Originally Posted by
Moosefire
it can be subjective based on individual preferences but broadly speaking, yes. At the opening of the Oakland base flying was flowed from the Memphis domicile to great denser trips with less soft time.
for instance a trip at the beginning of a week of flying from that originates with a deadhead to LAX would pay roughly 9 hours for the first trip for a Memphis based crewmember would now pay closer to 6 when it was staffed from the Oakland base due to the shorter block time of the deadhead leg.
Other side of the coin:
You live in base, you get that day off, don’t have to deadhead, have opportunities to pick up open time, draft, sit reserve, bid secondaries, work in the office (if it’s a big enough base), drive to work, trips have the opportunity to become more efficient, etc.
I want to be clear: I see the upside to what you’re saying. I just want to make the point, more bases aren’t the end of the world. I won’t “GWTFP” (as stated above, not by you) because this works for some. I’m not senior enough to hold these and I don’t really wanna camp out in the right seat to hold ‘em either. So it makes it tough for me. There’s something to be said about more bases and living in base. I’ll be curious to see what happens to our bid packs when the optimizer gets turned up on our path to efficiency.