SWA First Year Pay?

[dudemize]

Dropping trips

In my unit guys drop trips all the time for military duty, but can you drop trips if you just want the time off unpaid, or are you obligated to fly them until someone else picks them up? Thanks

 

[FatesPawn]

In my unit guys drop trips all the time for military duty, but can you drop trips if you just want the time off unpaid, or are you obligated to fly them until someone else picks them up? Thanks

you can't simply DROP. You can give away. Mil Leave is different.

 

[SWA/FO]

Yeah, tell that to the guys in your unit...no dropping trips unless its official military stuff!

 

[FatesPawn]

This is one first year (strike that, now second year) guy that agrees with Chest on the whole "dropping and picking up" issue. While Fate makes a valid point that dropping trips does not put them in open time, it's very debatable as to whether that saves the company money. There is a greater chance that the company is now having to pay more. If, hypothetically, a first year F/O attempts to drop all their trips, and some or all of these trips are picked up by other F/O's, they are likely to cost the company much more than first year pay, as second-, third-, fourth- (etc) year F/O's are picking them up. Meanwhile, the original F/O is now picking up open time at second-year pay that would likely ultimately be assigned to a first-year reserve F/O. Seems very likely that a strategy like this is costly to the company. At any rate, this is certainly not how the company designed the system, which was to reward diligent first-year F/O's who are not making nearly the amount of more senior F/O's.

Flycatcher,

While I think that on the surface, it appears this system costs the company more money, the bottom line is that regardless of how trips are paid for that come out of open time, the number of reserves required to cover the flying is less than if this system didn't exist.

While the 1st year F/O dropping all their trips is not the guy being extra productive, the 2nd, 3rd, 4th year guy IS. I traded the productivity to him/her when I gave away a trip and picked up open time. If I simply gave away and didn't pick up, that would be an inequity. I got the premium, but that's the system.

I see your point about a non 1st year F/O picking up my time getting paid more. At the same time, I get paid more for flying a DOT trip. That doesn't sound like cost savings when a 1st year reserve could be flying that DOT...

But, reserves cost the company much more than $42.00per trip. They cost us medical benefits, 401k match, unemployment insurance premiums, etc. If every 1st year F/O was able to give away just enough to pick ALL the DOT in the system, we'd need fewer reserves and THAT would be a savings. Any time we have to assign a reserve to DOT that has been lingering in Maestro for days/weeks, we lose flexibililty. We lose the ability to cover a sick call.

I guess my hypothetical would be an F/O with 4 trips that pays 25 each to equal 100 for the month. He should make $4300 that month, but gives it all away. It's picked up by 2nd year pilots that fly it at $72/trip and so the company has to pay $7200. That's a $2900 premium paid by the company...

Now the 1st year pilot goes out and picks up 4 crummy weekend 3 days at 20TFP each. 80x72=$5670. But his original rate would have paid him 80x43=$3440. So the true premium for these trips was $5670-3440 = $2230.

So total EXTRA paid by the company for these trips is $2230+$2900=$5130

Now, lets say that none of this happened. No trading/dropping took place. What happened to those 4 DOT trips that paid 80? They have to be assinged to Joe Reserve pilot. Now, not only is Joe reserve pilot getting paid $43x90 for the month, he's putting 7.3% in his 401k, getting sick once or twice a year, Jeppesen has to send him revisions... you see where I'm going with this... I think an extra reserve pilot to cover those 80 TFP worth of flying costs more than the $5130 PREMIUM the company had to pay for existing pilots to pick up that extra time.

I realize that you can plug different numbers in above and get different results, but I think that if we are saving bodies on the property, we are saving money. I guess the bottom line is as long as I'm flying 95+ hard hours per month, it's hard to feel any guilt about how much I'm getting paid for it ;-) I think I'm doing the company a favor. Win win.

Fate

 

[FatesPawn]

Yeah, tell that to the guys in your unit...no dropping trips unless its official military stuff!

Hey, i hear you... but check my profile.

Fate

 

[T1bubba]

I agree with Fate's Pawn on this one. First year guys giving away their trips aren't that different from lance captains. I'm flying a turn today that a lance gave away, but if this turn hadn't been available most likely I'd be staying home. The company got me to fly when I was going to stay home so that's one way of getting the increased productivity they keep talking about. Obviously there are lots of other reasons for the lance program, but it does allow FO's to be more productive by ensuring more trips are given away.

Anyway the company could have just paid second year pay for every TFP above a certain number if they had wanted first year guys to max out, but they didn't. They simply wanted to encourage first year guys to help cover uncovered flying. That is what they are doing even if they give away trips to be able to pick up. I wouldn't read too much into the company's intentions, if they wanted the system to work a different way you can be sure they would have set it up that way.