Minimum day?
 

First, don't get me wrong... I'm grateful and blessed to be working at my dream airline.
But there is one thing that's bugged me, which seems like a major contractual deficit, a problem that didn't even exist at my regional airline.

If there is a 2 day trip, with 1 hour of pay on day 1, and 10 hours of pay on day 2, the trip pays 11 hours. Isn't day 1 supposed to be worth 5 hours at a minimum, regardless of how hard you work the next day?

At my regional, this trip would pay 15 hours. I've noticed a lot of cases like this in the airbus, and I'm just wondering if that's how the contract has always been written. Seems like we're leaving a lot on the table there, and just because I work hard on day 2 doesn't mean my day 1 isn't worth 5 hours of pay.

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While the obvious thing to say is yes that would be nice, the historical thing to say is we are getting better and it is a stair step to get to the top rung. Dont know about most majors; but at Continental, we never had it this good.

This is more or less typical of airline contracts. Its a trip minimum, not a daily minimum.

Most majors have a higher per day min credit than we do. 5.25 up to 6.5 i believe. Maybe next contract, as well as our joke of vacation and training day credit.

"Did you know that Continental was voted one of the best places to work? Bid a month of reserve and see for yourself"

-Floyd

Wouldn't the company just increase the hard time per trip to avoid paying soft time in the event we were able to negotiate a min credit increase to 5.5 per day? I'm ok with only 5 hrs in a guppy per day.

What we've got is a average min per day which pays at least 10 hours for this trip. What we want a min per each day which would pay 15 for this trip.

I think they would try to even out the hard hours per day to keep each day as close as possible to 5 hours.

We should be going for a min per duty period. Have you seen the trips with a 5am departure to a day sleep, then fly out that night? That's two duty periods but it all falls in same day.

Have you guys read 5-G-2?

Old UAL had min per duty of 5 hours, which resulted in a 3 day redeye trip (either east coast or Hawaii) that only paid 10 hours. Or a 5 day domestic trip, 4 duty periods with a 30 hour layover, that paid 20 hours.

Pick your poison. The company will figure out how to build trips that cost them the least amount of $$.

Exactly! LCAL did not have a meaningful per day rig so the pairings could be very unproductive, but because there was no meaningful per day rig there were pages and pages of one and two day trips in the 737 bid package. Once we got the rig the vast majority of trips became four days to reduce paying the 5 hours a day. A 3 day trip that ended early on the last day was joined to a 2 day trip that started late on the first day yielding a 4 day trip that paid a min of 20 hours vs the 25 hours the original trips paid with the new rig.

Some liked the old system because shorter trips allowed a great deal more flexibility in PBS line construction and in the ability to drop, trade, and pickup extra flying. Some didn't like the old system because seniority played a big factor in getting the really productive trips (27 hour four days) while junior folks got the 16 hour four day. Now the lines are so homogenized that everyone gets a 20 hour four day, little ability to drops, trade, or pickup, but at least everyone knows they're getting 5 hours per day average. The different systems also had some effect on commutability.

So, as you said, pick your poison.

Because of this,

5-G-1-f-(3) A pilot shall have a minimum of sixteen (16) hours and forty-five (45) minutes free from duty prior to a duty period that contains an ANF, except that:

I wish that had survived into the UPA. I'm not a fan of flying in the morning and then redeye that night.

Completely agree with you on wishing we still had that protection. I can't imagine doing one of those. Knowing my own body I'm sure I'd be to fatigued to safely operate one of those trips.

Agreed about the joke of vacation and training day credit, but I don't think "most majors" have higher than 5. I think AMR even still has the old way of LUAL which was 5 hours a DUTY period. 5 hours per DAY was a huge get for us.

Yep, we (AA) still have 5hrs/duty period. All of our LAX-Hawaii 3 day trips only pay 11 and change... Guys have to fly 7 of those per month vs 5 for delta and United. It blows.

I wish we still had that as well.

However there were enough pilots complaining about having long layovers and the inefficient time away that it got reduced.

Combined with the change to min per day and you have a classic "be careful what you wish for" scenario. The company will figure out what works best for them re $$ and scheduling.

So is the easy answer to combine both?

"Each trip shall pay at a minimum either five hours per day, or five hours per duty period, whichever is greater."

Easy, except you have to get the company to agree to it. :(

Good luck with that.

Don't know why it's such a joke. One week vaca pays 22.75. You'd be hard pressed to make that on the job. Two weeks vacation for a reserve puke like myself pays 86 hours minimum for a 30 day month. A big plus up from 73 hour guarantee.

Training over 5 days pays 3.0 for EVERY day..even off days. That's 90 hours for a month of transition/upgrade, meaning you'll likely take a pay cut when you're finished and go back to the line.

The only joke is PC pay. 3.75 is not enough as there are generally no off days in the training. Should be 5 hours.

I agree about training, 93 hours a month as a newhire? It was awesome!

22.75 hours a week isn't crazy good money. Its ok, sure. But if we're talking about changes we'd like to see, I'd rather have more time off than more money. Give me 4 days paid at 5 hours per day, AND 6 unpaid vacation days per week. Ten consecutive days off is a week's vacation. Not seven. I've got to synch my schedule with the rest of the world, they're not going to change to accommodate me.

"Two weeks vacation for a reserve puke like myself pays 86 hours minimum for a 30 day month. A big plus up from 73 hour guarantee."

Days off for vacation are the most important thing for me. It takes you using two vacation weeks to get any real days off that month. I only get two weeks a year, so I need to spread them out. One week of vacation only gets me an additional 4 days off a month. That is an absolute joke. At a minimum I want to get 7 extra days off when using a week of vacation. I don't really care how we make that happen, but one way may be to credit more per vacation day.

"Training over 5 days pays 3.0 for EVERY day..even off days. That's 90 hours for a month of transition/upgrade, meaning you'll likely take a pay cut when you're finished and go back to the line."

This is a good point. I was more referring to the CQ pay, but I should have specified.

While it would be great, what you're really asking for is to have it both ways. The whole point of this contract language wasn't to score you 5 hours for a 2 hour day, but rather to make sure you don't do a 9 hr 3-day trip.

Bumping min day to 6+ would be a better solution because we have a lot of 20hr 4 days on the narrow body stuff.

Correct me if i'm wrong, but I believe Delta gets 5.25 per day. SW, FedEx, and UPS are between 6 and 6.5 hours per day.

Not sure about DAL, but I think they have 5/day. You're way off on UPS. They have no minimum daily, just 4.0 per duty period with a 3.75/1 duty rig. And that's in their brand new contract. You poo-poo 5/day, but that was a BIG win for us and cost quite a bit of negotiating capital.

The UPS trip rig is 3.75:1, the duty rig is 2:1 or 1.5:1 depending on the hours the trip flies through, Min Pay per Duty/Reserve Period is 4:00, and Min Turn credit is 6:00.

Thanks for the info BoilerUp

Change the trip rig to 3:1, or at least 3.25:1

Sorry, didn't mean to poo poo anything. I just like to strive to be up towards the top, not happy i'm not at the bottom.

First contract survey is out. Fill it out with all of your suggestions. I just did it, took 10 mins.