Originally Posted by
B727DRVR
Out of curiosity, does anyone know why Atlas is the only company doing this whole imputed thing? I’m not aware of any other carrier doing this.
There is a lot of history to the Atlas gateway system, but in the end it simply boils down to Atlas having
both bases and travel to and from the pilot's actual home. So the IRS sees travel between the home and the assigned base as being a benefit.
In the past airlines have avoided this by having either real home basing or by declaring the crew base as being in some nowhere location that no one ever touches.
And a good chunk of the Atlas crews do in fact live in base, and some [but only some] of the Atlas flying is fairly firm and is scheduled around the base system. Both of those things complicate the picture further.
What Atlas needs is a hybrid system. Default being home basing, with hard bases/flying scheduled in the hard bases for those who want that. And of course some minor incentive to nudge pilots to bid the hard bases if that works for them. But that kind of change is not going to happen in the current Atlas environment.