Originally Posted by
AZFlyer
What I should have asked was: Do the scheduled dh's affect the number of scheduled days off per month compared to a guy who doesn't have to do any commuting at all?
If you have to be in position 8-12 hours or whatever prior to your operating leg, my reading of this is that you are losing days off/time off at home just the same as a typical pax carrier guy would who is commuting in for his trip, but the upside with the FX system is that you're not sweating it out hoping for a free seat on board your commuting flight.
Am I in the ballpark now?
I guess you're in the ball park. There are some nuances to the various scenarios, but there are times the DH trips have the potential to get you some extra days off. But the main thing to correct you on is that you're usually not
losing days off with the DH trips.
The footprint of the DH trips include the DH and the time required to be in position prior to operating. Look at that time period like the first leg of a trip beginning in domicile through the end of the first layover. You're just not operating the first leg (and if you live where the trip deadheads to, you're already at the layover). So if your schedule was Mon-Sat, week on/week off for a month, you'd have two 6-day trips (12 days of work) scheduled that month. Say the two trips were identical with a front AND back deadhead. If you lived in the city you were scheduled to DH to Monday morning and DH from Saturday night, then you would have most of Monday off before going in that night and be home Saturday morning with no further duties. Are those bookend days technically "days off"? I guess it depends on you. Most guys will be trying to bank some sleep before going in Monday night and will probably be messed up most of Saturday coming off a week of nights. But, you're home, getting paid. So, some might say they only worked 8 of the 12 scheduled work days, since they were home most of Mon/Sat for each trip. On your calendar, the trip will go from early Monday to late Saturday, so you decide.
If you're deadheading to/from another city with the same schedule, you're correct. You're probably not getting extra days off. However, you're not losing scheduled days off either. You're getting into position on the days you're actually scheduled to work rather than using real days off. So, the above scenario would still result in 12 days of work with little to no time away from home that isn't true paid work time.
Commuting to MEM to start a non-DH trip may require burning part of a true day off, unpaid, the day before the trip starts just like a pax guy on a non-commutable trip. Clear as mud?