Lets try to get something positive here, just how does the "drop a trip" at straight pay work, and are you paid when you drop it? Or is it just the ability to drop a trip for no pay?
No, you don't get paid. You drop the trip, you drop that credit. That's why people look for other trips in other bases in most cases. You may just need that day off for something but still need the time back.
My contention is that will never work at SWA. SWA is not manned to allow folks to drop a trip, paid or otherwise, and have other folks fly that trip. Thats why you are hired, to fly that trip. Sick calls are covered by reserves.
Again, 90%+ of the trips that people drop into open time (back to the company straight drop) are picked up by other LINE HOLDING pilots. The system works quite well in that there is VERY little that's not picked back up and, therefore, would require reserves to cover.
As an example, I just looked and I have over 60 FLICA alerts for dropped trips for 737 F/O's system-wide at AirTran for January since Daily Open Time opened back on the 21st of Dec. Of those 47 dropped trips, there are only 3 left in open time. 2 in MKE towards the end of the month, and 1 in ATL on the 19th.
Of everything that was dropped, more than 90% of it has already been picked back up and only 3 reserves will be needed to cover dropped flying FOR THE WHOLE MONTH for the ENTIRE system, the rest can be used for sick calls.
Pretty sure that wouldn't overburden the reserves even at Southwest with a similar percentage of trips. Not to mention, with your higher pay, people tend to be more incentivized to pick them up.
It's like any industry, if you worked at a sandwich shop, and want to drop a day of work, someone has to want to work that shift, or you get to work that shift.
But that's not how the airline industry works. In truth, more airlines allow straight drops than not without an artificial "minimum duty periods required" per month constraint.
Please explain how the company would ever want to entertain getting involved in taking flying from guys and then have to pay someone else to fly that line?
Pretty simple, actually
If there are 40 uncovered trips for MDW F/O for instance when the month starts and 432 Line Holding F/O's to pick up that flying (2,000+ system-wide) or one of the 32 reserve F/O's on one of their 5 reserve weeks have to cover it (152 available weeks for 40 trips seems pretty "adequate"), if a line-holding F/O wants to drop a trip on one of those blocks of days with adequate coverage, the company doesn't have to pay him to fly that trip, and thus saves that money by flying a reserve on it.
The reserve is going to get paid guarantee in all likelihood either way, but the company just saved 20-25 TFP by not paying the line holding pilot to fly the trip.
On the flip side, if another F/O anywhere in the company picks that trip up, now the company doesn't have to cover it with a reserve AND it's even money for the company.
The minor variations in longevity pay equalize - sometimes it's a senior person flying the trip, sometimes it's a senior person dropping and a junior person flying.
Again, this system has worked successfully here and at other airlines for decades. Southwest's system is truly... ummm... "unique", and I don't mean that in a good way. The system could be a lot more pilot-friendly.
On a brighter note, we would like something akin to that trip drop, but only once or twice a year for family needs. Not on a recurring bases.
I bet more of your pilots than you think would "like" to have that ability on a regular basis.
To get this, we are going to pay for it. So please, please explain how the company would see to allow trip dropping?
It's actually a money-saver for the company, especially in low-flying months. Pilots don't get paid for what they drop and reserves get paid the same regardless (guarantee).
In the high-flying months, on many days the threshold for required reserves is such that you can't drop the trip anyway, so it doesn't cost the company a dime.
Heres a tidbit on SWA efficiency in schedule, we use a 8-10% reserve manning, sick calls go about 7-8%, so there is some room in there, but not much. Now Add in other things, trip pulls, diverts, etc, and the cushion evaporates day to day. Worse, on bad days, instead of having more reserves, they online reroute, and are very efficient at that, to the tune of getting 10-15% more flying out of the guys on the line than if they didn't and just used more reserve coverage. This is especially tru while we are fat on pilots.
Your sick call rate is nearly double ours... If your people didn't have to use sick calls to get the trips they need off (especially the junior people), your sick call use would likely decline. That's what has happened here as people can more easily manipulate their schedule with the new CBA we have.
As for the other, yeah, that re-assignment thing sucks, no doubt about it. Do you have limits on yours? We do. If it goes over a certain number of hours past your initial release time, you can decline for personal hardship, like you can't get home and you have child care responsibilities, prior commitments, etc. Same thing on being extended into a day off or junior assigned on a day off if you were stupid enough to pick up your phone.
Like I said, I prefer our system over yours. It's not about not wanting to fly, we all still like our paychecks and need the hours, we just prefer to have more control over our flying lives than you guys have and hope that you can see how well our system worked for our people and work to move in that direction.
