Originally Posted by
Pineapple Guy
scambo1, I complained about that for 20+ years. Having said that, if there's one thing I've learned the past few years, it is that solutions that appear to be so obvious, really aren't. Or they would have been instituted by now.
Regarding productivity -- I think the real issue is pilots and Delta define productivity differently. We define it as flight pay per hours away from home; whereas they define it as flight pay per block hour. So sit arounds and 30 hour layovers generally cost them nothing, but cost us a lot. We need work rules that balance those two different goals. And that's why things like the Average Daily Guarantee were implemented last contract. It's less than we wanted to get, but more than Delta wanted to give.
I do think it is almost as simple as that. However, I agree with your definitions of productivity wrt pilots and the company. I think dal likes an amount of nonproductivity and I think they like reroute flexibility.
Also, if crews were paired together with their planes, there wouldn't be a need for synthetic credit. A domestic guy would be flying a hard 6 plus hours, with the only thrash being if the plane was hard broken. As it is now, we are talking about synthetic credit and deadheading, but the nonproductivity issues really only show themselves when transiting a "base."