While on voluntary COLA - ALL of the following are available, but must be paid AT THE PILOTS EXPENSE

Medical/Dental/Vision
Basic Life
Voluntary Life
Personal Accident
Voluntary Personal Accident
LTD


As mentioned, refer to the table in UPA 12-J.

How much do you want to pay to take the month off? All while continuing pilot hiring?

Where's that contract again?

It’s nice to have this flexibility. Any flexibility is good. I don’t understand the negative comments.

My first 3 years I was able to take 'partial month COLA' for November and December. I was able to bid 7 days minimum, and you bet your a$$ those 7 days were over Thanksgiving and Christmas. Like someone said earlier, this partial and full month COLA was common a few years ago.

What's bull$hit is the company offering this, but not monthly vacation slots in the same BES. So you can afford for me to take the whole month off without pay, but you can't afford to let me take the time off to use the vacation I earned? WTF?

In my BES there are no trip trades, no trip drops, or vacation drops in January - no coverage. But, by magic I can take a COLA in February, and pay 100% of my benefits, and somehow there’s coverage?

All while hiring 40+ per week? That’s the kind of flexibility you like?

We are staffed for the deliveries that are coming, it’s one aircraft every 3 days, manpower looks 6 months down hrs line. Cola allows company to save money and people to step away from work should they choose to. Makes sense to me.

My BES didn't even have any COLAs available. Not sure how that's properly staffed if no leaves were offered.

that’s what I’m saying. IAH 737 FO they’re going to be pumping out 90 hour lines (since when do they ever give you the low end of the value).

meanwhile, 3 other bases can take COLA.

I don’t think any of us have the big picture with this one. Town Hall is next week.

Having "Flexibility" is GREAT. What we should ALL want.. both the company/management and the (union) pilots.

As others have posted (besides myself), COLA's while massive hiring?
Having to pay (yourself) for numerous items WHILE losing out on some seniority issues?

Ask yourself this- (And it will take a little work)
Come January 10th, in the BES's that had COLA's offered-
How many took it?
Then, will those same BES's be showing "red" on staffing levels each and every day in FEB.

A COLA is 100% the company trying to figure out a way to save money. Fine with that!
But allowing pilots to drop a week of reserve (and subsequent loss of pay) or having a line holder drop a trip (again) with loss of pay.. would still net the company a savings. Problem is, it's not the FULL savings they want AND it also helps those individual pilots Quality of Life.
Our contract ALSO allows for SRL's. Why not offer that? Again- why pay 50 hrs when you can pay zero?!
Not sure why anyone now (in those BES's offered) would accept a COLA and not just turn around and bid reserve. Yes, Reserve sucks (more if you're a commuter) BUT.. if the company is publically stating they are overmanned on certain BES's.. sounds like a great way to get 73hr of Pay, and at least 6 days off in a row, not to mention another 6 days off and THEN the other 18days where you probably won't get used (least not every single day)

If you feel that my post is "a negative comment", so be it. Just pointing out some facts. I wouldn't expect the company to post this. But I would have hoped the Union would- and they haven't.
We probably have about 11K "active" Pilots. Then, after you take away the Capt positions (not offered except GUM), down to 5k(ish).. take away anyone not offered, down to 4K(ish).. take away anyone with a conflict (ie, vacation.. training, etc) and we are probably looking at 2-3K.
I'll beat less than 50 takers..

How many would have taken a SRL for a month... probably double that? But.. the company savings would have been a lot less.

That's the message some of our posts have been about. Nothing "negative", just more of the full story.
Guess we will know the numbers by tomorrow.. and the new "G Line" by Tuesday.

Always
Motch

PS) I believe Feb and Oct are our lowest months. This does set a trend that they will offer COLA's on those months vs. SRL's. THAT is the trend we need to look at, and (hopefully) prevent.
Reason SRL's are in the contract is to prevent the company from "scaring" the pilots with a potential furlough WHILE making sure that we are not looked at as seasonal employees.
Just my opinion~

Motch-

Lots of reasons for people to take COLAs, which have always been a common offering. None of which are affected by senior bidders’ desire to trade/drop trips nor your opinion on whether the company should offer SRLs instead. And sure as f aren’t going to try to bid a reserve **** line to try to get those days off. So easy on the pulpit brother.

Staffing will continue to be weird till the international flying goes back to normal. I don't see that happening for quite a while, maybe years. They are overstaffing several categories banking on flying returning--while others are understaffed because no one wanting to bid or fly reserve. Russian airspace, Chinese politics.....there are more....

Like someone else said, where's that contract??

I bid for partial month COLA’s several times in the past as a 756 FO in DCA. Each time I was denied the COLA because it went senior to me.

I also usually bid reserve in the winter as we were rarely used. It was great for checking things off the to do list, as long as they were the type of thing that could be done whenever, not time critical. I don’t commute - if I did, I wouldn’t voluntarily bid reserve. Nor would I bid reserve in busy months.

Seems this died a slow death.. kinda like the COLA offers.
35 takers, all around the system. No Widebodies!
Looking at the past, they HAVE offered COLA's.. but it was geared towards the triples while the majority of them were grounded. Doesn't surprise me that they had few takers early last year as most (probably) figured they could stay home and get 73hrs of pay and not fly anyway...

If this October (another historically slow month) they offer it, and again next February, so be it. It is legal by the UPA. But keep this in mind (FO's) when you try to drop a trip in February and it's denied. "Coverage"..
ESPECIALLY in the BES's that had COLA's offered, and had no takers.

I love History. Aviation, Military, German, etc..
It's important to learn and understand history, so we don't repeat the same mistakes or to cutoff something negative before it goes to far.

Till October!
Fly Safe, Fly Professionally and
Fly the Contract

Motch