Regional Pay Comparisons

[detwilers]

YTD Block = 420
YTD Credit = 672

Thru June.

2004 Numbers

Credit = 1052 hours
Block = 318 hours

 

[rstev1955]

My point was that I was able to get paid for 95 hours a month on reserve with only 35 hours of block.

I am really curious how you could do that over there (not trying to bash you, just curious). Did you have a min guarantee on reserve? If so, can you post where those other 65 hours came from, especially any hours that were over min guarantee without flying more than min guarantee? I have not seen any contract that allows that yet.

Thanks.

 

[jtf]

It probably depends on the amount of pay per day used on reserve. If you get 5 hours if they use you or keep you out of base no matter if you are deadheading or only fly one leg it will add up quick without doing much in the way of flying. To beat guarentee that much without flying much probably required a bunch of days on airport/ ready/ hot reserve that pay at least 5 hours whether or not you fly. There are a lot of regionals that have extra pay for airport reserve and there are always some reserve pilots who will take advantage of the situation to get the most pay possible by volunteering for lots of airport reserve. In theory a reserve pilot with 10 days off in a 31 day month could make 105 hours of pay without getting in the airplane if they sat airport reserve all their reserve days and were never used.

 

[detwilers]

I am really curious how you could do that over there (not trying to bash you, just curious). Did you have a min guarantee on reserve? If so, can you post where those other 65 hours came from, especially any hours that were over min guarantee without flying more than min guarantee? I have not seen any contract that allows that yet.

Thanks.

Happy to share:

The normal guarantee was 75 hours. Last year I was able to average 90 hours a month (I had 6 weeks off for the birth of my baby of which 3 weeks was not paid) Off course there is all the paid time off as well (Vacation 2 weeks stretched into 4 weeks, Sick time, etc) Average days off a month was 19. That includes days on reserve that I was not used but was able to stay home.

There where 2 main reasons why your guarantee would end up in the 90+ hour range. Indy had what was called a reserve bump and airport standby was paid at 4:45 above guarantee.

1. Reserve Bump – Any flying over 3:45 for the day when on reserve bumps your guarantee up to 80 hours max. (e.g. Get a one day trip worth 5:45 credit when on reserve (5:45 – 3:45 = 2 hours) your new guarantee is now 77 hours)

2. Airport standby paid at 4:45 ABOVE guarantee (e.g. If you were assigned airport standby you where deducted 3:45 from TOWARD guarantee and paid 4:45 ABOVE guarantee). In this case if you where assigned airport standby 3 times in one month your new TOWARD guarantee would be lowered or adjusted to 63.75 (3.75 x 3days = 11.25 – 75 = 63.75). You would be able to bump that 63.75 up to 80 hours if you were assigned any trips with credit higher than 3.75 for the day using the reserve bump explained above (To do this you need to be assigned trips with more than 3.75 of credit per day for up to 16.25 hours to bump the 63.75 up to 80 hours). I found it took about 9-11 days of flying a month to get your TOWARD guarantee back to the 80 hour mark. Then when you add in the ABOVE guarantee of the 3 airport standby assignments of 4.75 x 3 to the 80 you would end up with 94.25 hours for the month. Now this is just an example of an average month. Some months you could do worse and sometimes better.

All this required flying 9 to 11 productive days a month plus 3 airport standbys a month; that is it. easy pleasy lemon squeezy

 

[Yank McCobb]

Holy Crap!! What did he just say?!?

 

[tattoo13]

We are the lowest paid...HOWEVER we take pride in the fact that we didnt bend for a BULL SH!T, BRING EVERYONE ELSE DOWN, FKIN CONTRACT like some other pilot group did (you know who you are). We have been fighting for 5+ years and will continue.

 

[rstev1955]

All this required flying 9 to 11 productive days a month plus 3 airport standbys a month; that is it. easy pleasy lemon squeezy

Okay....call me a skeptic. Call me whatever you want. I don't believe there is any contract that will allow a reserve pilot to get 95 hours in a month and only fly 35 hours, regardless of ASB, or "bump."

You say you had 19 days off (that you were not used), and 3 ASB days. That means you flew 8 days, and got 35 hours. That averages to 4.375 hours each day. According to your math, that would increase min guarantee to 8 * 0.625 = 5 hours. That would make 80 hours (if in fact your contract allows this when you havent even met min guarantee yet......which I bet it doesnt). According to what you said, the 3 ASB days lower your min guarantee by 3.75 each ( I already calculated your 35 hours of flying....so you cant fly on ASB), so that brings it back down to 68.75. Again....this is only if you can go above min guarantee without flying above min guarantee, which I bet you can't.

Do you have a pdf of your contract? I would love to see the section on pay, especially for reserves. Care to post it, or cut and paste it?

 

[BluDevAv8r]

Okay....call me a skeptic. Call me whatever you want. I don't believe there is any contract that will allow a reserve pilot to get 95 hours in a month and only fly 35 hours, regardless of ASB, or "bump."

You say you had 19 days off (that you were not used), and 3 ASB days. That means you flew 8 days, and got 35 hours. That averages to 4.375 hours each day. According to your math, that would increase min guarantee to 8 * 0.625 = 5 hours. That would make 80 hours (if in fact your contract allows this when you havent even met min guarantee yet......which I bet it doesnt). According to what you said, the 3 ASB days lower your min guarantee by 3.75 each ( I already calculated your 35 hours of flying....so you cant fly on ASB), so that brings it back down to 68.75. Again....this is only if you can go above min guarantee without flying above min guarantee, which I bet you can't.

Do you have a pdf of your contract? I would love to see the section on pay, especially for reserves. Care to post it, or cut and paste it?

ACA Section 4.A.1

A. Reserve Line holders Bid Period Guarantee



1. All reserve line holders shall be paid credited flight time at the applicable rates with a minimum guarantee of seventy-five hours (75:00) per bid period. A pilot who has the credited flight time, less than seventy-five (75) credited flight hours for the bid period will be paid Actual Block or Scheduled Block, the greater for each day of assigned flying up to a maximum of eighty hours (80:00) for the Bid Period.



If a reserve pilot actually flies more than eighty hours (80:00) during a bid period he will be compensated at a rate of three point seven five (3.75) hours, or scheduled/actual block whichever is greater, at his current rate of pay for each day of scheduled reserve after reaching eighty (80) credited flight hours.



Pilots assigned to ready reserve will be credited with a minimum daily guarantee of 3.75 hours. The ready reserve daily guarantee (3.75 hours) will be deducted from the pilot's monthly guarantee. The pilot will be credited with the greater of 3.75 hours, assigned flight hours, or actual block hours, above guarantee for the day. The pilots adjusted monthly guarantee will be increased to a maximum of 80 hours for all credited, assigned or actual flight hours in excess of 3.75 hours on any regular reserve day (not to include ready reserve assignments). A pilot with more than 80 hours of assigned or actual flight time, towards guarantee, will receive the sum of all credited hours for the month in addition to all hours credited above guarantee.



2. A reserve line holder who is unavailable for duty for part of the bid period will have his bid period guarantee prorated at the rate of three hours and forty-five minutes (3:45) for each reserve day missed.

 

[rstev1955]

Thanks BluDevAv8r. I knew I could count on you to post their contract.


And, just like I presumed, there is no way a reserve pilot can fly 35 hours and be credited for 96. I don't know of ANY contract that allows a reserve pilot to be paid more than guarantee if they dont at least fly guarantee.

 

[detwilers]

Okay....call me a skeptic. Call me whatever you want. I don't believe there is any contract that will allow a reserve pilot to get 95 hours in a month and only fly 35 hours, regardless of ASB, or "bump."

You say you had 19 days off (that you were not used), and 3 ASB days. That means you flew 8 days, and got 35 hours. That averages to 4.375 hours each day. According to your math, that would increase min guarantee to 8 * 0.625 = 5 hours. That would make 80 hours (if in fact your contract allows this when you havent even met min guarantee yet......which I bet it doesnt). According to what you said, the 3 ASB days lower your min guarantee by 3.75 each ( I already calculated your 35 hours of flying....so you cant fly on ASB), so that brings it back down to 68.75. Again....this is only if you can go above min guarantee without flying above min guarantee, which I bet you can't.

Well you can! I don’t know how many other airlines you have flown for but there are still many other good contracts out there especially outside of the regionals. ExpressJet, for the most part, has a very good contract. I just wish the reserve section was better. I think they have neglected that section because the mentality here is you are only on reserve for 2 months and we have bigger fish to fry (MCD issue).



As far as the ACA reserve section above, there was a TA that amended that section slightly early in 2004. For the most part the only difference that matters in this case is that fact that airport standby pay went up to 4:45 from the 3:45 in the section above.



As far as the rest I will attempt to explain. I flew 431.6 hours last year. That is were I come up with the average of 35 hours flown a month. I don’t know why I said 318 in one of my previous post. I think I got it from the 12 month look back feature from my electronic logbook which would make sense because of training at XJT. I just took a look at my excel file for 2004 and I flew 431.6 hours in ‘04. ANYWAY, like I said I had a few periods where I had time off. So 2004 was a little skewed compared to previous years. I was on FMLA for 6 weeks, Vacation for 4 weeks and sick for 3 separate 1 week periods (These were all paid time off except for a short part of the FMLA, the rest of FMLA was paid out of my sick bank). That adds up to 3 months off, paid for all intents and purposes. If you divide the 431.6 by the 9 months that I was flying in the year then you get an average of 48 hours a month. SO on average the months I was flying I was actually flying 48 hours. Here are a couple of months, copy and pasted, from my records that were not affected by FMLA, vacation, or sick time. Remember for days off, I count actual days off plus the days on duty when I did not work.

May
Pay – Hours 93.3
Pay – Dollars 3401
Per Diem – Hours 141.9
Per Diem – Dollars 241
Total Pay – Dollars 3642
Block Time – Hours 40.9
Days off – 18

July
Pay – Hours 92.2
Pay – Dollars 3263
Per Diem – Hours 126.5
Per Diem – Dollars 202
Total Pay – Dollars 3465
Block Time – Hours 31.8
Days off – 19

June – 2 weeks of vacation in the first part of the month
Pay – Hours 80.7
Pay – Dollars 2946
Per Diem – Hours 68.6
Per Diem – Dollars 116
Total Pay – Dollars 3062
Block Time – Hours 24.2
Days off – 21

These are the numbers plain and simple. I knew a few FO’s that put themselves on call me first while on reserve. These guys where able to do much better in the pay area than me! For me though time at home with my wife who was on bed rest for the last 5 months of pregnancy and the birth of my daughter was more important and hence my pay was not quite as good as others.