EAS Pilots,
The biggest problem with Astro is that it makes no exceptions or predictions for human factors such as fatigue, not even obvious, common sense ones. Take a good look at their website
The Optimal Path and you will see that nowhere in it is pilot fatigue even mentioned. Astro could work great if it had a pilot fatigue prevention and recognition subroutine embedded in it, like Jeppesen's CrewAlert Pro app for the iPad
Articles - Jeppesen Introduces CrewAlert Pro for iPad to Manage Fatigue Risk for Airline Crew , but it does not even consider it. Only FAA regulatory compliance is considered in something that software engineers don't seem to understand: You can be legal time-wise, but still not safe to fly. Much like NASA's German scientists in the space program who caused the Astronauts to threaten to walk out if the space capsules were not fitted with a porthole and given autonomous control. Unfortunately, the Cosmonauts could not make the same stand and they were simply remote controlled guinea pigs in the early stages of their space program with much heavier losses than NASA's. Astro, as it stands, would be great for robots flying drones.
When Astro became "self aware" at the Fractional Avantair (Yes, I'm referencing the pariah, human-hating program Skynet from the Terminator movie series), conditions for pilots degraded immediately. 4-5 legs per day became 6, sometimes 8 legs a day. VNR's top whiz kid Director of IT sold other top management there on how they could do more with less, typically a noble cause, but not when it conflicts with safety and customer service. They were addicted to the "OPTIMIZE" button like a test monkey addicted to crack cocaine, so much so that schedules would change 3-4 times from when pilots took off from their last leg. In addition to numerous schedule changes in flight with a call from Center, the schedule would change numerous times overnight forcing the pilots on a short layover to do rushed flight planning in order to make their new departure time or different destination.
With airplanes breaking or crews calling fatigue after numerous seemingly endless 14 hour, 7-8 leg duty days for 7 days straight, the QOL of an Avantair pilot was effectively over other than the 7 on/7 off schedule which temporarily went to a forced 8/6. When a friend of mine asked a Flight Scheduler "So if Astro told y'all to jump off a cliff, would you do it?", they told him that upper management was using Astro not for the customer's behalf, but for their bonuses based on Utility. Go on the Avantair owners forum and ask them what they thought of Astro and you will find that they hated it as much as the pilots as they got optimized right into a delay or cancellation due to crew duty time burn out.
Finally, in what was the most maddening part of Astro for VNR pilots, was Astro's lack of "common sense". One VNR crew would be arriving at the hotel in, let's say ASE, TEB, wherever, after 4 straight days on 14 hour duty days, fighting 10-24 issues all along, and had another 12 plus duty day in the next morning after another minimum rest night. There, they meet another VNR crew at the hotel restaurant (since they didn't have time to eat anywhere else), who has been sitting around at the hotel for last 3 days covering a perfectly good aircraft and were on hotel standby the next day. When both crews agreed to the unfairness of this stupidity and called OCC to swap schedules, they would be told "well, that's what Astro says to do... and during this break-in period (which I heard never ended), we are letting Astro make ALL decisions, good, bad, and indifferent". Therefore, all decisions became based on "UTILITY". After a fatigue call from the abused and battered crew, the OPTIMIZE button was pushed again and commom sense took over allowing the well-rested crew to fly instead. But it took the stalwart pilots rising up against the Astro abuse, with tacit Chief Pilot approval, through the use of fatigue calls and a Teamster Drive to get management to agree to go easy on Astro and work on reducing the fatiguing schedules. I fear about what would happen at an airline where pilots don't stand up to Astro, but really it is just another tool. The only question is just how far EAS management will allow this Astro tool to push its pilots. The answer will say a lot about them and I hope its good.
Good luck and fly safe and rested..