It doesn’t work like that when you upgrade. At that point your sick bank is in effect sold at your FO rate and then re-purchases sik days at your Capt rate.

thats what the contract says, but It did not work like that for me or any of the others I have asked

When you really need every minute of your sick time there will be an audit and the company will recoup their gold. “O’Doyle rules...”

Both of those make sense. You could look for a 3% investment I guess.

Colleagues,

Occasional lurker. Curious what the Z stands for behind a base (SDFZ) and curious what the average (normal without picking up) monthly credit is per fleet ?

Z is the 767 international side of the house. UPS divides the SDF767 bases up into 2 bases domestic and International....SDFZ. As for monthly credit. 75 hours is the guarantee per pay period. Flying domestic that's about what you will get. Sometimes a little more. Flying International, guys will often get more with lines often built to upwards of 85 hours.

Excellent. Pretty much the picture I had in mind thanks

To be clear. 75hrs per pay period equals 81hrs per month. We have 13 pay periods per yr.

Question on Junior MD schedule
 

tnkrdrvr…weighing the options of MD or 74 for July heavy class assuming MDs are in the drop. Would you mind PMing me to discuss current MD schedule for a junior guy. Thank you!

You can sell down to 148 or continue accruing up to 208, the max allowed under the 2016 CBA, your choice, but anything over 208 as of the end of the November bid period gets paid out in December.

The trip board can be beneficial as long as you know what you are doing. Say you have a line that has 65 hr credit…you still get paid guarantee of 75. You have what is called a 10 hour line buffer. Now you post a trip that has a 20 hour credit and someone picks it up, if you want to get back to 75 hours, you not only have to pick up something for 20 hours, you also have to “make up” the 10 hour buffer, so if you drop 20 hour trip, you will need 30 hours pickup to get back to 75 credit. Most people colloquially call this flying for free.

Right exactly so it’s on the house ??

Ie my airline this month. Example. 18 days off. 85 credit. 80 block. Pick up one 17 hour 3 day trip. 102 credit, 15 days off. Regardless what one drops, trades picks up etc etc before that.


Or cleaner example. Line award: 18 days off, 82 credit, 78 block. Pick up a 12 hour two day.. 94 credit 16 days off.

That's how it works here. Block isn't even part of the equation. An average month for me is 78 credit and less than 40 block. You can add, subtract, etc and your credit changes as it does anywhere else. The gotcha is if youre awarded a line worth less than 75 credit, and you start dropping and adding. Once you drop, you lose that buffer of time between 75 and original line credit. So now you have to pick up more to get back to the original 75.

Holy cow that’s a lot of flying!

Gotcha brother. Thanks.

Here, if you let’s keep it simple, have an 80 hour credit 75 block line you can drop a 10 hour credit 2 day trip which would initially put you at 70 hours pay with 65 block but if you then pick
up a 20 hour credit 3 day trip you would have 90 credit with 85 block. Of course in the above example you would have one day less off.

Oh 100% agreed friend. Example only. That would be to much work !

2nd hand info, ymmv, etc. Expect reserve until you can hold a line towards end of first year.

Or the end of year 8 - kind of depends when you were hired.

The poster is obviously looking for the current state of things. The info I provided is from guys hired in 2020.

That was for MD. SDF 74 bottom feeders getting reserve, apparently - I haven’t verified with the CMS bid awards.

How the heck do you credit 82 hours in 12 days of work? And even more egregious 80 block hours in 12 days?? You basically are not getting off the airplane all day.

Work rules ? Min daily guarantee? Soft time?

My last month was 82 credit with 81 block actually with 18 days off. Too much work ? Yes sir. But, not following what’s so special about it.

you don't lose the buffer until us drop to 1/2 your credit value of the original line.
ie, line is 60 credit 75 guarantee:
drop 10hours: 50 credit paid 65
drop 31 hours: 29 credit paid 29

if you want to get back to 75 - yes then you have to do those 10 hours again. but, if you just want a better QOL f--k the 75 hours :)

Remember, he said per month so:

82hr CR/30.4 days = x/28

X= 75.5 hrs CR -> he is matching our guarantee but only working 10 days / 28 or 18/28 days off. We earn on average 6 CR hours per duty day. He, apparently, earns 8.
That would be the UPS equivalent of 16 days off /28 for 75 hr guarantee. We see a good handful of lines like that in our bid packages, but certainly not the average.

@UPS, we can get the same deal from bid lines that aren’t stuffed up with duty days but we are blocking a heck of a lot less hours for the same credit. I don’t think it would be possible for us to consistently earn 8hr CR per duty day actually flying. SJU turns we’re the only pairings I’ve ever seen that credit that much and you couldn’t do them back to back.

Yup agreed with all of the above. Good discussion

But when we start talking about conflict bidding and vacation rules, we can do some crazy stuff!!

I was only referring to the scenario of getting back to 75. I probably said it poorly, which is pretty standard.

So is it possible to eventually hold a 14-16 day ON schedule with one commute a month for 74 ANC or 74 any base? And being able to do that every month if you wanted? I'm sure the answer is somewhere but couldn't find it. Thx.

Prob on reserve in ANC. If you bid a hard line you have to be super super super senior. Otherwise a lot of the hard line schedules are like 7-10 on with 1 or 2 days off. Then followed by 4 or 5 day trip.

I see... So you would basically have to jumpseat/buy a ticket to and from work and have your own crashpad/hotel if you bid a reserve line every month to make that work.

Thanks.

If you bid the 14 day reserve blocks you'll probably plan on buying maybe 2 or 3 hotels. They're pretty busy up in ANC, so you'll be out flying a lot.

The way ANC 74 flying is right now you might be able to get away with only one hotel room a month at the start of your 14 day block. Spend the rest on the road. Not sure why you would buy a plane ticket, unless you are living somewhere that makes commuting on company iron totally unpalatable. Reserve up there used to be a sweet deal senior guys would grab in the summer so that they could spend the summer fishing for salmon on the company dime. Nowadays, there is more flying than could ever be covered by available pilots.

As per above, you will not sit in ANC on reserve, and this does not look likely to change in the foreseeable future. If I had it to do over again, I would not get a crashpad, but play the hotel game. This can get a little tricky in the summer, but is easy in the winter. I would, however, get a car. Ubers are expensive and unreliable, and of course you will be showing up at weird hours.

Oh okay. Yea I forgot about the option of jumpseating on company or other cargo aircraft. I would imagine jumpseating on pax could get challenging at times but idk.

And 2 to 3 hotels a month doesn't sound too bad. I wasn't sure how busy reserve lines kept there..

I don't understand how you can just drop 10 hours of credit? I thought you had to restore that some how?

He is talking about putting a trip on the trip board and another pilot picking it up. You can’t technically drop anything unless you take a PLOA.

And you would lose that 10 credits of pay I'm guessing?

Either way, yes. Or you could call sick in which you’d use your sick bank to cover the credit.

To understand what’s going on with our pay, we have 2 factors actively being affected/manipulated: line credit and line guarantee. Line credit is the aggregate credit from the trips in your pay period (what you do). Guarantee is 75hrs. You get paid the higher of the two. However, things affect each one differently so you have to track both and compare to see what the outcome is after you make a change. There are specific situations where you can pick up a trip for X hours but not actually change what you get paid. Once you know how this happens you can avoid it.

Does anyone commute from DTW to SDF? And also, how is the QOL commuting? Is SDF Junior?

DTW = easy. Pre covid delta had a bunch of directs daily. Also UPS runs a solid amount of flights too. Then you can drive it if it all goes south. Your QOL won’t take a major hit if you stay in DTW.

Junior FO fleets in SDF are A300, 767domestic then the MD and Z. Most senior is whale.

How many days off per month?
And also, I’m guessing UPS pays for your ticket to commute , right?