Originally Posted by
2GoodEngines
Can anyone give a bit of insight into how commutable the pairings are (in general) at Spirit? I know it varies from base to base, but for example, what percentage of pairings have first day show times after 1200 and last day duty off times before, say, 1600? I know it's impossible to give exact numbers, just trying to get a ballpark idea. If I were fortunate enough to come onboard at Spirit, I'd be commuting from a non-hub airport in Texas. DFW base would be the ultimate goal and an easy single leg commute even with fairly early shows/late releases. But from what I gather, new hires are not getting DFW out of class, so any of the other bases would be two leg and fairly inefficient commutes. And as a follow on question, once you hold a line, is it still fairly easy to drop and pick up trips during the improvement windows in order to get a more commutable schedule? I've seen in lots of previous posts that there's a ton of flexibility in the system, but just wondering if that has changed at all with the implementation of PBS, current staffing levels, etc. Any input is greatly appreciated!
Pairings change quiet often depending on the month and specially, depending on the season. Pairings in smaller bases like DFW would get affected (more) by early departures and late a arrivals, these varying greatly depending on the season. I don’t have first experience with DFW but there’s no point in giving you specifics about what’s going on right now anyways for the reasons I just mentioned. You get my point. If you want to see the silver lining a 4 day trip that starts early and finishes late, it’s probably worth 23-25 hrs because our 3.5:1 trip rig.
If you’re a line holder there’s a ton of flexibility (reserve = 0). You can change your schedule constantly throughout the month. We don’t have an “improvement window”. We have initial open time, where you can modify your schedule based on seniority, and after that we have daily open time, which is independent of seniority and the latest you can trip trade/drop is 2 days prior by noon ET. You can also pick up out of base, but you’d be restricted to the green/red grid to the original Trip’s base.
The bad news is, DFW is our most senior FO base at the moment. It’s not growing at all. You might be able to hold DFW a few months after training but holding a line could take forever. If you’re a commuter, I think you’d be better off going to a base where you could hold a line, and then pick up trips from DFW. In the meantime, you just got to figure out where do you want to commute to reserve (ughh)