Yep! Definitely a nice perk of the job. Trying to find some time for some international travel this summer and fall.
When dreams come true... (long)
- Thread starter LDJones
- Start date
Yep! Definitely a nice perk of the job. Trying to find some time for some international travel this summer and fall.
A quick story:
I've been fortunate to be able to have most weekend off for 95% of my 121 career so far. With the upgrade to Captain, and the drop in seniority after the upgrade, that hasn't been the case the first few months in the Left Seat but it's steadily improving.
For May, the only weekend that I HAD to have off was this weekend, May 6th for two events, a confirmation and my mother in law's 80th birthday party celebration. So I tried to bid pretty flexibly to give the system plenty of leeway to fill my schedule without taking that weekend.
Naturally, when bids came out a couple of weeks ago that was the ONLY weekend that I was assigned a trip based not on my bidding parameters but on Company Need! Dang. I tried dropping the trip, but that was denied due to "insufficient reserves" (a not uncommon situation...nobody wants to pay extra pilots sitting around just to support random days off.) I even split the trip at the last leg of day two thinking maybe if I flew the majority of it I could drop the last four legs. Nope. Insufficient reserves. So I posted the trip in Open Time hoping another pilot might pick it up on their day off for some extra $$. I even through some extra incentive dollars to sweeten the deal.
I take my reliability record very seriously. I didn't miss a trip for illness or emergency in the first three years of flying 121. If a trip was scheduled, I was there and flew it. I enjoyed peeking at my reliability record occasionally and seeing all 0s on the report when the average was 6.7 "occurrences" per crew member in the preceding 12 months. Finally, at the start of my fourth year I had to call in sick for one Standup, so I've had one occurrence in 38 months.
But with the importance of this weekend, I contacted my Chief Pilot and explained the situation and told him I would have no choice but to call out emergency for that date and asked if I was better off doing that now for the whole trip or wait until Saturday and call off for those last legs. He suggested keeping it posted in Open Time, then call off later on Saturday when I actually had to be off. He said he'd approve my emergency callout, which was kind of him. He also thanked me for my stellar reliability record.
So my original trip was to start today at 9 a.m. Last night, at 7:30 p.m. my wife and I were just about to sit down to a nice dinner and uncork a bottle of wine when the phone rings. It was Crew Support. Conventional wisdom is you don't answer CS calls on your day off! But I sometimes go against conventional wisdom, so I answered. Turns out, another Captain had just called off sick on a trip and they were wondering if I would be willing to do a swap with my trip and, if so, how quickly I could get to the airport. I told them if they got me Sunday off I'd be happy to do it and that I could be at the airport in one hour....15 minutes to pack and change, 30 minute drive to airport, 15 minutes to get to the gate from parking. They agreed.
So my dinner went into the freezer, the wine back on the rack and I headed out the door. I walked on the plane one hour to the minute from their first call!
So I ended up with a much easier three day, with the last day just deadheads coming home, getting me home six hours earlier than I would have otherwise AND I have the day off that I needed with my reliability record intact...plus full pay for my original trip. And I earned some brownie points with CS. It was a win-win-win.
I've been fortunate to be able to have most weekend off for 95% of my 121 career so far. With the upgrade to Captain, and the drop in seniority after the upgrade, that hasn't been the case the first few months in the Left Seat but it's steadily improving.
For May, the only weekend that I HAD to have off was this weekend, May 6th for two events, a confirmation and my mother in law's 80th birthday party celebration. So I tried to bid pretty flexibly to give the system plenty of leeway to fill my schedule without taking that weekend.
Naturally, when bids came out a couple of weeks ago that was the ONLY weekend that I was assigned a trip based not on my bidding parameters but on Company Need! Dang. I tried dropping the trip, but that was denied due to "insufficient reserves" (a not uncommon situation...nobody wants to pay extra pilots sitting around just to support random days off.) I even split the trip at the last leg of day two thinking maybe if I flew the majority of it I could drop the last four legs. Nope. Insufficient reserves. So I posted the trip in Open Time hoping another pilot might pick it up on their day off for some extra $$. I even through some extra incentive dollars to sweeten the deal.
I take my reliability record very seriously. I didn't miss a trip for illness or emergency in the first three years of flying 121. If a trip was scheduled, I was there and flew it. I enjoyed peeking at my reliability record occasionally and seeing all 0s on the report when the average was 6.7 "occurrences" per crew member in the preceding 12 months. Finally, at the start of my fourth year I had to call in sick for one Standup, so I've had one occurrence in 38 months.
But with the importance of this weekend, I contacted my Chief Pilot and explained the situation and told him I would have no choice but to call out emergency for that date and asked if I was better off doing that now for the whole trip or wait until Saturday and call off for those last legs. He suggested keeping it posted in Open Time, then call off later on Saturday when I actually had to be off. He said he'd approve my emergency callout, which was kind of him. He also thanked me for my stellar reliability record.
So my original trip was to start today at 9 a.m. Last night, at 7:30 p.m. my wife and I were just about to sit down to a nice dinner and uncork a bottle of wine when the phone rings. It was Crew Support. Conventional wisdom is you don't answer CS calls on your day off! But I sometimes go against conventional wisdom, so I answered. Turns out, another Captain had just called off sick on a trip and they were wondering if I would be willing to do a swap with my trip and, if so, how quickly I could get to the airport. I told them if they got me Sunday off I'd be happy to do it and that I could be at the airport in one hour....15 minutes to pack and change, 30 minute drive to airport, 15 minutes to get to the gate from parking. They agreed.
So my dinner went into the freezer, the wine back on the rack and I headed out the door. I walked on the plane one hour to the minute from their first call!
So I ended up with a much easier three day, with the last day just deadheads coming home, getting me home six hours earlier than I would have otherwise AND I have the day off that I needed with my reliability record intact...plus full pay for my original trip. And I earned some brownie points with CS. It was a win-win-win.
mscard88
Touchdown! Greaser!
Except....flew Delta Connection stuff for 24 years at ASA, "lifetime" travel bennies. Well Delta dropping ASA this year and no more Delta travel for ASA retirees. To be frank, I don't think Skywest fought us keeping those benefits either. Ahh well, won't be paying to fly Delta. Southwest baby!
Our "lifetime travel" benefit only accrues after ten years of service, and is only on our metal, so of limited benefit. Unless they raise the mandatory retirement age or I go into the training department for awhile after aging out, I won't qualify even for that. My goal: Invest well enough that I can BUY the tickets I want!
flyingcheesehead
Touchdown! Greaser!
Good thing you hadn't gotten the wine open when they called!
How many people are there in crew scheduling, and how many pilots are there? Are the "brownie points" actually worth something? If there's too many people for them to know you, is there a way they keep track of such things in the computer?
It sounds a lot like it was back in my truck-driving days... Take the run to New Jersey that nobody wanted, or the emergency overnight trip that they forgot about, and you'll get a "milk run" to California the next week, or that extra home time you wanted. It was nice to build that rapport with dispatch where they knew they could count on you to get them out of a bind, and in return they'd give you extra miles ($$$) or extra home time when you wanted it.
Good thing you hadn't gotten the wine open when they called!
How many people are there in crew scheduling, and how many pilots are there? Are the "brownie points" actually worth something? If there's too many people for them to know you, is there a way they keep track of such things in the computer?
It sounds a lot like it was back in my truck-driving days... Take the run to New Jersey that nobody wanted, or the emergency overnight trip that they forgot about, and you'll get a "milk run" to California the next week, or that extra home time you wanted. It was nice to build that rapport with dispatch where they knew they could count on you to get them out of a bind, and in return they'd give you extra miles ($$$) or extra home time when you wanted it.
We're currently around 4,600 pilots and Crew Support is a relatively small group...they typically have around 20 people during the morning and afternoon shifts, then a fraction of that on the "graveyard" shift til 3 a.m. It's a job I don't envy and sometimes wonder how they pull it off.
While I don't know to what degree they track what we do individually, I've actually had them follow up the next day with a "Thank you" when I've bailed them out of a jam. I suspect they can log notes in their system about such events. More importantly, my Chief Pilot monitors such things and brownie points with CS don't hurt you when you need his help. I have a great Chief that really cares about his pilots...many stories of him going way above and beyond the call of duty to help out his crews, both on and off the job.