we don’t need to be like Skywest with 100 bases of 20 people.

 

ATL is being drawn down. Sucks for those that live there, but the writing is on the wall.


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SkyWest isnt allowed to displace people out of base based on seasonality and planning numbers.

They just flow pilots from one base to another via trip planning or deadheads

 

The best option is co-terminals but the boomers freaked out. Company can just add bases without our approval. I suspect there will be a few satellite bases announced (SAN, SMF, TPA) and a main bases of MCI. We are our own worst enemy sometimes.

 

That is something SWAPA may have to look into at some point if this keeps up. Unfortunately nothing will change until the next bargaining cycle. Big loop hole from a network that doesn’t exist anymore.

 

point remains…they got a ton of bases and most are really small.

 

Yep. That would kill OT and TT.

Also, hopefully these displacements are just an overall realignment and not an annual thing.

 

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How would that kill OT?

Weather would still happen. Vacation pulls would still happen. Mil leave pulls would still happen. Jury duty pulls, bereavement, etc. Those are the things that feed OT.




If it saves the company a few bucks, they will likely do it again and again.


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I suppose it's more of the concentration of OT and not necessarily the totality of it. As someone that lives in a base, I think it would be detrimental to my QOL. I can see how others would view that differently if the company happened to open a small base where they lived. On the TT issue, if you make bases too small it will become too difficult to find matchups. I think the same argument could be made for ELITT, yes some pulls but less variety and quantity to lube the system. The same reason we shouldn't want another aircraft type that does the same mission, it cannibalizes the market.

My point about the displacements is that hopefully this is just a realignment not an annual event. Something to persevere through not something to continually endure.

 

The way we do displacements here makes it 2x - 3x worse, but we wrote that into the contract so it's all on us.

If displaced pilots were moved only to bases that had openings, that would be the end of it. Instead, almost every displacement causes a secondary displacement. Then the next month those secondary displacements cause even more secondary displacements. Ultimately 2x to 3x the number of pilots are displaced, because that's how we said it should work in the contract.
It's not how I'd do it if I was king, but I'm not. And the people who actually LIKE the current system that causes so many displacements are extremely vocal about it, in the name of seniority. The only argument for or against how our displacements work can be simplified to "this is how we defined one aspect of seniority and we (should/should not) change it."

We define seniority completely differently in other parts of the contract. Displacements is the ONLY section of the contract where a pilot can take another pilot's bid award. The ONLY place. Everywhere else, once you're awarded something nobody but the company can take it from you.

Whether you like the current displacement process or not, it's disingenuous to try to hide behind the "seniority" argument without acknowledging that this is the ONLY part of the contract where a pilot can take another pilot's bid award, because we defined seniority differently here than we did elsewhere in the contract. Once you get past that indisputable fact, the rest is just your personal opinion, how much noise can you make, and how many votes can you generate next time the contract is up for revision. Just don't go so low as to try to pretend that this is one of the 7 divine rights of seniority or some such nonsense, because it's not. It's a contract definition that is unique in the SWA contract in that it gives one pilot the ability to simply take another pilot's bid award, whether you like it or not, whether you want to admit it or not.
The closest other contract provision to this "seniority" power is extra fly, where we can take a reserve assignment. But even with that, it's really an assignment not a bid award, there are established boundaries and speed bumps in the form of ownership preferences, and other limits on how and when a reserve award can be taken by someone else. Nowhere else can a pilot simply take a bid award from another pilot.