Airline Pilot Central Forums - Annual Vacation?

Quote:

Originally Posted by pilot64golfer (Post 1578594)

Which is a great system if you are junior. It used to be the senior pilots would grab a summer block and then Christmas.

This CAL way of bidding forces you to pick. You get to choose which one you want, because you can't have both. Chances are if you pick summer, then a bunch of other guys will pick Christmas so when you get around to bidding secondary, all those dates are already taken.

In the old UAL system you could have Christmas and summer vacations, but not anymore.

Its great if you are in the bottom half of your base, which is now why I'm starting to understand why the LUAL group tended to stay senior and not upgrade, and the LCAL group bid up right away.

Now that's going to even out since LUAL pilots aren't getting the advantage of being senior in a seat as much, so might as well upgrade ASAP like the LCAL side traditionally did.

Unless I am not understanding your description, I do not believe that is the way this works at all. As a senior pilot, you are still likely to get awarded both since the awards go by BES.

As an example, if you are the #1 777 FO in ORD, the system looks at your first bid group and awards you a vacation (say you desire Christmas first). Then it goes to your next bid group and will award you something (that summer vacation week). Two awards for the senior guy then it moves onto the #2 777 FO in ORD to award his choices which have been reduced by a Christmas opportunity and a summer opportunity and so on down the staffing list in that BES.

Under the old CAL way they only opened a certain number of slots for each week during each bidding window. Just this past year in the primary window I was awarded my 5th choice of vacation as my 1st-4th were unavailable. Then the secondary window opened and I was awarded one of my "unavailable" choices from the first bidding cycle. Under this method, they can't do that. All weeks and slots are available from the primary bidding cycle. Once the weeks are gone they can't offer them in subsequent bid windows.