I'm not even any good at it, but we can do a few things to modify our awarded line by dropping, trading, and picking up trips to meet our own priorities. Some examples...

Pilots on reserve can't pick up trips straight out of open time, but they can drop reserve days if there are enough reserves on the schedule to cover a pre-determined reserve buffer. Then most guys on reserve will almost always get calls from scheduling offering trips with some sort of overtime bonus. If they really need you for a trip on your day off, they might drop other reserve days with pay protected to ensure you get your min days off.

If you have a line, you can drop or trade trips and even pick up trips from another base which is useful for some people. You can bid a base where you have seniority, drop most of your schedule, then pick up better trips from other bases or wait for scheduling to call with something better.

For me, I wanted time off while I am on first year pay so I pretty much try to drop my entire schedule then pick back up 1-2 day trips that work for me, or take a trip that pays an overtime bonus when scheduling calls me and it works with my family schedule. Even as a new guy, I've typically had only one or two trips per month that I "had to do", and I have been able to meet or beat guarantee almost every month flying mostly trips that were convenient to me. And that's with low seniority and not really working the scheduling rules to the max advantage like some guys do.

One month I needed a full week off for a family activity but we're guaranteed 4 days off between trips which ties scheduling's hands. So I bid and got a relief line and waived the 4-day off rule if they could get me all of my desired days off. They stacked my whole month's schedule into the first 2 weeks of the month so I had the entire last half of the month off for my family activity. Those 2 weeks sucked but it got me the time off I wanted in spite of low seniority.

A little while back I dropped almost my entire month, picked up a couple high-hour trips, and got 120 hours credit flying just a few trips of my choice. Can't do that every month but its possible to get decent extra hours credit flying mostly lines that you choose if you work the schedule process correctly.

Another guy I know who commutes does kind of the same thing... Drops everything that isn't commute friendly then picks back up convenient trips, often with a few hours extra thrown in if scheduling calls for some help with an un-covered trip.

The trips themselves aren't anything special and some are rather inefficient and painful (4-day where every day alternates early morning and late evening report times) but the ability to modify the schedule here to meet your own priorities is pretty good.

I know some other companies have pretty good flexibility especially once you're senior, it just seems really easy to do here even with low seniority.

Not saying that everything is rosy here with regards to QOL and both on and off the job BS can reach epic proportions (been sued by your boss lately?) but I've found some of it to be great for my own circumstances.

 

I swear we are our own worst enemy sometimes.

You should probably just go be the company representative making their case to the mediator on why this is such a great place to work and we don't need industry standard compensation. They will probably just print that out and say "see look at how happy they are, we don't need to pay them to achieve our growth plan".

You are undermining your negotiators not to mention that essay doesn't represent the majority of the pilot group nor should I have to "work the system" or wait for scheduling to call to make an Airbus pilot compensation package.

Our red/green language is very good and has been held up in arbitration after it was blatantly stolen from us with zero justification and is never for sale. Outside of that and maybe one or two other cherry rules, our work rules and schedule flexibility is pretty much industry standard and not "better than" requiring some sort of compensation discount. I'm sure you didn't mean it that way but it will be interpreted that way at the table. Other airlines that may have perceived less flexibility is mainly because PBS solves with little to no open time so they have nothing to trade with. Talk to a southwest pilot much? Lots of flexibility, read: QOL, and the compensation to boot. The email we got the other day with the small pay comparison didn't represent them correctly if I'm not mistaken. Their pay numbers were shown compared to hourly when the numbers are for TFP so it made them look artificially low.

You should email your NC.

 

Come to Spirit cause you've "got no place else to go!"

 

someone from my company recently told me that spirit doesn't pay for the hotel during training? Im assuming this is incorrect info. Can anybody clarify?

 

Wrong. They definitely pay your hotel.

 

That would be the other ulcc.

 

Hey new hires make sure you have a back up plan if/when we go on strike. You don't want to be like the guys at UAL!!! Think twice before coming to SPIRIT, it's going to get worse before getting better. Management is stuck in a time warp. They for some reason think people are lining up to come here.

 

I hope we do strike!! What will it say about a company when the last 2 contracts require pilot strikes.....

 

No, you don't. I don't care what you think it looks like in the movies. Or how cool you'll look with a battle star. Ask your family what they think of the prospect of it. You WILL strike maybe, but leave the renegade image at the door. No one WANTS to strike.

 

I can't speak for the original poster but.....as for myself... I don't want a strike, I want a fair industry standard contract like everyone else should. But if that is what it takes to get industry standard, then so be it. My strike fund is ready, my family is on board and I'm ready to walk the line if need be. Until then, my strike fund grows every month, (thank God I'm not on first year pay) and so does my full retro check.