The SWAPA Ride Report: Vacation Accrual, Payroll Audit Process & Contract Q&A

This week, Communications Committee member Tony Mulhare takes a deep dive into how your sick bank and vacation accrual are related if you were to go out on disability and the importance of making sure you don’t get awarded a line for a month that you won’t fly in (unless you have vacation, of course). Check the Benefits Committee page on swapa.org for a more in-depth discussion and additional products related to this topic.

He also discusses LRO and the SWA Payroll audit process, answers a question about repositions, and explains when a reserve Pilot can be assigned a pairing instead of using a premium OT bidder.

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Transcript

This is the SWAPA Ride Report for Friday, August 16th, 2024. 

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

I’m your host, Tony Mulhare with SWAPA Communications. 

The buzz this week is all about going out on disability and managing your sick bank.  Previously, Chief Pilots had the discretion to work with a pilot going out on disability to use their Sick Bank as well as simply pulling trips that were already on their board with no pay.  That allowed pilots to save some of their sick bank if they didn’t want to burn it all. But, that practice has been upended by a certain Headquarters Chief pilot who is no longer allowing domicile Chiefs the discretion to pull trips with no pay. 

Ok, so what’s going on?  It’s all about vacation and vacation accrual.  Here’s the deal – vacation is expensive for the company and they are trying to reduce expenses .  And, your sick bank is directly related to your ability to accrue vacation for the next year while you are out on disability, so the company has an interest in reducing your sick bank as quickly as possible.  

Remember, that Per CBA Section 14.Bravo.6 a pilot only has to use 1 TFP per month to continue accruing vacation  while out on a long term leave of absence.  So You do need  Sick TFP in the bank even after your Loss of License has kicked in.  Ok, so how is this affecting pilots currently?  Let’s look at an example and dive in the weeds a little…

Let’s say Pilot X has an unfortunate skiing accident on the 6thh of the month and is looking at ACL surgery and a six-month long recovery time.  He had a block of time off at the beginning of the month to make room for his ski trip so he has all of his trips left on his board for the remainder of the month.  To make the math easy, let’s say it is a round 90 TFP worth of flying that will be pulled sick this month.  He calls his chief pilot and has the remainder of the month pulled with sick trips and is listed as a paper bidder for the following month.  This pilot would need a sick bank to cover the 90 TFP for this month’s trip pulls and say 50 TFP for month two until LOL kicks in if he is also using STD to help plus up the 2d month.  Then he would need 1 TFP for each additional month of his recovery for vacation accrual.  If he’s out just six months in total he would need another 4 TFP in the bank for a grand total of 144 Sick TFP.  

Now let’s say that same pilot has the same skiing accident on the 12th of the month – after the following month’s bid has been awarded.  Now his 2nd months' worth of trips would also be pulled off his board and out of his sick bank.  If that 2nd month’s worth of trips was also 90 TFP and if we do the same math as in the first example, his grand total that would be pulled from his sick bank would now be 184 TFP.  

This is where previous practice would have allowed a domicile chief pilot to pull some of those trips with no pay, reducing the total draw from the sick bank and allowing said pilot to better meter out his sick bank, depending on his or her situation…  If this same pilot started this situation with just 180 TFP in his sick bank then he would not have the 4 TFP to use to accrue vacation during his last 4 months of recovery from surgery, meaning he would lose out on one third of next year’s vacation, at least a week for most of us.   

So what are you to do if you find yourself in that situation?  Here are a few strategies to consider: 

1. Trade vacation into one of the months that you think you will be out on disability.  While this might not help with the initial trip drop, using Vacation does earn sick trips and this might help you extend the period that you can be out and still accrue vacation for the following year.
2. Use TTGA and ELITT to reduce your current and/or next month TFP total to reduce your sick bank draw, especially if you have STD coverage to help with the pay difference.
3. Make sure you let your Chief pilot know that you will be out on disability for the following month before 1200 Herb on the 9th to avoid being awarded a schedule that will be pulled with sick trips. As a general rule,  DO NOT BID for a month that you do not plan on flying in. There’s one caveat here and that is unless you have vacation.  In that case, make sure you are on a medical leave and you are a paper bidder and then bid for vacation and vacation overlap.

As you contemplate what the magic number of sick TFP you need in your bank, keep in mind that if this pilot comes back off of disability and then has any other issue, that pilot would have to use sick TFP to cover the ensuing 60 day period before Loss of License would begin again.  Admittedly, there were a lot of numbers here, so I'd recommend taking a look at the transcript to make sure you grasp the dollars and sense - I know I will!"  

The benefit teams speaks to every single pilot that goes out on disability.  They passed along that every pilot that has a lot of sick time is happy with their financial situation for both  the short and the long term.  Every pilot that has less than 200 is much more stressed.  The more sick time you have the more money you will make when you are out on disability and for a longer amount of time. They have some neat graphics that sum this discussion up on swapa.org.  Every situation is different.  We each have a different amount in our sick bank and each pilot’s medical situation is unique.  Each of our financial situations is also unique.  What works for you may not work as well for someone else.  Brent Wiesner and Tony Capparella would be my first call if I get hurt or lose my medical for any reason.

Moving on to some commonly asked questions that our Contract Admin staff fielded recently:

First up, a pilot writes: “ I bid premium for a trip, but they gave it to a reserve.  Can they do that? “

Yes they can, not all premium bids must be awarded before a reserve is used. If there is less than 2 hours from RAP to report, if Scheduling is going to split the trip or import it to another base, then they must offer it and award a premium bidder first.  However, in all other cases they can award it to a reserve instead of a premium bidder.  This language lives in Section 13.Alpha.

 Another interesting situation:  I pulled up to my gate, but had to stop short, then they towedme in. Should I get reposition pay for that? 

No, a reposition is when a pilot is asked to reposition a plane from one area to another. CBA Section 2.Victor.2 states “Any on-duty Pilot who complies with a request to perform an aircraft reposition (excluding charters) will be compensated an override of one (1) TFP.” If you are still bringing the plane into a gate, that is not a reposition, but a completion of that flight.  

 Next up : I called scheduling to do a Jetway trade the night before, but they said I had to be at the airport, are they correct? 

Yes, a Jetway trade is made between two pilots while at the airport. The CBA definition is “93. Jetway Trade: A Pilot-to-Pilot trade or giveaway of flying done in person at the airport prior to aircraft departure via a phone call to Crew Scheduling.”  If you are trading or accepting legs the day before, you should be able to in TT/GA.  

And finally, this one we see a lot and is a good reminder to wait until the following month for the audit process to be complete before you contact contract admin for LRO and GTO questions

 Here’s the question: My trip did not have any changes, so it is not marked Audit Needed. But I think I should get LRO for my last leg coming in over 2 hours late.  Do I need to have them put on Audit Needed? 

No, that process happens automatically.  Until they get all programming done for the new overrides, LRO is being caught at the beginning of the next month when payroll runs a close out process that looks for that.  They also look for GTO from report time to first push and GTO that has a HTL line on your trip for a dayroom.  We have seen them usually run this around the 7th of the following month. If you don’t see it on your payroll report by the 10th of next month, please call payroll or let Contract Admin know to get it corrected.  But again, the volume of calls on this are very high.  Please give this process time to run in the beginning of the month after your trip before calling in.

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 August 30th , 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.