SWAPA Comments about 717

[texman]

Rimshot!lol!

 

[Tripower455]

Rimshot!lol!

LOL... leave it to SWApA to "gain" what we already had.....

 

[humveedriver]

Does SL12 increase guarantee 6.5 trips for each day no matter if it has a red eye or not? Said another way; Does the 6.5 ADG only apply to a redeye "day" or is it included in all days for the pairing? I don't know how meaningful the extra 15% really is, next to 6.5 ADG. I wonder how it looks comparing say LAS-BWI to SEA-BWI? I bet it would be lucrative on LAS-MDW. I'm currently flying redeyes without override, do you guys think SL12 meets the bar?

 

[TahoeBoarder]

Technically, 6.5 as an ADG, regardless of red eye or not, is in our current contract and is further defined in SL14 (yet to be voted on). We didn't gain anything here, just clarified what a "day" is with the intro of red eyes.

 

[Lear70]

Red-eyes as part of a day-scheduled trip are unsafe. Period.

The human body wasn't designed to flip-flop its circadian rhythm like that. That's why our company mainly makes red-eye only lines or at least puts 3 red eyes back-to-back rather than scheduling a day trip then a red-eye.

The worst pairings we have are those that fly a 3 day trip and the last day is a West Coast overnight followed by a red-eye return into domicile. People don't want to call fatigue out there because it's their last day and they're going home, so they suck it up and fly fatigued anyway, just to go home without a delay.

My body can't handle them, hasn't for a long time now, can't go to sleep in the middle of the day to be rested for the evening after being on a day routine all week. They really should only be flown by people who stay on a night rhythm for their entire pairing. Anything else is jeopardizing safety.

/soapbox

 

[PCL_128]

Of course everyone over there could have lived with DOH. So in that scenerio, your saying that getting hired at Airtran was exactly equal to getting hired at SW. That's not meant as a slam on AAI, just framing your point of view.

Yes, that's my point of view. I understand that you feel differently, and that's fine. But you should understand that many AirTran pilots never applied to SWA, and never had any intention of doing so. We didn't ask for this anymore than you did. Just something to keep in mind.

He didn't come to SWAPA and ask us what we thought he should do, he decided himself.

Yes, I agree with you there. I don't blame SWAPA for the pay, or for much of anything, really.

 

[SWA Bubba]

Yes, that's my point of view. I understand that you feel differently, and that's fine. But you should understand that many AirTran pilots never applied to SWA, and never had any intention of doing so. We didn't ask for this anymore than you did. Just something to keep in mind.



Yes, I agree with you there. I don't blame SWAPA for the pay, or for much of anything, really.

Well that's a refreshing change! Everyone else (especially those at other airlines not SWA or Airtran), seem to think that SWAPA set this all up just to mess with you.

Hopefully this will all get explained and straightened out soon, and the holes in the NEW plan and timeline can be reconciled with the OLD plan and timeline in a positive manner.

Bubba

 

[SWA Bubba]

Does SL12 increase guarantee 6.5 trips for each day no matter if it has a red eye or not? Said another way; Does the 6.5 ADG only apply to a redeye "day" or is it included in all days for the pairing? I don't know how meaningful the extra 15% really is, next to 6.5 ADG. I wonder how it looks comparing say LAS-BWI to SEA-BWI? I bet it would be lucrative on LAS-MDW. I'm currently flying redeyes without override, do you guys think SL12 meets the bar?

To answer your initial question, yes, paired with SL14. The company wanted ADG to mean "Average Duty Period Guarantee" instead of "Average Daily Guarantee," which SWAPA wouldn't buy off on. SL 14 codifies the definition as "Average Daily Guarantee," with the Southwest day running from 0300 to 0259. The only exception is a single duty period, say running from midnight to 5am, would be one ADG (6.5) instead of two ADG (13.0). That's pretty much the way it is now for single duty period overnight charters. The ADG doesn't apply; they have their own rigs. So with the new agreement, if you flew two nights of back-to-back redeyes, it would pay a minimum of 19.5 (3 days' worth of ADG), since you're flying on three "Southwest" days. The company's original proposal would only pay a rigged minimum of 13.0 instead of 19.5, since it was only two duty periods.

The 15% override is only for flying out of the 48 contiguous states, unrelated to redeye issues, other than that's probably where you're going to see them, at least initially.

Clear as mud?

Bubba

 

[redflyer65]

Yes, that's my point of view. I understand that you feel differently, and that's fine. But you should understand that many AirTran pilots never applied to SWA, and never had any intention of doing so. We didn't ask for this anymore than you did. Just something to keep in mind.



Yes, I agree with you there. I don't blame SWAPA for the pay, or for much of anything, really.

Agree to disagree on the DOH thing PCL. It was definitly thrust upon all of us without our asking.

Lear,

The way the language is in SL14, you could be assigned a string of Redeye only flights. The carve-out on the Redeye turn is they don't pay ADG of 6.5 for 2 days. But they do pay a 15% overide if it equals more than 6.5. Clear as mud?

SL12 also gave us embedded reserve for Hawaii only. So a three day trip could be something like... 1st day (LAS-OAK-OGG), 2nd day embedded reserve that pays 6.0, 3rd day back to the CONUS. Could end with a redeye, but it would pay 6.5 because it's not a redeye turn.

Once you have completed a redeye leg, you can't fly anymore. You could be deadheaded though.

I think SL14 also states you won't have more than one redeye in a weekly pairing or something to that affect. So you could do a string of redeye turns for the week, or have one most likely as your last leg home, but that redeye would pay 6.5. I don't think anyone else gets paid better for that one leg.

 

[PCL_128]

Are you guys hearing that lines with strings of redeye turns may be coming in the future? That might be something I would be interested in bidding. Looking for any way possible to avoid 3 and 4 day trips.

 

[redflyer65]

The weak thing is, we haven't seen any good examples of how any of this flying will look. Other than a few examples of the Hawaii flying. They are saying in the US they are looking at around 40 redeyes a day. But it's anyones guess at how the company could turn on a dime and add lots more if they like them.

I'm not sure where the string of redeyes came from. It was either pilots worried of doing them (because of the CBA language), or floated out by the union as a possiblity. We were told in a SWAPA conference call that people would want to fly them, but most people didn't believe that at all. So maybe that would work out for someone like you that would like them. We all have different preferences for sure.

 

[PCL_128]

I think most guys might be surprised at how senior something like that would go. While the majority of pilots wouldn't like it, there is always a small group that really enjoys that sort of flying. Over on this side of the partition, red-eye turns and CDOs go very senior. I'm in the top half of the FO list, and I can't hold a CDO line right now, for example. I haven't looked at the 737 lines lately, but the last time I did, I couldn't hold the red-eye turns, either.

 

[Lear70]

It really depends.

You have a very small core of guys who like the Redeye turns because they live in base and want to be back home every day. A Redeye turn classic example is our ATL-PHX, basically a CDO (Continuous Duty Overnight, Nap or High-speed, depending on what regional you came from). It leaves base around 8 or 9 p.m., blocks into PHX around midnight Eastern time, leaves at 0200, and gets back into ATL around 0600.

With your rig, that would be basically 5.5 HOURS of pay on our side of the fence per duty period. 3 in a row over 4 days would pay 22 hours, which is in line with what most of our 737 lines do, 5-6 hours per day credit, but they don't leave until late and get in early, leaving you the whole day,,, allegedly. I'd collapse and be out most of the day after those, but I'm getting old.

Pre-bankruptcy those things used to pay around 7 hours a day at Legacy carriers, my Dad made 10 years of his career doing those, flying 2 back-to-back over 4 days with 24 hour overnights on the West Coast, making it a 28-hour 4 day. 3 of those a month was 84 hours of pay with 18-19 days off, so they went senior.

Here, they do NOT go senior unless they're on a LINE in ATL. In MKE, they go mid-level seniority, a few CA's and F/O's snatch them up, our MKE F/O rep is one of them. In ATL, there's enough people that like them that they don't get past the top 1/3 of each seat's seniority list. In MCO, the one redeye that was on our lines for the first time ever went almost very bottom of the pile junior.

When Daily open time comes open every month, the very first thing that happens is those line holders who have them scattered on their line drop as many of them to open time as they can, which forces our reserves to fly them, which is a constant complaint with the circadian rhythm "flipping". (We don't have to get someone to pick up our trips if there's good reserve coverage, we can just straight give them back to the company and wait for something else to come up that we like better).

For those of us in smaller bases, there's not enough reserve coverage to get rid of ANY trips, I haven't been able to drop anything the entire month. Therefore, if you get stuck with a redeye somewhere, you're probably just stuck with it.

As for how it will work at Southwest, it really depends on how they build them. With their aversion to soft time and desire to keep everyone maxed out, I'd be shocked if they built them into line of all red-eye flying (which is what they SHOULD do). Also, 40 redeye flights PER DAY sounds a bit high. Even if you had 10 city pairings originating red-eyes at night, you'd have to send them to BWI/MDW/MCO and a 4th East Coast base to get near 40. Do you have 10 West Coast cities that could originate red-eyes to every East Coast base?

Maybe that's a combined number with both of our companies integrated...?

 

[texman]

4 day that pays 22! Is that how its all ways been for yall?

 

[dloop11]

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