I remember someone posting an excellent transcript of a Jeff Miller recurrent fireside chat a few months ago. Jeff said that not having pilots flow through bases is a killer when on irop. He used an example of those trips where you leave a base and do MYR turns for 4 days and head back to a base. He feels that having crew support at more stations is a help, assuming he means x/y list and reserve staffing.

Makes sense, we don’t go hub and spoke like legacy carriers do, we go out and stay out and the more bases we have, the more likely we are to adjust with new crews on the fly. Southwest shows 12 pilot domiciles on this site. Assume it’s for a lot of the same reasons Jeff mentioned.

But I agree, more bases will stagnate growth in bases but if there is a “upside” he did also mention that it could help with these pairing mixes we have, all these 4 days in some bases.