A$$

- scheduling improvements
- vacation improvements (summer and pay)
- pay rates exceed DAL/AA
- less PP (turns pilots in to contractors)
- LTD (will happen to 35 year old - I know)
- improved sick accrual to bridge to LTD (but no big bank payouts at retirement - incentivizes working while sick)
- enhanced retirement savings platforms
- Reserve rules improved to reduce FSB/SC overuse

good enough for you?

 

good enough for me
but hell NO to 67 as well

 

we have EARNED a great contract.

the good news for me, age 67 is not a contractual issue.

 

how many sc/FSB do you get assigned every month? How would your reserve life look if you were a commuter?

 

No it’s ok to call me ass. I just assumed since you were onboard with stealing everyone else’s seniority for your gain you’d support the same in this contract. Mea culpa.

 

I’d say I average about 7 SCs a month. I probably APU about 90% of those just to reset myself to the bottom of the list. I’m at 2 FSBs so far in 2023. I’m lazy and don’t like driving in to work, so I generally won’t pick those up unless it’s a choice between a reasonable FSB and a crappy trip.

Works well for me, but it’d be absolutely brutal as a commuter. If I didn’t live in base, I’d bid any line I could get over commuting to reserve.

 

Do NB reserves and/or lineholders get worked into days off? Can they just reassign you to do it? Or would it have to be like “stuck in some outstation with no mx until tomorrow” kind of situation for it to happen?

 

There are some limits on the order of who gets reassigned but they can work lineholders into days off without extenuating circumstances.

I had it happen about 3 times in 45 days or so last summer.

The insane part is there is 0 limit to it. They could do it every single trip if staffing was bad enough. Right now it isn’t super common and appears to be very base/equipment/seat dependent.

My worry (and what I’m telling my reps/surveys) is that without tightening the reassignment rules this place is going to have worse QOL if we ever decide to run lean in the future or simply can’t hire enough. My regional that limited such extensions to ten a year (and we routinely hit that limit).

That being said your mileage will definitely vary. For me, as someone who got repeatedly boned by our reassignment rules in a very short window when I was already flying very high cadence months with some challenging coworkers and crappy weather, getting these rules fixed is a huge priority. DEN 320 FO might get it all the time, LAX 737 CA might go a decade and never have one. What grinds my gears is how bad the contract allows it to get, even if many people don’t ever see that floor.

 

This MUST be fixed in the next contract or everyone should vote NO! Frontier couldn’t even do such and they aren’t exactly known to be labor friendly.

Unlike reserve, this affects the ENTIRE seniority list and should therefore be an even higher priority to fix this time.

 

Just to clarify - it is very hard to extend 'Basic' reserve into days off outside of extenuating circumstances such as cancelation or -117 issues at an outstation. That is of course assuming that the Days off are HDOs. On 'Basic' reserve, all your days off are HDOs with one FDO per month. They can fly you into an FDO without prejudice (it does get restored).

The above synopsis of line holder re-asignemnt is spot on as far as 'what they can do' - also like it was said, it is very Base / Equipment / Seat dependent too. That being said, the MEC website has an exhaustive discussion on how our line holder reassignment rules differ (are better in a lot of ways) than AA or DL.