The SWAPA Ride Report: International Conference of Pilot Unions, Scheduling and OPS Day, and Contract Q&A

In this week’s edition, Matt McCants from the Communications Committee gives a recap of this past week’s events at the International Conference of Pilot Unions and the coming comm products from the panels you may have seen on social media. This will include a SWAPA Number episode featuring multiple pilot union presidents, and an article we will release next week. 

There is also some gouge on the scheduling changes you’ll see starting in November, as well as some quick reminders about OPS day and your Training Golden Days Off (TGDOs). The contract Q&A this week covers flight cancellations during a commute, inconvenient van times, and some reminders about blank line bidding and Golden Days Off (GDOs).  

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Transcript

This is the SWAPA Ride Report for Friday, October 25th, 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.  

So this week, SWAPA Hosted the International Conference of Pilot Unions here in Dallas. Guests included the Director of Medical Specialties Division at the FAA, presidents from Net Jets Association of Shared Aircraft Pilots, the Allied Pilots Association, local 2750 of the International Aviation Professionals, and Wall Street analysts of the aviation industry. These panels are designed to help problem solve in the training, safety, and negotiation worlds, and explore where we need to go in some less travelled fields like AI. We’ll have the takeaways for your viewing pleasure next week, as well as a SWAPA Number podcast featuring those association presidents.      

A quick touch and go on all things ops day - The initial communication from the company indicated they would not place Ops Day in a month where you had vacation.  They have since revised that to indicate that if your month has a mix of vacation and pairings, they may pull a pairing for Ops Day.  So, per section 9.A, TGDOs have to be in by the 11th of each month, and this is your reminder to use those accordingly. Take a look back at Tuesday’s Snapshot for some more Ops Day resources.  

On the Scheduling side of the house, 12 hour RAPs start on November 1st, so if you still have a 14 hour RAP anywhere in November, please contact Scheduling to have it adjusted.  Remember, though, that this is when you are contactable. You still can be assigned for duties up to 15 hours from RAP start.  The change was designed to keep you from needing to answer your phone when there wasn’t a possibility of being used that day. Additional provisions for premium pay for the first duty period for short notice callouts make it lucrative for Reserves to still check their schedules even if not officially contactable.  SWAPA SAC is still working closely with multiple product owners and developers in Technology and Flight Ops... and we’ll have more intel soon on the implementation of the additional work rules surrounding duty and rest, when being reassigned. 

No Ride Report is complete without some Q & A from Contract Admin, so let’s take a look this week’s batch, starting with some commuter protection language. 

I had my commute deadhead cancel while trying to get to Orlando during the hurricane. I had to meet up with my pairing later downline, am I pay protected for all of it?  

So you could be.  There is new language in the CBA concerning commute issues to a station that has had a large number of cancellations. To sum up 12.H.7, it states that a pilot that could have been legal and available to fly one or more scheduled flights, or perform reserve duty, will be pay protected if there was a cancellation of 70% or more of SWA flights going into the station they were trying to commute to.  There is a form in Comply365 >My Forms >Flight Ops >Commuter Pay Protection Form that you can fill out and submit to the company.  You will need your PNR of the commute deadhead that cancelled.  If 70% of SWA flights were cancelled within 2 hours of the scheduled arrival time of your flight, you will be pay protected for the trip.  Again, that is 70% of all SWA flights going to the station where you were going to start your trip, not from the station you are departing from.    

Onto a bidding question:  

I am bidding for Blank Lines, and there are a lot of pilots junior that are bidding ahead of me in the 2nd round.  Is this an error?  

Let’s start with the CBA language from 9.I.10, which states, with reference to blank lines:  

Pilots will bid blank lines based on the line number awarded in the first- round bid. The Pilot awarded the lowest line number in the first-round bid will be the senior bidder in the second round regardless of actual seniority. 

This means that the order you bid your blank lines in the first-round matters!  The seniority for second-round (blank line) bidding is based on the blank line number, with the lowest numbered line being the highest in bidding seniority. Therefore, if you did not bid the blank lines in order starting from the lowest numbered to the highest, you may end up with a pilot junior to you having their bid executed before yours.     

How about a question about short notice open time? 

I tried to bid premium on a SNOT pairing and I couldn’t.  I thought we could always bid premium.  

So short notice open time (or SNOT) trips are put out for bidding as either straight or premium.  Your alerts, if set up, should show as “SNOT-S” for a straight bid only pairing or “SNOT-P” for a premium bid only pairing. If Scheduling has an available reserve and there is between 3 and a half hours to 2 hours to check-in, they must make a SNOT pairing, and they can designate it for straight bids only.  If they have a pairing in that same timeframe, but no reserves available, they must make it a premium pairing.  You can not bid straight for a premium listed pairing, just as you can not bid premium on a straight SNOT pairing.    

Moving on, if you’ve ever had an early van, this might apply to you: 

I am on a duty hour paying day and the van time to the hotel will have me arrive 45 minutes early.  Scheduling won’t start my day early- is that legal?  

Correct, it is legal. Scheduling will not start a pilot’s day early for an early van time.  But you do have options to help prevent this.  CBA 16.F.6.a states:  

In the event that transportation to the airport does not or will not depart from the hotel in alignment with the required report and the Pilot is unable to adjust Company-provided transportation, the Pilot may obtain alternate transportation at the Company’s expense. 

If you cannot adjust the van time to the airport through the hotel or provided transportation service to something that makes more sense, you are able to acquire your own transportation.  You can call the CHAT team to try and set up a LYFT for you, but you can also obtain the rideshare on your own and submit for reimbursement.   

Lastly, GDOs are a popular topic these days, and this pilot added a golden day off to their board before the line was awarded.  They didn’t pull the pairing that was awarded over it.  Should the GDO have protected the pilot from that pairing?  

In short, no. A GDO will protect you from a JA, if possible, for a pairing that is already on your board.  If you bid a line, or were awarded an open time pairing or reserve block over your GDO, that will not remove the pairing, as it is considered pilot created. You can still remove the GDO up to 2359 central time 2 days prior per CBA 12.P.11.f , giving you a chance to use it still in the future. Keep in mind this removal process still needs to be done manually over the phone with scheduling until it is automated in CWA.  

That wraps up the headlines and Q&A for 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 November 8th, 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.