Originally Posted by
PilotFrog
This trend to more and more 5 days as highlighted in the scheduling alert sucks. No matter how you slice it, we are paying for that 5:15 guarantee.
Pilot Frog,
You are correct in that we are
"paying" for the 5:15 guarantee but remember we are also getting
"paid" for the 5:15 guarantee.
There are a lot of factors that are leading to the 5 day trips. Most are coincident with good times: Hiring, more block hours, pilot retirements etc. Also, many commuters want them. I think that there is some affect from the 5:15 but it is not the main driver of the 5 day trips.
I don't think you would rather go back to the days of 5:15 per duty period - in other words the three day 10:30 trips- would you? Just looking at pay hours (not pay-rates) those trips recently increased from:
10:30 (5:15 duty period average)
13:30 (4:30 ADG)
15:45 ( current 5:15 ADG)
That is huge! Finally I will say all of these changes affect each category differently. If you already had good trips - maybe your trip mix has in fact deteriorated.
Or in the case of LAX 73N, proudly known to have had the worst bid package in the system with tons of the former 3 day 10:30 trips and plenty of former 4 day 17-19 hour trips we are pretty happy with the 5:15.
At one time our bid package was 33% 4 day red-eyes that paid 17-20 hours.
We had one trip that was in open time almost every single day in October and now you only see it occasionally. That is because of the 5:15.
Scoop - just my 2 cents.