Alaska Hawaiian Merger

Are reserves and line holders able to pick up trips over vacation days?
No. There is no need to though because you can just cancel your vacation days (other than 7 of them) and pick up or get 200% premium... or even better, if you are senior, just get the exact pairings you want during PBS. The downside i guess is that you don't get the extra pay until the end of the year, but you get it at a potentially higher pay rate.

In addition to that @BobDDuck can reserves pick up opentime on their days off for pure extra pay over reserve guarantee? Regardless of staffing. Just work on a day off for extra money, for reserves. ?

No. Reserve pilots can only pick up a pairing if it touches one of their reserve day (but the rest of the pairing can be on days off). Just counts towards guarantee. The other difference is that they can add pairings (subject to a 48 hour soak) to their schedule weeks in advance if they want and don't have to wait until the assignment window the day prior to do it.
 
Here’s the AS/HA contract comparison for those that haven’t seen it
It’s comical how nearly every issue @BobDDuck has raised isn’t mentioned in that document.

The scary part for me is the senior AS pilots entitlement and arrogance about the widebody flying.

That’s gonna be really bad for junior AS pilots.
 
It’s comical how nearly every issue @BobDDuck has raised isn’t mentioned in that document.

Contract comparisons are really tough to get right. They cover the big issues like pay and min days off and DC percentage fine, but so many things are really nuanced and there just isn't a way to explain or capture the information in a readable document. Most pilots don't even know the details of what is in their own contracts, let alone understand a different property's book.
 
No. There is no need to though because you can just cancel your vacation days (other than 7 of them) and pick up or get 200% premium... or even better, if you are senior, just get the exact pairings you want during PBS. The downside i guess is that you don't get the extra pay until the end of the year, but you get it at a potentially higher pay rate.



No. Reserve pilots can only pick up a pairing if it touches one of their reserve day (but the rest of the pairing can be on days off). Just counts towards guarantee. The other difference is that they can add pairings (subject to a 48 hour soak) to their schedule weeks in advance if they want and don't have to wait until the assignment window the day prior to do it.


Both these sound like concessions. It’s insane you can’t pick up over vacation. I can see a lot of guys being against that.

How about I want 3 weeks off in July. And then pickup whatever I want from opentime.

With our current system, I have 12 days vacation plus 3 GDOs plus 4 IVDOs. Then, I can pickup anything from opentime, from my choice.

At HAL, I can run 3 weeks vacation but then get locked out from picking anything on vacation.

Or run the month with no vacation, but be forced to use PBS to pick trips in those 3 weeks, which would suck being a junior guy when you don’t get your pick of trips.

How is that a good thing? I want max time off AND the ability to work during vacation with trips of my choice.
 
Both these sound like concessions. It’s insane you can’t pick up over vacation. I can see a lot of guys being against that.

How about I want 3 weeks off in July. And then pickup whatever I want from opentime.

With our current system, I have 12 days vacation plus 3 GDOs plus 4 IVDOs. Then, I can pickup anything from opentime, from my choice.

At HAL, I can run 3 weeks vacation but then get locked out from picking anything on vacation.

Or run the month with no vacation, but be forced to use PBS to pick trips in those 3 weeks, which would suck being a junior guy when you don’t get your pick of trips.

How is that a good thing? I want max time off AND the ability to work during vacation with trips of my choice.
Some of us want to use vacation to not work. The more we can not be at work, the more valuable the vacation is.

Contract comparisons are really tough to get right. They cover the big issues like pay and min days off and DC percentage fine, but so many things are really nuanced and there just isn't a way to explain or capture the information in a readable document. Most pilots don't even know the details of what is in their own contracts, let alone understand a different property's book.
IIRC the contract comparison has zero mentions of the HAL reserve system option to bid 18 days in a row.
 
philosophical differences, some places would look at picking up over vacation as manpower negative. more pilots is more better

No one forces you to work extra. It’s optional. But if you are going to try to limit my ability to work as much (or as little) as I want on a voluntary basis, you can go…. Fill in blank :)
 
Couple that with pilots having to bid all their vacation at once means junior pilots get stuck with January/February vacations they may not want, and no opportunity to trade (except pilot to pilot) because there are no open slots to trade into.

This is probably true, however I’d still consider myself a junior FO just past year 3, and I got Dec 22-31 off this year, in last year’s bidding (so my year 2). But that isn’t because the system is awesome for everyone, it is because I’m probably not senior enough to hold the 200% pay blocks on the holidays now that this exists (didn’t before the current contract)
 
I'm not doing an "ours us better" dance but details matter here to understand what I'm getting at... your buy back occurs in July of the year prior, before you bid your slots for the following year, so it occurs at a lower payrate than what a post vacation year buyback would, but more importantly every fsy sold back is removed from the total liability the company has to account for when generating vacation slots for the upcoming year. Couple that with pilots having to bid all their vacation at once means junior pilots get stuck with January/February vacations they may not want, and no opportunity to trade (except pilot to pilot) because there are no open slots to trade into.


No, because we have 4 rounds of vacation and in round 1 while you can bid all your days, they must be consecutive. So that most senior guy can either bid all summer vacation or Nov/Dec timeframe. But he can’t run all 41 days over both timeframes. And by end of round 1, summer, thanksgiving, and winter Christmas break are gone.



It’s actually a pretty fair way to do it. And it sounds like you are FOR spreading fairness when it comes to vacation, so you should like it.
 
No one forces you to work extra. It’s optional. But if you are going to try to limit my ability to work as much (or as little) as I want on a voluntary basis, you can go…. Fill in blank :)
sure like it’s optional to pick up open time during a picket. I used to wonder who in the world would try and pick up open time while there’s pilots on furlough and it’s absolutely you
 
Back
Top