade with and also prevents you from doing all of the work just to have someone senior to you too lazy to do the work "stealing it" from you on the last day...

That looks like a great system and I am sure we would love to have it in RAH except the fact that noone trusts crew planning that they would release the accurate data to the pilot group.

SKW used to have an informal system: find a buddy to trade with, call HQ for approval, and it was done.

But that stopped because some moron complained that domicile slots were being awarded out of seniority. They were not actual openings in domicile, they were swaps...to me it is apparent that there's a difference. They probably could have implemented a formal system to ensure that the two most senior folks in each domicile got awarded first.

SKW: We have an online standing bid with no communication from Mgmt about openings for new hire, transfer, transition or upgrade.