The SWAPA Ride Report: Annotated CBA Overview, Scheduling IT Update & Vacation Bidding Q&A

In this week’s edition, Captain Matt McCants takes the membership through the high points of the latest update to the Annotated CBA. This revision touches on a lot of sections, so be sure to download the latest version to your mobile device. 

He also gives a recap of the latest IT summit between the Scheduling and Analytics Committee and the Company team. Take a listen to find out what percentage of duty periods were already executed within the lower duty limit restrictions this year. The answer might surprise you. With vacation bidding coming up, this episode’s Q&A focuses on the C2020 vacation touches, and what to look forward to down the road. The show notes will point you to even more vacation bidding resources, like the TA education podcast and August RP article.

LINKS:
Annotated CBA
Vacation Bidding - Section 14 | Contract 2020 TA Education
Vacation Bidding for 2025

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Transcript

Welcome back to the SWAPA Ride Report for Friday, August 30th , 2024.  

The SWAPA Ride Report is your source for headlines, updates, and answers to frequently asked questions regarding your new Collective Bargaining Agreement.  

I’m your host, Matt McCants with SWAPA Communications.  

Let’s get started with a bit of a “pubs revision” check as we just dropped a new Annotated CBA that has a lot of updates worked in. This captures a LOT of the little changes and clean up items we’ve seen over the last couple of months, but here are a couple of the high points: 

On the Compensation front, we had a few clarifications involving minimum premium payments and how overrides can (or cannot) stack. There’s also a “Called Out Not Used” table that summarizes some of the nuanced situations out there with regard to reserve. It also clears up a few of the repositioning situations we’ve seen lately.   

Expenses and Benefits have some notes added about meal reimbursements, medical reimbursements and NEC on non-taxable Loss Of License. Keep on scrolling down to vacancies for updated annotation regarding ETOPS training, locks, and removals.  

Contracts are somewhat inherently difficult to read, and especially when we have some rickety bridges still being crossed from the previous contract. The idea with these new Annotated Versions of the CBA is to clear up what’s actually being said here in the language, as well as provide pertinent information regarding implementation dates. It also captures the intent and “why” of implementation updates as they happen, as well as clarifications both parties come to during the Joint Implementation Committee meetings with the company.  

Make sure you download this new version of the Annotated CBA to your mobile device from the Contract Corner of the SWAPA website, so you can have it handy if one of these topics comes up in your day to day. As you might have seen in some of our publications and blasts, we’re getting closer to fielding the newly refreshed SWAPA app, and the annotated CBA is one of the many improvements you’ll see conveniently found there. And yes, it will automatically update when we produce a new version.  

Speaking of IT, that’s always a popular topic around here, and the SAC recently had a meeting with the company’s team and here were some of the takeaways from that summit.  

Let’s start with a special alert for our First Year First Officers.  All open time awards checking in beginning on Sep 1 will pay 2nd year rates, which is a shift from the last contract where only TFP above your original line would trigger 2nd year rates.   

Flight Ops and Crew Scheduling are making progress on delivering the new duty day and block limits that were previously delayed.  SAC members will be testing the new limits early next month, and will report back to the membership with a status update soon.  As a reminder, the bid packet is built fully in compliance with the new contract, and thus far this year, 98% of duty periods were executed within the lower duty limit restrictions, but obviously we look forward to seeing 100% compliance later this year with the full implementation of the new work limits. 

There is a LOT on the implementation docket next year too, and we’ve begun preliminary discussions with our Company counterparts on how to best navigate that roadmap.  Our SME’s will be collaborating with developers and product owners to ensure our new processes like release to check in, reserve proffer, self service Open Time Priority, and the training bid are all programmed with our membership’s customer experience in mind.  There is actually a strong spirit of turning new features on earlier than their delivery date when able, which we’ll track and communicate throughout next year. 

Well September is right around the corner and in the SWAPA world that means the opening of vacation bidding. Now there were some Contract 2020 touches here, so let’s get the Q&A segment of the program started with some questions about that.  

Contract 2020 has only two rounds of bidding, but I heard that it hasn’t been implemented yet. Is that true?  

That’s correct, It is NOT implemented yet.  That is slated for 2027 bidding on 2028 vacation. Until then it will be the same process as C2012 where you have 5 rounds of bidding.  

Question #2: If I am changing bases in October, does that change the remainder of my vacation bids?   

No, it will not.  All vacation bidding is from the base and seat that you are in on September 1st.    

This is a good one - If I upgrade to CA next year, how does that affect my vacation trading?  

So you will still trade with other FOs.  Your seat when you were awarded vacation is the seat you trade vacation in for that year.  If you were an FO when you bid for VA, then even after an upgrade you would still trade with other FOs. If you are a CA and choose to downgrade to FO, you would still trade with other CAs. Now, when attempting to search for vacation weeks to trade with the company inventory, ensure that you select the correct seat for what your vacations were awarded in.   

Now how about a block bidding question since that will still be available to you: I heard if I block bid vacation weeks, I can’t shift those weeks.   

Right, so this is partially true.  If you are awarded a block bid of vacation, any shifts you do to that block will move the entire block.  There is a work-around though. If you trade out of one of your block weeks and then back into it, that will break up the block in Crew Planning’s system. That will free you to shift the first week to the left and the next week to the right if that was your goal.   

Moving on to an inquiry about floaters: Can we still exchange for floating vacation for 2025? It isn’t in the new CBA but they let me exchange to Floating Vacation this year.  

So floating vacation will be phased out this year.  The process is currently being sunset, and there won’t be an option to trade a “bid vacation” to floating in 2025.  You’ll see what used to be floating vacations in the form of additional vacation weeks that will be added to the company inventory before vacation trading opens to prime the pump for trading. 

So that was a good recap of a few vacation topics, and if you’re looking the “why” behind these moves in Contract 2020, take a listen to the TA education podcast on vacation, or the August 2024 RP article by the SAC. We’ll link to those in the show notes.   

That’s all for the Q&A, so let’s wrap the show by revisiting the operations side of the house. We can add a handful of checklist and callout adds to the myriad of distractions out there right now, on top of our CBA evolving as implementation presses on.  

Continue to back each other up, place safety at the top of your priorities, ask questions if something appears to be out of place, and do not hesitate to utilize your SWAPA resources for anything that comes your way. We will maintain mutual support with you and are actively invested with the company on each and every issue that you experience.  

That wraps up the big news this week. As always, if there’s something you want to hear more about on the show, please send us an email at comm@swapa.org.  The next episode will drop on September 13th, and if you missed anything, this transcript will be on the Podcast Page under the Communications tab on the SWAPA website.  

Fly safe, fly informed.