Rhino Driver

Our FA's have several domiciles that are not DAL domiciles. MCO, BOS, and TPA come to mind, however there are more. I believe they have to have at least 21 personnel that live in the area or have interest in the area. Essentially, they start and end their trips in, lets say Tampa. They have to cover each other for sick outs, personal drops, etc. You can't just call in sick and know you will be covered. It is essentially a mini-base. Someone else may elaborate further.

For us, I could see CVG becoming a virtual base. There are a ton of pilots that live in the area, but commute elsewhere. DAL will probably always have a large presence in CVG, but it may disappear as a domicile/hub. If you have enough players in the area and you run enough traffic through the airport, you could essentially just swap out your crews much like a traditional hub but without all the admin/maintenance/CPO resources required by a traditional hub and spoke airport.

newKnow

Speaking of bases: Has anyone heard how much DC-9 flying is supposed to go to ATL? Is ATL going to be a DC-9 base. If so, how big?

Thanks.

__________________
Choice is an illusion, between those with power, and those without.

rvr350

Funny! Last company i worked at, they toyed with the idea, but still decided to dump tons of money in hotels. (Maybe mgmt get to keep all the points But simply said, virtual basing means you'll sign-in to your assigned "virtual base", you'll begin/end your trip there, and you assume the responsibility to check your v-file when you pass thru your regular pilot hub.

It probably would save some hotel costs, but from a scheduling standpoint, it could be a nightmare in case of IROP or lack of reserve coverage. We could definitely use DFW/MCO/BOS as virtual bases.

Dash8widget

I "choose" to commute though I am based in a city that I wouldn't mind living in (SLC). I can't sell my house for what I owe on it, so I "choose" to keep making my payments instead of "choosing" foreclosure. Of course, if I did "choose" to loose my house then I could move to my base and not commute - but I'm junior and with the upcoming Airbus for MD swap I would probably have to move again to not be a commuter. Some "choice" eh?

By the way, I'm not bitter - I like where I work and I know that the current situation isn't permanent. But to say that commuters are commuters simply by choice doesn't tell the whole story in today's world.

acl65pilot

Enough to make AAI squirm.

RockyBoy

I saw a study that JetBlue did on virtual basing and if you have more than about 40 hotel rooms per night at any particular city, virtual basing could save some serious money. The biggest issue is you need to have a large enough "pool" of local people to make the base work. Basically, everyone who elects to be in the virtual base will get a schedule and also have to cover so many days of SC reserve. In the past, virtual bases were very difficult to manage, but apparently with the advent of PBS and more powerful computers, it should be a simple thing to do that will save the company alot of cash on hotel, transportation, and perdiem costs.

Nosmo King

I opposed virtual basing on many occasions as a rep. To me its a staffing issue and a nightmare to get the language written correctly to avoid getting abused by scheduling.

For starters, no virtual basing in an existing domicile. Example - no virtual SLC A320 base.
No virtual basing outside the CONUS. Do you really want to see a virtual base in NRT or AMS? Helping the company is one thing, helping the company by reducing their deadhead penalty time is a huge staffing issue on international. Need to make sure that virtual base is staffed normally under the formula for schedule holders and reserve needs. None of this no reserve cover it on your own crap.

A previous proposal had virtual bases being BID for every month. If you were lucky enough to hold it and a schedule, they wanted you to commute/sign-in in one day early and sit one day of Reserve without pay.

Lots of bad things can happen with virtual basing and some nice lifestyle changes can happen for a small number of pilots.

Personally, I commute a long distance. I don't enjoy it, but its my choice. I'd rather not lose jobs to a poorly written agreement just to have virtual basing.

For those that like the idea, Greg Baden ws always a big supporter of "Satellite Bases."

My response is - Do you support virtual basing if it causes a pilot surplus or creates a reduced number of pilots required in certain categories (like 777A or 765A)?

Nosmo King

Can anyone give me the PWA references for Category Freezes and under what circumstances you can break them?

Looking for - Initial Captain upgrade exemption, new or re-established category and upgrade to higher paying position (not necessarily captain).

Thanks.

Cycle Pilot

Is anybody getting REALLY tired of constantly getting inadvertently logged out of Deltanet? I can't be logged on for more than 5-7 minutes and then the server logs me out. At first, I thought it might be on my end, but I talked to I.T. yesterday and they told me it's a systemwide problem. They also have no idea when the problem will be fixed. For me, the problem has already been going on for the past couple of weeks.

Delta I.T. - "Bringing you yesterday's technology tomorrow!"

NuGuy

Heyas,

I agree with Nosmo. Virtual basing is a scheduling nightmare. It MAY work with FAs and places like SWA because everyone can fly anything that parks at the gate. At a place like DAL, there are too many sub-sets of pilots. Could you imagine trying to call around to cover a trip because you're sick?

I would, however, endorse a move where you could swap out your trip on a leg-by-leg basis. Doing the last turn through home? No problem...swap out with a guy going to work, and call it done.

Nu