I understand and I completely get that the cost per the trip would be more expensive with 3 pilots. I don't dispute that on a leg by leg basis. But I think we would need fewer Captains in the month to cover the trips under the TA then we do now.
Now forgive me, I went off and built a 5th line in the first "present way" so I didn't mean for it to look like a real PBS award. I just had to move some stuff around. See notes below.
[Note, this is as big as I could get it, you need CTRL+ and CTRL- to zoom in and out on your browser, if you have Apple, I have no idea how your overly expensive computer works
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Now I am going to put my management hat on, which is appropriate, when I log onto Deltanet it goes to... Corporate. So now I have gravitas.
The way I see it, if I had to cover 1 single ATL-SFO-ATL trip where the airplane flew out and then flew right back 1 hour later, I would have 290 hours of block to cover.
But if I am constrained by the fact that under the PWA I cannot return those pilots (and let's say I have no other flights that day) then I have to give them a 24 hour overnight and make this a 3 day trip worth 13.30. By my estimation I would need 5 As and 5 Bs to cover it for the month and I still have a lot of open time to cover. If the contract allowed me to pay straight time on those open time trips this whole thing costs be $144K before overnight expenses.
If I had to GS those open time trips I pay out $187K.
If I could make them bring it right back then it's a turn worth 10.30. Now the trick is I have to pay for a 3rd FO. But under this scenario I only need 4 As and 8 Bs and the good thing is from my management hat on perspective I only have 1 trip in open time.
Cost to me $160K. If I GS that one trip $170K.
So it's cheaper to run it under the PWA and I only need 10 pilots under the PWA. Under the TA I would need 12 pilots and it costs more. That's what seems like the win.
Except that's 1 fewer A. Multiply this over 7 routes per day with the same constraints and now I go from needing 40 As under the PWA to 29 As under the TA, or 80 pilots vs 87.
Now multiply this out and yea, it's 12% more expensive to run it with the TA than PWA and you saved on costs. But to me we've lost Captain positions. I'm not sure if that's a win but I'm open to changing my mind that it's a win if the TA is very restrictive but even then, it's eh. Although that TA schedule looks appetizing.
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Also, I do wonder if the modification to get a 40 degrees of pitch and a spongebob in would be easier than losing 2 FC seats.