Hey BD22: I did not mean to sound condescending and if I did my apologies. Some of the stuff I thought was coming from the guys – well you know what I mean. I now know you and understand.
As for the trying to get the roster right – well I think you know JF and I tried our earnest back in 04-05 to do that (along with the seniority thing.) Remember I was the guy the DECs called “Captain Copilot” on the DOH issue and the not so heated arguments with AS.
Yes we will miss the guys and so will the company, but you and I know that is not in their plan.
As for your answer about the airline, well you know it was my company. That bid sheet and the ability to fly or not fly whatever you wanted. Sure it was nice for us but also great for the company. We ran about 12-13% fewer total pilots (fewer reserves) than the other majors. That amounted to about 7-8 hundred guys when I retired, but much more today (over a 1000.)
I’ll give you an example how it worked. A senior guy is also the coach of his kid’s football team and chooses to bid weekends off. No problem for he has the seniority. At the end of the season the kid’s team wins and gets into the playoffs. The game is on Wednesday, the day Dad (the coach) has to fly a 12 hour 330 flight to Europe. In the other world, Dad has little choice but to “call in sick” for trip trading in a 5-10 thousand pilot airline is near impossible with all the permeations. The company calls out a reserve to fly the trip. Later that month the reserve is not available for another trip because he flew THAT trip and the company calls a third pilot (another reserve.)
In our world, that world back there, the Dad simply dropped his trip. Sure a reserve flew that trip but Dad was responsible for his block time for the month. He got an 80 hour line and he is responsible for 80 hours. Now he could claim the time sick but he doesn’t – why? Well he drops his trip, the reserve flies it (as before) and Dad has the game. Let’s say the team looses and now it is over for Dad and his family responsibilities. But, on Saturday (a day he had normally off), he puts himself available on the “Bid Sheet.” This is far to complicated to explain here, but suffice it to say, he has made himself a reserve from the company standpoint. An extremely senior pilot becomes a reserve. He picks up a trip (that someone else dropped or is in open time) and flies the trip.
Now look at the pilot usage. In case one the company had a pilot out, a reserve used and later a 3rd pilot used for the future trip. In our case the company had a pilot out, a reserve used and the original pilot used for the future trip. 33% fewer pilots in this example. It worked great for all and I did it for over a quarter century!
Of course you need a large pilot force for it to flow as smoothly as it did there, but it can also be manageable with a small force. In all the give backs and all the pilot/management negotiations during those horrible years – not once did the company desire to change that. As a matter of fact ALPA once offered to remove it and the company refused to budge – they wanted it more than the pilots.
I retired quite senior but my last 4 years I NEVER bid a line of flying – not one single month. I always used the Bid Sheet. I could care less what I got (except those few restricted days like XMAS etc) because I new up front that I would never fly 10% of what I actually got. I retired #17 out of 197 Captains on the big bus in PHL, #209 out of 6416 total and I could have been #1 out of 274 if I down bid to the 76. I had a fairly good life until I got tired of the cold, rain, taxes, sore knees, the FAs were younger than my daughter and all the international stuff flew at night over the NAT Tracks - you know that I don't do night flights well
Now the beauty of the bid sheet was the junior guys got some great trips that their seniority would never hold. When I was tail end Charlie on the 72, I got a 3 day layovers in Bermuda during the winter that I will never forget. Why, because some block holder needed that time off and he was hundreds of numbers senior to me.
There are few guys here that want to take the scheduling out of the hands of Bombay, more than me. I have tried diligently to explain the “win-win” situation of what I write. Back in the world I was extremely knowledgeable of this operation for I was the ALPA over 85 chairmen (or LEC member) for 9 years. Technical airplane knowledge – go for it, but make it work for pilots and the company, that was my baby. The only problem is most guys really don’t care.
So I simply say the facts as they exists and hope others take what is and do the best for themselves. We all know it is hard to get two pilots to agree on when to put the gear down not alone scheduling and seniority issues.
Burners and Out!