The way Delta does premium time is very different from United from what I hear. It sounds like Delta has various limits/thresholds/triggers for green slips and silver slips. United is literally first come first serve in the real time window (after 0900 local day prior), and seniority based outside of the real time window for all opentime premium trips. Zero limits on anything, just FAR rest/duty/block limits. Meaning, the senior people can AND do drop their entire schedules and try to vacuum up all of the premium time legally allowed. The double edge sword that stops the senior folks from taking it all is the tiered premium percentage system the company uses. It helps the company but also helps AND hurts the pilot group as people will essentially undercut eachother. The company will generally (depending on urgency) post the trip at 50% premium. If no bites then 75%, and if still nothing then 100%. This allows folks to get a bite at some premium time before it goes to the most senior pilot with a 100% premium pay auto pickup in.

 

Not quite. There are various leveling mechanisms for premium flying at DAL. Outside of 2 days out, a premium trip counts towards the pick up limit (average line value plus 15), and inside 2 days (trip coverage), premium time has a trip leveling mechanism, that favors people with fewer premium events, and that resets each month.

 

still i think the fundamental difference here is seniority ranking/entitlements in real-time, tactical scheduling. United doesn’t have that.

 

So how and why is the current system ‘currently crumbling’ at Delta under the new PWA?

 

Open time at DAL has to be worked manually by crew scheduling (the DAL version of the crew desk), the coverage has to be done by seniority, in a very specific order with very specific notification rules.

It was designed for the airline in the year 2000 with 8500 pilots, and very little open time. Needless to say, it doesn’t scale well.