Just looking at the A320 bid pack for Sept., 63% of all trips are either 4 or 5 day trips! Ouch. The breakdown:
1D = 2% of trips
2D = 15%
3D = 20%
4D = 49%!!! What, why?
5D = 14%

I know this has been discussed many times over the years. The company likes to build 4-5 day trips because, they say, it's cheaper than breaking the trips up. Sure it's cheaper looking forward, when building the trips in a vacuum. However, I'll bet if the company did a "look-back" audit of how many of those trips actually had to be broken up to be covered it would turn out to be more expensive to cover the longer trips. We lose a LOT of schedule flexibility when we have a 4 or 5 day trip on our line. It's tough to drop, swap or move them around or worse actually fly them. Yuck.