how much vacation time do pilots get?

B

bobbyp

New Member
how much vacation time, do pilots get at the regional and major levels?


OT: is it true airline pilots cant drink beer?
 
Depends on the individual airline's contract. For example, I got a whopping three days this year, but it's because I didn't work a full year last year. When you only work a partial year, your vacation time here is based on full months of service. Next year I'll get 5 days, the year after that I'll get 10. The guys that have been here a while get 3 weeks. That being said, there are ways to extend that WAAAAY past what you actually get awarded. I was able to work my days off where I had 3 days of vacation, but I was actually off for 11 days in a row.

And yeah, we can drink beer. Just not within 12 hours of flying per company policy and 8 hours per FAA regs.
 
At AMR employees got 2 weeks of vacation once 1 year of service completed. On one's 5th anniversary it goes up to 3 weeks.
 
kellwolf said:
That being said, there are ways to extend that WAAAAY past what you actually get awarded. I was able to work my days off where I had 3 days of vacation, but I was actually off for 11 days in a row.

And yeah, we can drink beer. Just not within 12 hours of flying per company policy and 8 hours per FAA regs.
Click to expand...

I turned two weeks of vacation into 23 days off and I'm drinking a beer right now! I just hope I remember how to do my job when I go back.:nana2:
 
We've got something nice called "vacation slide." Basically, you bid your vacation for the next year in November. Then, the month before your vacation, you bid your line for that month. You can then slide your vacation four days forward or for days back in order to cover a trip. Some guys were able to get nearly 3 weeks off this way. Then they initiated PBS.

PBS gets confused over vacation slide, which is a contractual right covered in our CBA. According to the CBA, we have XX amount of time AFTER the bid closes to slide the vacation. Well, that increases QOL! So, with PBS, they want it BEFORE the bid closes. Wha? How am I gonna know if the trip before or after my vacation is worse? How do I know which side has more or less days off? Answer? I don't. They basically used PBS as an end around to decrease QOL and nix vacation slide, a union negotiated and protected benefit. And people wonder why we say this violates the status quo and should trigger an immediate 30 day cooling off period.....

Sorry, didn't mean to go into rant mode there. :)
 
At colgan its a week after 1 year, 2 weeks after 2 years.

However, I go on a mini vacation with my girlfriend every month or every 2 months. 3-4 days off is usually all I need to do that. By trading trips with other pilots I can get 5-6 days off in a row sometimes.
 
It's not vacation, but I've been able to weasel at least a 5-6 day block off per month the last couple of months just using our bidding system and swapping trips (and there are people here that get much bigger blocks off than that).
 
As far as company/mandatory vacation goes, Doug is up to 3 weeks a year now...but essentially, every time he bids good and gets 2 weeks off in a row, i see that as a vacation... HAHAHA
 
Can you take a week or a day out of your vacation here and there, or does it have to be all at once?
 
A 6th year pilot at USAirways gets 7 whole days, what a joke. Prior to 9-11 and two bankruptcies it was more like 21 days.

For what it's worth the European airlines give far better vacation. I get 42 days per year. All pilots get that from day one. Similar to others it's pretty easy to add days off on both ends to make for longer stretches in a row. Best I've done is 35 in a row using 24 days of vacation.


Typhoonpilot
 
You can take one week here as a "vacation at a time," but odds are you won't be able to. It's under the murky contract language of "the company will do its best to honor" or something. To my knowledge, everyone that's tried has gotten "denied due to staffing."
 
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