I fail to see - in this environment +- why a JCBA should give up ANYTHING. The negotiation ought to be striving for the best of both CBAs plus improvements. If not now, when?

 

A lot of people said that about the last contract(s) too and look where we are. I’ll hope for everything on this wishlists going around, but I sure won’t be surprised seeing another result that targets the “we’ll be leaving money on the table if we don’t pass this” group.

 

Can some explain the 4-days off. I know a little about what it means, but I would imagine there are ways to take advantage of it as a pilot that I haven't thought of? I know you can waive it in PBS, but do you have the option to "waive it to 3" or "waive it to 2"?

Are there ways to use the 4-day off rule to add credit? What are the strategies?

My initial concern is for a guy that likes to fly 4-days, and never work a weekend, those two things seem incompatible with "min 4 days off". Is the solution to "waive to 3"? Or?

Agree with others, generally looking to get the best of each contract, as much as possible, and profit sharing, and industry leading rates. Thanks

 

4 days off is just an initial scheduling req for the company. I think most people waive it to get what they want.

DTZ and the red/green rules let you do stuff like drop everything and sit on the X/Y list. I know guys who are flexible and routinely credit triple digits while keeping normal number of days off.

The point is you can earn more than at a legacy here if you want to hustle. Or, you can chill out and fly one trip a month. Or, do both depending on what you have going on. And because of the grid rules, open time tends to have more and better trips. It also forces the company to keep the airline adequately staffed with reserve coverage.

If a friend calls you up and wants to go camping, or you're invited to a wedding last minute, you can just drop a conflicting trip and and pick up something on other days. You don't have to rely on the ambiguity of a trade. This flexibility is gold to me.

There is no reason we can't have industry leading work rules AND pay with the new JCBA except for our willingness to fight for it. Attracting pilots is an operational limfac and could be a competitive adv for the new JetBlue.

 

It’s still a youngish pilot group (both groups) which means you have very potentially mobile FOs but those who intend to stay will be here for the long haul. That gives the pilot group a lot of negotiating leverage. Older pilots tend to be sort of trapped here with little time to recoup losses in the time they have left and little ability to do any better if they go. The secret, I guess, is to not negotiate that away. I say that because I’ve been watching the UA progress with the Tumi TA debacle. They wound up having to recall and replace a bunch of folks before their MEC and NC got sufficiently aggressive to take a long term view.

 

Exactly.

Guys complaining about the recent contract are missing the forest through the trees. It was a temporary raise knowing a new contract is coming soon. The company had to do something to help recruiting/stem attrition, and it put us in position to negotiate for the long term.

The merger doesn't happen w/out a JCBA. We're nearing the bottom of the pool of qualified pilots and facing a decade of shortage. We're in a unique situation where both the company and the pilots are incentivized to put a great contract in place. Delta doesn't have a snap up to JetBlue... just sayin'.

 

Yeah, and IF IT GOES THROUGH (and that’s going to be politics) I truly believe it will be life or death for JetBlue as a corporate entity meaning they aren’t going to have much incentive to futz around and drag this out the way managements (all of them) typically do.

 

Who said Im willing to give anything up?

 

yes, in NB you select waive, drop-down has waive to 3,2,1 options.
no, 4 days off is for QOL not credit.
yes, my situation exactly, for home bound to weekly schedule, for commute prefer 4 days, so waive to 3.

Not waiving will mostly get you more days off in your initial award, requirements to have open time, and people using IOT for dropping will give junior people a lot of options to change their schedule in DOT.
Requirement for the company to only be able to use one number for minimum reserve required across the whole month (with the exception for a few specific days a year), with the requirement that 75% of the days need to be green, and the option to have red on red day trades gives everyone options most of the time.
No requirement to ever have a certain credit level means if you need more time off, it’s normally not that hard.
The way our premium is build and handed out means generally very good pay for very little work, most of the premium I’ve done, I will get 20 hours of pay, and as a commuter am gone from my home less than 24 hours.
Most of our rules lean towards less work, not more credit, and that is why people came to NK over SWA.

I have never done PBS at another airline, so for all I know, JB could be superior in every of these categories, and that is why we should keep comparing here, so we both figure out what we need to keep most.

 

The real beauty in the 4 days off min is that it forces the company to build more productive pairings if it wants to limit the number of pilots.

You can’t make a schedule of 5 hour min days(20 hour 4 days) and complete an entire summer month, with the typically higher bid divisor.