I still get a vote.

there’s no reason to take a day away from someone, and I understand there are *actual* irops every now and again, but the market will provide. Keep sending trips out for multiples of the rig til you get someone off the couch, find a reserve, or cancel the flight.

my days off are mine. I’ll protect them as necessary, but I shouldn’t have to justify why I need my time off to the company.

 

I agree with this 100%. My time off is too important. If I wanted to work extra I would bid it. Stop JAing. To bad it’s already staying in the contract.
Here’s a clue for you proximity. JA IS NOT industry standard. Our contract will lag once again the day we sign it.

 

I think JA is BS and that trips should be offered in open time at an every increasing premium multiplier until someone flies it.

But I knew in Jan 2020 when I read Fligthplan 2020 that getting rid of JA is not even a SWAPA ask, so it isn't going away. If you want to escape JA, you'll either need to go elsewhere, or when you do get JA'd take matters "into your own hands."

 

We shouldn’t have to do that. Believe me I do. SWApA capitulating once again.

 

In the more than three years since Flightplan 2020 was published, much has changed at SWA and in the industry: the COVID shutdowns, the bailouts, the increasing reliance on IROPS as regular ops, the meltdown, a more and more competitive pilot hiring market for employers, an accelerating number of pilots leaving SWA for other carriers, and the bar-raising ratification of Delta's (and Alaska's) new contracts.

Given SWAPA's semi-regular polling since the publication of Flightplan 2020, it's not unreasonable to think that SWAPA might have eliminated JA as something they were willing to incorporate into the new contract.

Until a new contract is ratified, it's not too late for SWAPA to eliminate JA from the realm of items they're willing to accept. However, the fact that they are still bargaining to retain JA as a feature of our new contract tells me that the majority of the membership, neither when Flightplan 2020 was written nor since it was published, communicated to SWAPA that they weren't okay with JA.

The bigger obstacle to eliminating JA is convincing enough of the membership to care enough about getting rid of JA (or obtaining industry-leading career compensation or retirement or any number of other seemingly important contractual items). That has really always been the problem here for as long as I've been paying attention.

Until the membership at large cares enough, SWAPA's response to just a few emails from a couple of guys whose names and/or "rants" they probably recognize from various internet forums will be something like, “Ya, the forum crowd may want all of that stuff but SWAPA didn’t write the contract for them."

"We wrote it via a 'data-driven' SEP process that incorporates all the membership’s wants and needs, not just the wants and needs of people who spend their lives on the forums."

"Is SWAPA supposed to tell the majority of the membership who just want a contract sooner and are okay with near industry-leading NB rates vs industry-leading career compensation, and who don’t need or want a 25% NEC, and who can accept still being JA’d, to pack sand because the 'extremists' from the forum crowd want more?”

The problem with the above is most of our membership is supremely uninformed on how our contract stacks up to other contracts (besides the three or four selectively curated anecdotes most pilots here seem to have from their buddies at OAL's). And they're even more uninformed on how the RLA process actually works and what leverage it affords us.

To top it off, we've all been fed a steady diet of SWA exceptionalism since before we arrived. Becoming familiar with "Nuts" is required pre-interview fodder. We even report the time in "Herb."

We're conditioned to believe that the SWA way is always better even if it doesn't really make sense. So, even if objective evidence exists that OAL's make more money than us, for example, they really don't, we tell ourselves. Because we can fly more or some other $h**.

And besides, we have more "fun" than any other airline, so why rock the boat? Why demand more when we're on the SWA Train, about to catch a ride on Comet Hale Bopp?

 

That's exactly what f9 alpa did to eliminate ja (An ever increasing premium folder). We got rid of ja last cycle. Management likes it to some extent because they get trips covered quicker. Couple that with reassignment out of origin footprint handcuffs such as, max number of legs to get back to domicile (2
incase of no direct flights) as well as make it expensive seems to work well. Looking back it’s probably best to make it a seniority based system like nk x,y. Otherwise it’s a bit of a free for all. The other nice thing about the folder is you can contractually require all opentime to go there during irregular ops. I’m not sure if you have something similar in irregular?

 

We have provisions that provide incentive pilots to work for less than negotiated rigged flying here.

There are threads of value on how to hack into SWA hotel climate controls in order to maintain room temperature in SWA hotels.

We have guys grandstanding how smart and awesome they are for footing crew trans and lodging during irops.

The pilot group and the union that represent it has a ways to go before addressing topics like you mentioned above