Dropping an awarded vacation day and making it a "day off" is addressed exactly where? What does furlough have to do with vacation allocation? Have you read section 11?

 

Exactly. I didn't like them at first, but now that one guy that gets into a base out of seniority benefits people who can now bump into that base even though there hasn't been any bids awarded in a while. One of the bases had a guy trade in who was 1,700 below the junior guy, and now its filling in with junior pilots who wouldn't have been able to hold it absent the base trade.

 

I was called by the crew desk to take a trip (in the 90s) that was a flight from DEN-ABQ with a 12 hour layover and fly back to DEN the next morning for 10 hours of pay with about 2 hours of flying. I took it.

The Captain found out and complained to me that I should have refused it and the company would be forced to hire more pilots. I informed him that we were hiring 24 a week and had been for months. I couldn't see the direct relationship between that one trip and the overall hiring. It would have been staffed anyway, that was just the easiest thing for the crew desk to do at the time.

Its never made sense, actually. We think it does, but in fact management doesn't care how many cancellations we have. We think completion percentage is important, they only look at profit. They won't sacrifice profit for anything.

Our hyper-induced sense of over importance has led some of us to believe that we can make an impact to staffing by our daily actions, which isn't the case.

Either the contract requires it, or it doesn't. If we want fatter staffing, lets make it contractual and not from tying to guilt-trip other pilots.

 

Pilots who are all about 'me, me, me'.... where do they get that ability? Oh, from a collective bargaining agreement. Basically the mentality is, let me benefit from having a contract, but let me abrogate the contract as best I can for my benefit..... typical self serving mindset.....

Just because its in the contract doesn't mean you should do it. It doesn't mean that ALPA promotes it or wants it. The contract is an agreement between ALPA and the company. The company wants provisions that benefit it too.... like 200% pay. So it isn't necessarily that ALPA likes it, says its ok.. rather that the union simply agreed to it.... because the company wanted it....

Now, as a member of a profession, its up to you, to decide if you are going to be management's boy or a professional. Highly subjective and circumstantial.... but knowing how to make those choices is what being a professional is all about.....

Guys, this isn't hard.

Oh, and there is a system, in house, to find out how you can abrogate the contract.... no need to come on to APC.....

 

It's called reserve 777 any base. Bid it and you'll see. I haven't landed the plane for real since the beginning of 2014. Perfect.