Originally Posted by iaflyer

A couple of points:

The company is not paying $300+ a night for those rooms - we have long term contracts with a set number of rooms, I'd say we're paying $150 or so a night for those room, perhaps cheaper.

A crew basd requires reserve pilots, so there is the cost of having reserve pilots in place. Of course, they have reserve pilots in the bases currently covering the BOS trips, but I'm guessing there is a inherent number of reserve pilots just required for the operation.

Crews are much less likely to call in sick mid-rotation than they are are the start of a rotation. I'd bet that they reliability of the crews leaving BOS is higher than the same crews leaving their crew base.

More bases work when there are a lot of out and back trips - that's why the ULCC like Allegiant has them. As I understand, they often fly base-LAS-base for example each day. Simple, no layovers. In a complex operation like ours, it is possible for the crew to fly BOS-MCO-BOS, but that sucks up that "efficient" flying and puts the non-efficient flying into other bases flying. That's why Crew Resources prefers 4 and 5 days trips when the staffing is tight. Longer trips allow the computer to optimize the solution better than it can with shorter trips. If you take out the out and backs from the giant schedule, it forces less efficient flying (which more expensive) on the remaining trips. Thus, the overall cost of the flying the schedule might actually be higher with a Boston base than without it.

Training - a new base provides an opportunity for everyone to bid, irregardless of seat lock. This increases the training churn required, as CR has said repeatedly, we just don't have the extra sim capacity to do this. They might be mudding the water a bit and using this as an excuse, but that's one of their lines.