No, you wont see the high schedule days, NOR pay. What you will have is a company who can without your approval, extend you two hours, if you decline, at least in our contract, pay is lost. Unless you claim fatigue, then your screwed into a no pay overnight and DH back.
After watching the ramifications this last week, I have complete faith the companies were all in cahoots with the FAA to get them to be able, at no negotiating cost under the guise of a new law, to keep our asses in the seat for many more hours with much less pay.
No, they cannot extend your day without at least the Captains going along with it. Second, where under the old, the company could schedule you til 15 anytime they wanted, now they can never schedule you to 15...and in fact if it's during periods where you are naturally more tired, it can be as low as 9 hours. 9 extendable to 11 is a huge improvement over 15 extendable to 16.
Once you are extended you cannot extend again until you get 30 hours off. Which again is a huge improvement over...we owe you two hours extra in the hotel. This Practically means that you can only be extended once during a pairing.
You are also mixing up contract issues with Part 117. If you are not pay protected because you get removed from a flight because of legality issues you are pointing the finger at the wrong culprit. An extra day for me means 5 more hours of credit at a minimum. If it runs into something I already had on my schedule...I still at least get paid for that. On the extra day, all they can do is get me back to base ASAP (to include off-line flights) or I can agree to do something else...which puts the ENTIRE pairing at 150% pay.
This actually seems a lot less complicated to me. What time did you start, how many legs, that is your FDP limit. What is so hard and complicated about that? Seems a lot better than how many block hours in the last 24? What time did my reduced rest time start? When is 24 hours after my last rest time? How much CREDIT rest do I need? So 10 hours in the hotel makes up for having to be on duty for 16 hours from 2200-1400?
Never mind the fact that they could schedule you right up to 16 hours...and then for a long time the airlines insisted that if you were delayed beyond that you could be on duty INDEFINETLY. The only thing stopping them from holding that position in recent years is some lawyer at the FAA named Whitlow who I don't believe even works there anymore. That seems a little too tenuous for me.
As far as tracking hours goes, most of it is because nobody really paid attention to FDP until now. It's no more or less complicated to track FDP then Block time. Once I.T. catches up, it won't be a big deal.
While 117 is not by any means perfect, at least compared to 121-Domestic rules that I have been living under for the past 15+ years, it represents a HUGE improvement.
