Anyone been URPed lately at Airtran?

[Sunking]

I thought the whole urp thing was over with, hasn't happened for 4 years. All of a sudden in Dec. I was urped 3 days at the end of the month two weeks in advance. For some reason sched. folks thinks this saves money, but when your talking straight pay I don't see thier logic. I've called 4 of my buddies with realitive same seniority and they have a credit of 100 plus hours compared to my 84. And they still had a couple of days left to go.

 

[Lear70]

Were your friends working weekends or the couple days before or after the holidays?

If they need the coverage, they won't URP you. If you're working during the week with plenty of coverage and your credit's up, you'll get dinged.

It's their new contract interpretation that goes along with the idea that reserves can't drop reserve days.

Right out of the Eastern play book... if the pilots don't cave, take away every good thing about the job you possibly can, one by one, until that concessionary T.A. looks good by just bringing them BACK to the QOL they had before they started fighting.

 

[Sunking]

I was working weekends, if fact all of the reserve lines pretty much work weekends. There are a few that will give you 2 weekends off a month but I'm too junior for that. I was urped on the new years eve day and the two days before. I think they are just trying to jerk our chains.

 

[fmr727drvr]

I sat reserve from the 23rd through the 28th and didn't get one call. Since I have no kids and my wife was out of town I volunteered to fly for anyone who might want to stay home with their family.
Although there were trips that came up, they never called me. What a waste of time.

 

[Sunking]

I sat reserve from the 23rd through the 28th and didn't get one call. Since I have no kids and my wife was out of town I volunteered to fly for anyone who might want to stay home with their family.
Although there were trips that came up, they never called me. What a waste of time.

Must be alot less flying out there then, we can probally expect more urping in Jan. Just curious, what kind of a credit did you end up with?

 

[fmr727drvr]

84....is that you RC?

 

[Sunking]

84....is that you RC?

you got it tough guy, how you doing SK?

 

[fmr727drvr]

Another day another 3.5 hrs. Maybe I'll actually fly an airplane for my pay this week.

 

[Lear70]

They probably staffed WAY more F/O's than they needed for New Year's, realized it, then started pulling people with the highest credit...

At least, that's what they CLAIM to do (go in order of highest credit), but what do I know... Sometimes I could see their "big picture", sometimes it looked like Picasso...

Enjoy your New Year's off!

p.s. If they can cover all the open flying with lineholders below 75 hours' credit, and all those lineholders used to earning about 85, you can probably bet on not flying much in January, a lot of guys will pick up an extra trip to get their credit up (I wouldn't, I usually flew about 70-75 hours of credit a month deliberately for the days off with my family, but some people are all about the mula).

 

[say again]

What does URP stand for?? Seems like a raw deal by what Im reading.

 

[fmr727drvr]

I think it is unused reserve period.
You could have built up your pay credit only to be given days off you didn't expect resulting in lost pay not to go below 70 hours.

 

[fmr727drvr]

What I don't get is how the company is able to do this , yet we can no longer drop or even swap reserve days. If there isn't coverage I understand. But they won't even look at it. Like Lear said...they keep chipping away at our QOL.
If they aren't careful they will destroy the goodwill of the pilot group here. Maybe they already have?

 

[skypine69]

I burped last nite after i drank a beer. does that count?

 

[fmr727drvr]

Only if it cost you 3.5 hours for that beer.

 

[PCL_128]

I was UPRed for December, and lots of other copilots have been getting URPed for months. I think it's really rare on the Captains' side, though.

 

[TV9Driver]

i think all of the goodwill was used up LAST Christmas. I don't think any pilots except for a few senior ones that have a positive opinion of our company right now.

 

[fmr727drvr]

i think all of the goodwill was used up LAST Christmas. I don't think any pilots except for a few senior ones that have a positive opinion of our company right now.

Thats what I thought based on most of my FO's opinions, but check out the thread titled Airtran? It seems most everybody had a generally positive thing to say about working here. Maybe they don't want to scare off any talent out there and wind up with some 500 hour wonders.

 

[Sun Devil 2000]

Had 92 hours of pay in December and begged scheduling to URP me the last two days. I was told no. January is going to be a fun month for reserves since there is no open time after this week and the low credit lines.

 

[tubelcane]

I sat reserve as a fo from Nov 2005 to Mar 2006 and wasnt urp'd once. Now the captains in my crashpad at the time it was a regular thing for them. Maybe things have changed in the last few years.

 

[Kharma Police]

Had 92 hours of pay in December and begged scheduling to URP me the last two days. I was told no. January is going to be a fun month for reserves since there is no open time after this week and the low credit lines.

Does that mean guys on reserve will be home more?

 

[Sun Devil 2000]

Does that mean guys on reserve will be home more?

Well I don't live in ATL so the answer for me is no, I won't be at home instead I'll be stuck in my crashpad. For those that live in ATL I would assume that the answer would be yes more time at home.

 

[Lear70]

They can URP you at any time during your rotation, 1, 2, or 3 days in a row.

If you can get home during that time, great, you got a day off at home.

If not, you just got a day off sitting in your crash pad...

Not much fun at all.

 

[Sun Devil 2000]

They can URP you at any time during your rotation, 1, 2, or 3 days in a row.

If you can get home during that time, great, you got a day off at home.

If not, you just got a day off sitting in your crash pad...

Not much fun at all.

True but scheduling must advise you 48 hours prior to removing a RSV period per the contract.

 

[PCL_128]

Does that mean guys on reserve will be home more?

Yep, but I'm already spending tons of time at home anyway. It'd be nicer to get paid for it.

 

[Mertz72]

They've also begun tagging people with ready reserve on their last day, so that you can't get the early release. (i.e. 4am to 6pm reserve gets released at 2pm if they haven't been assigned anything, so scheduling gives you 11am to 5pm ready reserve, and calls it a flight assignment)

 

[maxblast72]

The urping thing has become an issue again since they stopped allowing drops. When they allowing dropping/swapping, they always seemed to be a little short (OK alot short this summer) so urping was never an issue. Now that drops are not allowed and we have cut our total fleetwide hours due to high fuel prices, we are well staffed and occasionally overstaffed which causes JJ (head of scheduling) to grab the URPing stick to reduce reserve costs.

One thing you can do if they URP you a week or two out is put your URP on the tradeboard. If someone has similar days to your urping and would like to be URPed (IE drop the days), the two of you can work a trade so you get the money back (great for guys that live in ATL).

Don't worry spring break/summer will be here soon enough and URPing will be forgotten again for 6 months as we run through these months with the typical Airtran short staffing.