Originally Posted by
joseolay
Trips are simply a combination of airplane RONs and round trips. There is a ratio between the two. If there was no RONs, we would only have day trips. The RONs require the company to build multi day trips. We used to have lines of only high speeds(high speed is a RON). They stop building the high speed lines and high speeds are rare now.
No high speeds means they pack those RONs into trips and is why the one days trips went away and we mostly have four days, it's the ratio between round trips and RONs.
It's not rocket science and ALPA building pairings is not going to change much. The flying we get assigned by AA is what mostly dictates our trip efficiency. ALPA building trips and work rule improvements might have a small impact and improvement in efficiency but it's not going to significantly change anything like some people on here are claiming.
The only way to guarantee more 1-3 day trips is contractual language requiring the company to build and maintain a specified ratio of those trips, something I doubt our union is pushing for.
I would agree with you that ALPA building trips is probably not going to move the needle a huge amount, unless the Crew Planning department is really as inept as certain comments on compass cards would make it seem. Having spent a fair amount of time in Jim S's office, he's smarter than a lot of people give him credit for.
What I am interested to see is how having a new VP of Planning and Efficency (or whatever his title is) affects us before ALPA gets their hands on the pairing generator.