mcbush

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought they were both ALPA carriers, and doesn't current ALPA policy prevent stapling? Edit to add: Googled it. Apparently "no stapling" isn't just ALPA policy, but it was also made into federal law in 2007 after the AA-TWA debacle. Looks like the law requires that carriers "make provisions for the integration of seniority lists in a fair and equitable manner," whatever that means. https://vlex.com/vid/seniority-integration-mccaskill-bond-statute-351067646

40% 737 FO here. I flew two legs this week and made 28:15 (all at straight time, no premium). These are good times in a good job and I'm trying to enjoy/appreciate every minute of it. The only thing I can add to the above discussion is the importance of knowing your contract. It's insane how many guys I fly with that honestly have no idea how we get paid. Gotta understand the rules of the game in order to make them work for you.

I was never an IP but did that drive a good amount as a student. Nothing wrong with it per se, but for me personally it's farther than I'd want to have to drive every day. But if you don't mind the distance, I don't think there's any other serious downside in terms of major city traffic, infrastructure, etc.

You're right, bad phrasing on my part. I don't want to air this guy's dirty laundry too much, but the early rotation itself wasn't discussed nearly as much as the bad TOLD or the early retraction of the gear. Suffice to say the board "acquitted" him (or whatever) of a lack of proficiency related to bad T/O data since he just did what everyone else did, but did find that he exhibited poor judgment in raising the gear before he was safely climbing away.

Never heard Baltimore described as fancy before...

Yep, here's the AIB report from that one: https://www.pacaf.af.mil/Portals/6/180413-PACAF-JB Elmendorf-Richardson-Alaska-AIB NARRATIVE REPORT.pdf?ver=2018-11-15-200849-187 I never flew Raptors but somehow wound up on the FEB for the pilot involved. It mostly worked out okay for him because the error in his T/O TOLD came from a community-wide standard practice rather than anything he did wrong specifically. Given the procedures in place at the time, it was bound to happen to someone eventually at a high PA field... he was just the unlucky one.

Anybody know somebody who's done this? Never heard of it before, but from my two minutes of googling, it sounds like it could be either a really good or a really bad deal. Curious to hear experiences if anyone has any.

Correct, it was essentially mil leave on a day that otherwise would have been a day off, which then didn't meet their "day off" definition. In any case, I just talked to our head mil affairs guy, and based on his advice and experience, it sounds like this would be a losing battle and an unbelievable hassle to pursue, just like the first guy said. Going to wave the white flag on this one.

Looking for some thoughts about whether I should engage with my airline on a potential USERRA issue, or just let it go. I posted something similar on another forum but I'm sure we have more USERRA experience here. The crux of the situation is that our contract says you get additional pay if you pick up an assignment early on your first day of a reserve block. More specifically, it says you get the add pay if the early assignment is on the first day following a "day off," and then goes on to exclude mil leave from the definition of a day off. This led me to a situation where on day X, I had no obligation to the company and performed mil duty, and then picked up an early assignment the following morning on my first day back on reserve. Company says no soup for you... mil leave is not a "day off," and therefore you don't get the pay. My issue with that is that if I had done nothing on day X and that day had remained a true "day off," I'd be getting the pay... but because I performed military service, I lose the pay. To me, that concept runs afoul of USERRA. The relevant part of the law (38 USC 4311) says: "a person who is a member of... a uniformed service shall not be denied initial employment, reemployment, retention in employment, promotion, or any benefit of employment by an employer on the basis of that membership, application for membership, performance of service, application for service, or obligation." 38 USC 4303 defines a "benefit of employment" as: "the terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, including any advantage, profit, privilege, gain, status, account, or interest (including wages or salary for work performed) that accrues by reason of an employment contract..." I spoke with a mil affairs guy at our union, and he seemed to think that this would probably be a losing argument, and that it certainly wouldn't be worth the hassle in any case. He's probably right, at least on the second part. We're only talking about $200 here (at least this time), so it's not like my family is going to starve to death if I don't pursue it, although I'm sure there are others that would be impacted by the same thing over the years and maybe the cumulative effect is significant... who knows. I'm just not sure if the juice is worth the squeeze. Anyone have experience fighting a similar righteous crusade under USERRA? Any words of wisdom? Mostly just curious if y'all would dig in or just crack a beer and forget it.

What year group is the AD O-5 board this year, 2010?

Lump sum investing beats dollar cost averaging about two thirds of the time. There are a ton of studies on this... see, for example, this one from Vanguard. Let me ask you this: would you be willing to loan me money at 2.99% if I told you I were going to invest it in the broad market? If not, what interest rate would you charge me to make that risk/benefit math worth it to you? I understand that it depends on the length of the loan, but what's your ballpark?

Concur. If I were in my 20s, I would borrow infinite money at 3% to dump into index funds. Oversimplifying somewhat, but if you don't need the money any time soon, that's a damn good deal and a pretty safe bet. Over the past 100 years, the worst annualized return over any rolling 30-year period was 7.8%... (source)

As usual, luck and timing are everything, and there is no justice.

In theory, they should go in and give you points for each course once you've finished the entire program. I'm virtually certain that's true for courses you took in previous R/R years too. In practice, I finished ACSC in mid-Nov 2023 and don't have any points to show for it yet. Since it's only been 2 months and nothing happens fast around the ARC, I wouldn't find that weird at all... if nothing had happened up to this point. What is weird though, is that almost immediately after I finished the program, 5 of the courses I took (out of 15 or however many) did show up on my PCARS, but all of them are on the wrong dates and are apparently worth zero points. I sent them a ticket in myFSS asking about it, but of course haven't heard back. Bottom line at the bottom: might be possible depending on your R/R date, but you're gonna want to bang out these courses as fast as possible in order to leave yourself as much time as possible to hound the HR points nerds at the end. Worst case, they can probably credit them after your R/R year closes out and change your bad year to a good year, but I haven't pressed to test on that issue, so I'll defer to someone smarter than me.

Wasn't 4 the max? Or was there some secret HPO deal so the shiniest of pennies could go quicker than that?