Originally Posted by Roadkill

Concur. When someone posts the old "If you don't like it why don't you just leave?", it almost always pushes me away from whatever they are supporting. Dissent is good. Questioning and striving for improvement is good.

I've read all the TA, and have access to the published numbers, and have a degree in probability and statistics, and another in math. And I will tell you that I almost UNIVERSALLY DISAGREE with the interpretations on the numbers and usage that are posted by johnso, as well as sailingfun and slowplay. While I OFTEN agree with much of the content and almost always am glad to READ what sailing and slow post. However, in my opinion their interpretation of the statistics is almost always wrong and not properly characterized. Even when I might agree that the actual number itself is correct, how they interpret what that number means is wrong.

Average SC sat is an example. The company is not forced to increase pilot staffing on almost ANY average, it is in fact when operations bump up against the outliers of the data that flights are cancelled. It is the NON-AVERAGE high SC use data points in various months and various fleets that force increased staffing. When the company finds a way to spread unused pilot capacity from a low-average area into a high-use area, such as making critical months 1 day shorter, that is when the need for additional pilots is terminated.

By quoting averages, particularly low ones and in areas where we absolutely know that seniority ensures that junior pilots don't see "average" use because they don't have the ability to successfully bid in such a way that they are unused, these guys are like magicians moving your eye away from the REAL critical areas and fooling you with meaningless data that just SOUNDS applicable.

Staffing problems in a scenario where under-staffing and thus cancellation of operations is not an allowable option are driven by "limiting factors" which exist on the outlying edges a standard dev out or so on the applicable probability curves. These "limfacs" are usually caused by usage limitations that SOUND like they won't generally apply (such as 7 SC or ALV +15), and in fact generally WON'T be seen by most pilots... but they are nevertheless the critical limfac that is driving the staffing decision.