Drop limits
 

Outsider looking in:

With the new contract, what are the drop limits?

Are there certain credit numbers you have to hit per month? Annual averages? How does the drop grid work/ coverage work?

Realistically is it easy to drop down to low hours?

Thanks!

There is no limit on what you can drop, the way you drop trips is via trip trade. Basically the trip you are wanting to drop has to be either placed in open time and that means it's just in the trip pool unassigned. For that to happen there has to be sufficient reserve coverage to allow a trip to drop into open time. The other way you can drop a trip is someone has to want that trip and pick it up from you, essentially like a one way trade. So how much you can drop depends on reserve coverage and/or some other pilot wanting your trip. If you are trying to drop a crummy trip on the 4th of July and your fleet/seat/base has low or no reserve coverage on that particular day you will have no chance of dropping it. If you have a commutable 3 day trip day flying that pays high on weekdays and is commutable on both ends and there is plenty of reserve coverage, well your chances are much better.

The language probably won’t be out until next month.

Drop limits weren’t addressed in the AIP summary so that probably means they stay the same (no limit-drop to zero). Someone told me you have to be able to cover the cost of your insurance and disability premiums but I haven’t been able to find that in the contract.

The drop grid is similar to the DAG at Frontier with the notable exception being crew scheduling can arbitrarily set the coverage levels which inevitably makes almost every day of the month red. Straight drops are difficult but not impossible. Swapping longer trips for shorter trips is the easiest way to drop hours. I can’t speak for other bases but I never had less than 19 days off as a line holder in my first year though I was only crediting 60-70 hours.

The language probably won’t be out until next month.

Drop limits weren’t addressed in the AIP summary so that probably means they stay the same (no limit-drop to zero). Someone told me you have to be able to cover the cost of your insurance and disability premiums but I haven’t been able to find that in the contract.

The drop grid is similar to the DAG at Frontier with the notable exception being crew scheduling can arbitrarily set the coverage levels which inevitably makes almost every day of the month red. Straight drops are difficult but not impossible. Swapping longer trips for shorter trips is the easiest way to drop hours. I can’t speak for other bases but I never had less than 19 days off as a line holder in my first year though I was only crediting 60-70 hours.

No, no it is not

Just dropping a trip into the open time pool is almost nonexistent, as scheduling never has “enough” reserve coverage. Another pilot has to pick it up from the open time pool in order for you to drop it

Without those levels being set at the beginning of the month there is no dropping..
At NK they set it to 75% must be green at the beginning of the bid package.

Without this little disclaimer there won't be any availability drop. Pretty basic but maybe overlooked

and probably not part of the AIP

They are set before trading opens on the 24th for the following bid period. That’s not the problem; it’s that the minimum levels have no bounds.

That being said, on a NB you can trade out of most of your schedule, you just can’t do straight drops. You just have to understand how to bid and trade accordingly.

No one is really able to drop anything at this airline so you won't have to worry about that.

That’s just really not true.

The key is learning how the system works and how to break up your trips into much more easily dropped chunks. If you put in 0 effort besides “drop trip- submit” yeah you’re not going to have a ton of luck.

Senior international first officers can drop trips pretty easily...a three day Rome is like throwing meat to the dogs.

You can barely drop as it is, and we have no ability to drop partial sequences. So your ORD-TVC-ORD victory lap on day 4 will all ways be a part of your schedule. We didn’t have the foresight to allow ourselves to voluntarily drop below min day credit in order to have a quality of life improvements (getting home earlier).

Shhh. Just keep repeating the chant here, 'yeah, unpossible to drop anything.'

I mean. Uh. Yeah. Impossible to drop. Don’t even bother trying.

LOL!
Seriously though, it's not going to be easy to drop any trips when the LCF is 80 hrs. But even at that, it's possible for some to drop certain trips that are more desirable.
Trading is always possible no matter how short they are on reserves with bad day/worse day trades.

Of course if you can't figure it out, you can always send a message to another pilot asking for a trade. Some of the trades I get offered are fantastic ...all nighters with long layovers in DSM (or something similar) in exchange for a trip I really look forward to fly on my schedule.

How is this possible? My BES hssn't had more than a single green day in almost 8 months. Even if you were senior enough to bid day trips or 2 days it wouldn't matter.

This thread has already answered this, but here’s your TLDR:
Straight dropping into open time won’t work. Dropping to another pilot works if you have the right trips. Using bad day/worse day trades to work fewer days works great.

Green days aren't the only way to drop trips. You need to get more familiar with the system.

That's a good summary.