Originally Posted by
Skyykingg
A couple people have commented on this. For a outsider looking in I’m a bit confused. Could someone shed some light on what exactly is happening? I plan on coming here and living in base. What is the problem with the lines?
Quite simply, lines consisting of only 4-day trips will require a pilot to be away from home between around 320 and 400 hours a month. If some lines were built with 1-3 day trips, the total amount of time a pilot would have to be away from home in a month would drop, and could be below 200 hours a month (if the line consisted completely of one and two day trips).
If you're single, no kids, and have no life where you live, then 4-day trips are fine. If you have to get on an airplane to commute to work because you don't live in your home base, 4-day trips are great, because they reduce the hassle of commuting.
If you have a family, a home, a business that allows you to work for what PSA pays, or other reasons to be at home, 4-day trips are sub-optimal. You'd likely prefer to come to work in the morning, and go home in the late afternoon, spending your night in your home with your family, like normal people.
Some people focus on how many days off they get, but I don't think that's the ideal metric. The ideal metric, in my opinion, is time away from base, and that amount should be the minimum possible.
From this viewpoint, four 1-day trips are far preferable to one 4-day trip. A 4-day trip will run around 84 hours away from base, for about 20 hours of pay. Four 1-day trips could run 40 hours or less away from base, for that same 20 hours of pay.
Even two 2-day trips will run about 70 hours away from base, with 20 hours of pay...and they'll allow someone who lives in domicile a night at home with their family.
We used to have a variety of these trips at PSA. For a while now, we haven't, because the company quit building them. You can occasionally pick up or trade into a trip that is shorter than four days in length, but that's because the original 4-day trip the company built got broken up for training, vacation, etc.
These shorter trips will disappear completely if the company gets their wish with PBS, and they continue to only build 4-day trips to begin with.
So, if you live where you are based, would you rather be at work 200 hours a month, or 400? You'll get paid the same, regardless.