Exactly. It is just about impossible to have a situation where there is very much open time and adequate reserve coverage to swap and drop sans the first couple PCS runs. This wasn’t true prior to the ability of pilots to exceed the PU limit via the swap board. I haven’t heard much talk about limiting the SB though.. (Could be wrong of course)

Just to address a few things that have been stated. You can’t have high ALV’s all year even with short staffing as the TLV forces a lower ALV to bring down the TLV. You could have a very stable ALV all year, but that isn’t realistically going to happen with the way our capacity increases in the summer.

GS do help out on manning short term. GS do force an increase in the staffing formula so you will see an increase in pilots required down the road after a year like this.

I honestly don’t get too would up about this as long as they are not IA’s. Being hired in the 90’s, I have seen this play out more times than not during that time. Exceptions of course would be when capacity was cut due to 9/11 and the Great Recession etc.

FWIW, I do not do a ton of GS. But when I do, they typically increase my QOL. I normally fly about 80, but when they are handing them out, it allows me to fly closer to 75 and pick up an easy 2 day. Many times that also allows me to fly low the next month.

Since GS are voluntary, any sort of fatigue issue is self induced. We have many guys who fly high hours off the Swap Board that exceed days worked by pilots who GS. Is that something we should look at as well? Is flying a 100 straight time not fatiguing?

I think we all know what is partially behind this memo.