ZapBrannigan

Right? I just want to know when I get the third week? Is it the first vacation bid AFTER my 5th anniversary? Or bidding for the year that starts my 5th year?


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ipdanno

Vacation bid AFTER fifth year complete, not after fifth year started.

ZapBrannigan

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ipdanno

Hey Zap,
You've got one month on me here at APC, but 1,713 more posts.
That must have been a busy month!

patelam

This past May, I used 12 days of vacation to create a block of 56 days off by sliding and expanding it (including bidding to work the first half of one month, and the back half of the third month). The 12 days covered my reserve days (intentionally bid).

In August, I worked Aug 3-13, with 20 hours of block. My next trip pays 97 hours for 50 hours of block starting in the middle of September. That leaves me with 37 days off in between those trips, and basically 3 months off this summer without doing much.

FedEx pilots make their coin picking up premium trips in those gaps, they'll never come close to hitting the block hour limits, so they can really wrack up the credit hours. YTD, I have 225 block hours, and I'm a 2nd year FO that hasn't sat reserve this year.

I passed up a premium trip that paid 25k in one of those gaps (I had prior commitments), but the same trip at captain rates would be worth well over 40k.

A captain and even senior FO could easily hit 285k if they grabbed some of those premium trips.

Hope that helps you understand us a little better!

Milksheikh

Yeah that does help. So there are premium trips being picked up to get those kinds of numbers although not necessarily all the time. Also does your schedule for the next month come out, you look at it and then select your vacation days to touch the trips you want off? For instance you being a 2 year FO I take it there were some trips in between the start of aug and the end of sept you were assigned but didn't have to do because of vacation. Or do you bid your vacation days at the start and know ahead of time which month(s) you can get these types of time off? Just curious. Thanks!

patelam

Our vacations are bid in summer/fall of the year prior. When the bid month is awarded, we can slide, expand or even shrink our vacation to hit as many or as few trips as we want. There is some formula in our contract about the maximum days it can be stretched or slid, but it's pretty flexible.

The benefit of shrinking it, is to have an excess of vacation bank in December that pays at the current hourly rate. In the best example, a person upgrading in June minimizes his vacation footprint in his awarded month of March to get the remainder paid out at the Captain rate in December.

There's also vacation buy back going on currently. If you sell your vacation back, they pay you the amount in December, and additionally 24 more hours. I showed my example of getting large chunks of time off, but if you sold back your vacation 3 of the 5 months a senior pilot would do, you'd literally get a 13th and 14th month of pay, while holding a regular line.

Sqwk1200

Still trying to fully understand the SWA way to pay based on TFP. What I understand so far, 1 TFP = 243 miles. Then for flights longer than that, you get paid 0.1 TFP for every 40 miles beyond the 243? That math doesn't work out. 10% of 243 is 24.3. What's up with that?

Ihateusernames

Nobody picks up premium....they get awarded it by the company because the company needs flights flown. People need to quit thinking of it like one is picking it up. It is awarded because the Company is in need.


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flyguy81

1 tfp is roughly 1.143 hrs. There's a few ways they figure how many tfp a leg is worth. I don't really pay attention to any of it. Just pretend it's a unit of measurement like inches and don't confuse yourself trying to figure it out.