Q: Can you explain the New Year’s Holiday? It doesn’t seem like a loss or a gain. Did we try to get additional holidays?
We did try for additional holidays – we proposed a lot of holidays. At the end of the day, the overall increase in Flight Attendant cost is 46% with everything included. We were not able to make additional holidays work within the framework of the deal.
The New Year Holiday idea was to make the existing holiday more efficient for Flight Attendants. Some may feel it is a loss, but the thought process is – more Flight Attendants prefer to be off the morning of New Year’s Day and/or the night of New Year’s Eve. Sliding the 24 hour holiday period would capture that preference.
Additionally, it may be easier to achieve the newly added Holiday RON pay – if a Flight Attendant reports early on New Year’s Eve, starts their layover prior to 1400, and doesn’t report until after 1400 on New Year’s Day – they will receive 4 TFP in addition to their 4 TFP for the EOR.