Open Time/ Uncovered Flying
 

How does UAL uncovered flying get assigned, and when it happens how does it pay and is it a simple process?

At a SE Legacy, the process that has worked for our entire existance is completely crumbling since our current PWA and just was wondering what your guys system is and if it works.

SE ?


Without going into too much detail: Open Trips are assigned to reserve pilots

He’s at Delta. Not sure why he thinks being vague would obscure his post history.

If there’s time to assign a long call or short call reserve, obviously they’ll do that.

For shorter timelines, we used to have (until this contract) reserves sitting field standby involuntarily who would pick up the slack. FSB is still in our current contract, but it’s a voluntary thing now and it pays an extra three hours whether you get used or not. The company has decided that’s too expensive and never builds them.

Currently, most short notice open flying gets covered via reassignments, usually using section 20-I-5 of our current contract. This is one of the biggest weaknesses of our CBA right now, in my opinion, since your trip can be completely blown up from start to finish by 20-I-5 and all you’ll get is a whopping one hour of add pay.

Best I can tell - the historical Delta system rains cash on senior people <at their option> when things fall apart. United has never had anything quite like that. As noted above, they primarily use reserves or reroute people. I don't think there's any obligation to do stuff before rerouting.

And shower another guy with cash to sit on his couch too. #23M7

Yes i guess I am looking for how they handle it when there are no reserves. At Delta we have the greenslip system that pays double as a line holder. That is when the company has no reserves, no voluntary requests for single pay open time, and they go to double pay greenslips.

They don’t necessarily do it in that order here. If the schedulers don’t want to burn a reserve, they may offer it up to line holders at premium , even if there is reserve coverage. We also have senior manning when no one is picking up trips at double pay, they will start calling people to offer it, even if you have a conflicting trip. There are of course a lot of nuances to all of that though that I am glancing over.

They can offer 50/75/100% premium ... and often do. But I've never heard of anything like "rolling thunder". I don't get the impression that scheduling gets backed into a corner HAVING to offer massive extra pay the way delta sometimes does.

……….and I think that’s what makes this so hard to explain: so much of this is at the discretion of the crew desk…..the Delta system seems to be more transparent albeit much more winner take all…..