The October Interim Vacation Bidding Period opened on October 1st at 0800 Central time and was scheduled to close on October 8th at 0800 Central Time. 

Late today a problem was identified with the automation that was to have captured all of the primary vacation periods that were vacated by those participating in the Early Our Program.  While the program did capture all of the primary vacation periods for those who "retired", it did not capture all of the vacation periods for those who "resigned."  As a result of our inquiry, the company has identified this discrepancy and has today revised the vacation allocations for the system to include these unintentionally missed allocations.

In order to ensure an additional period of time for a review of the revised allocations by Flight Attendants and to submit revised bids, AFA has advocated for the company to delay the closing of Interim Vacation bids by 24 hours.  As a result of our advocacy, Interim Vacation Bidding for the system will now close at 0800 on Tuesday, October 9, 2012.

The company will update the VACBID screens with any vacation changes by October 15th, in time for the close of bids for the November schedule month on October 18, 2012.  This is the last Interim Vacation Bid period for this year.

The applicable interim bidding vacation rules are:

• Interim Bids must be submitted via SkyNet.
• Flight Attendants with November vacations may only trade for open vacation periods within the month of November.
• Flight Attendants with December vacations may trade for open vacation periods in November or December, including overlapping vacation periods subject to the applicable rules when crossing months – 14, 15, 16 day vacation periods requires four (4) full days in both months while a 17 day vacation requires a minimum of seven (7) full days in each month.  In either case, partial days cannot be counted as a full day for the purpose of crossing months.