concise witty pithy accurate description of the whole pilot trade and sick leave programs. been here 26 years. flown with more fo's in the last 3 yrs wipin their noses and takin cold meds than in the prior 23 yrs combined. i call sick and go to doctor. it's a management decision to pressure pilots to come to work sick. not my problem man.

No attack taken, as a Vietnam Vet I appreciate your respect for those of us who spent time in a Combat Zone. I was just pointing out some possible causes for a lack of trip drops - not to attack my fellow vets.

No I don't think so. There aren't that many active military pilots that are dropping trips on a day to day basis. That would measured on a monthly scale. I base this on watching open time and seeing how few trips suddenly appeared to be aggressively picked up.

Thanks for your service!

You may be right. I don't think the company has ever really wanted the pilots have a free and open trip trading capability. If we had such a trading capability, it would most likely pay dividends to the company in a reduction of sick leave use.

Before PBS the bottom 30% were reserves. Now just 10% which indicates how much they're saving on labor costs by assigning every trip during monthly preferencing leaving little for trading.

20-P-4-b If immediately prior to the first run of the trip-trading system the pay value of all Open Trips in a Category is less than one percent (1%) of the pay value of all Trips available for awarding in Monthly Schedule Preferencing for that Category, the Company shall allow enough Trip drops in that first run so that the pay value of those dropped Trips equal that difference (between one percent (1%) and the current Open Trips). The intent of this provision is to seed trip trading.

UPA says 1% of value of all trips seeded but even this has been applied to our disadvantage. You might notice that often that 1% isn't there. I went forward with this issue shortly after UPA was implemented when I asked scheduling for a drop regardless of reserve coverage because there was no 1% seeding. They refused. Union said that one-for-one trip trades count as a drop and that scheduling also lowers reserve mins and that counts towards the 1% because it could allow an equivalent trade/drop.

Not sure. I've tried a half a dozen times to straight drop a trip on days I didn't want with the full intention of picking one up on days I did. No Coverage was always the response.

Mil leave approval? I don't submit mil leave approval requests. I submit military leave notifications.

I don't know where you're getting that military leave must be approved by the company.

I was responding to a previous post. You put it a lot better though. Mil leaves are notifications not requests.