Originally Posted by
SSlow
You're making a lot of noise about this, and for good reason, but I can tell you that among the NK pilot group you won't find many in favor of using negotiating capital to improve commutability. It's just not going to happen as most of our commuters are leaving or have already left for the legacies. I know from experience that the FLL and MCO domiciles are overwhelming local. We used to have quite a few commuting from ATL and IAH, and then the company magically opened domiciles in those two cities in a desperate plea to stop the bleeding.
I hear ya, and JB is closer to half and half commuters and locals. And I do believe that commutability trip-mix should be highly variable between bases, as like you said the bases have very different dynamics. I'm in favor of annual surveys, base by base, with requirements to honor each bases trip preferences.
Our company and union put out a pairings survey recently where they are least pretended to care about making better pairings, and commutability was a notable part of the survey. And if the airline wants to minimize the number of non-locals that leave the company, which they have are learning choice but to care about, they know they have to make pairings survivable for guys that don't live in base.