Columbia

How does one trip park? Gotta get me some of that!

finis72

In Sept on 777A worst day for reserves is 7 required 38 available, best day is 52 avail 7 req. You can blame trip parking all you want but we are over manned on the 777 and that"s a fact. We have 6 departures on most days out of ATL, ya"ll do the math.

forgot to bid

But how many trips are 4 man on the 777? If all of them were, and they're not, but if they were then would that be 52/2 is how many crews are available that day? Plus if that 1 guy gets called out a 9 day trip then for the next 9 days one pilot is not available whereas a domestic trip the 1 pilot called out may only be gone today, or on a 2 day and so on. I think you can just throw people into the 88 because it's lower paying but I doubt the company readily lets people move into the higher paying positions until they absolutely have to. To me you've got to carry a lot of fat to properly staff the international categories because a snafu in manning for a day could lead to a grounded flight and a grounded return flight and all the passengers and freight that never went to where it was supposed to go.

Those categories are fatter imho but also limited to near ALV pay.

I've just got a hunch and given that DALPA guys seem to be against this as well, that trip parking eliminates seats.

I just think for every 1 trip a person picks up a 30 hour trip over the ALV+15 limit on a trip park then thats 3/7ths of a pilot not needed.

FWIW, I can see where this is a bigger deal on the international categories than domestic but it was on the domestic MD88 side listening to a Captain talk about his friend doing it gleefully on the 88 where I first learned about it.

tsquare

I'm guessing that that is part of the reason for the 15 displacements on the AE...


Ya'll STILL want this seat/weight/speed pay formula? Really?

forgot to bid

From my best estimates, with just shy of 10,800 pilots flying the line and given their average seniority multiplied by the pay tables with some assumptions thrown in for benefits and employment costs and so forth I think we're spending just shy of $1.7B on the pilot group.

If we didn't change the ALVs (using Sep 11 numbers) and went to SWA=DC9 pay you're looking at $800M cost increase. Or an increase of $138K average pilot pay (not including benefits, employment costs) to $208K or a $70K increase.

I'm assuming.

iaflyer

Just a note, if you're trying to "E-Verify" your citizenship in Self-Service, the "Confirm" button didn't seem to work in Firefox. Went into Internet Explorer and it worked fine.

georgetg

Not sure I agree.
It's right there in plain sight (and we ought to use the data):


2010 Production
(for every dollar spent on pilot pay, heres how many ASMs were produced)

DAL 93.2 $/ASM
SWA 70.6 $/ASM

That means SWA got 32% fewer ASMs from every dollar of pilot pay than Delta did in 2010.

-SWA doesn't have augmented crews
-SWA doesn't make the same contributions
-SWA made lots of money

Clearly, pilot pay isn't the factor to running a highly profitable company.
But it can be an anchor on a poorly run company.

let's see if I can make my point using some other numbers:

AS 83 $/ASM
AMR 86.4 $/ASM

Both American and Alaska show relatively low production on the bottom scale of their respective peer groups. Yet, you would never know one of these is making record profits and the other near bankruptcy looking at these numbers.

My take -- this is a good metric.
"The street" looks at metrics like ASM CASM and RASM to determine the efficiency and production of an airline.

Dollars spent/ASM on pilot compensation directly affect RASM a key metric measuring an airlines productivity.


Cheers
George

newKnow

Question from a guy that is obviously new to "the game":

What is trip parking?

__________________
In fact, you're probably seeing double... I have two guns. One for each of you.

finis72

FTB, the required number on the reserve available takes into account that most of our trips are augmented crews. I'm in my 6th year on the 777 and I have never trip parked but I know some are doing it. I really don't think trip parking is a factor on this jet because on the Capt side there are very few trips that appear on open time,most days there are zero. I would like to see some avenue that would allow our pilots to pick up to the monthly max but I also realize that people in he'll want ice water.

acl65pilot

That right there is a jobs killer. Another thing that many airlines would love to have. You think our Capt staffing is low now, just imagine what it would look like with that.

How do we see the SWA and SWAPA model as the way to go?