Originally Posted by
Tyrion
The mini-base idea is pretty dumb in my not so humble opinion. It is a lot of changes for the benefit of very few people. The companies that do it are doing it for the company's benefit. Republic and PSA have a bit of an advantage in that they can lock down a majority of the flying into those bases. It saves the company hotel costs by calling those places bases. Sure, they probably have a handful of lifers filling those seats in PIT, DAY, IND, but pilots are just as likely to avoid Republic if it means 2 leg commuting as they are likely to find somebody living in those bases.
The other issue is that our pilot group is pretty fluid, and the largest demographic are pilots living in Texas joining The Envoy to eventually be AA DFW based. Outstation pilots are more likely to be trying to get out of The Envoy by any means available, and more likely to be high turnover as they are not tied to the DFW dream.
Let's face it... management can't even make small changes to reserve scheduling to benefit commuters. About a third of the pilots at The Envoy are on reserve, so it's not a small group. Management doesn't seem to have any incentive to build efficient lines. They don't seem to care about hotel costs as there are always several crews at each hotel, when many of those midday check-ins could be turns and more days off. If anything, the company likes to have as many pilots available to reassign as possible, so we get <3 hour days and lost days, and barely more than min days off.
Our reason to exist is simply to fly the short legs and keep the flights on time. Our lack of pay protections and soft pay make us a very cheap pilot group compared to our peers.
I can agree with a lot of this, however more than half our pilot group are commuters that have no intention of going to Dallas. AA has decent bases covering most key places so many are waiting to flow and end up in one of them. I get the point about Dallas, but it certainly isnt the end all be all for everyone.
You hit the nail on the head with scheduling though. They seem to have an unnatural fear of running out of pilots. The entire system doesn't make sense to me, but I am sure they have their reasons, rational or not.
In terms of the schedule and building lines, this is complicated. I mean we get what we get from AA and a computer does a bunch of simulations to determine the best lines. Who determines what is best varies I am sure, but the company seems happy with the results so we are stuck with it.
The fact that AA owns us offers our best and worst deals. Best in terms of flow and travel, worst in terms of being their ***** to do with as they please. I can imagine there are times when running some inefficient trips actually benefits AA in someway and having us do them, as opposed to say Skywest, is the cheaper of the options.