Originally Posted by
hercretired
Day trips suck in many ways.
1. I joined this line of work to see new cities and places, AWAY from the airport. See some local sights, try a new restaurant. Not the food court of an airport, haul ass to the gate, and depart again. "Chick Fil A is near our gate, haul ass bro, I got the preflight"
2. Driving on a daily basis to/from the airport turns it into a 9 to 5 job. traffic, commute, park the car, unpark the car, shuttle van, gas, etc.
3. Four of five back to back one day trips is arguably "more labor intensive" than just a regular four day. Hop in the plane, come back 4 days later, done.
etc etc
I think 3 days are perfect, especially if you leave late on Day-1 (basically have all that morning and some of the after noon off). Those are really just 2.5 day trips
To your first point, at NK we don't really stay anywhere that is worth bragging about or even exploring for that matter. 95% of the exotic and fun destinations are a quick in and out for flight crews. We can't even get off the airplane and walk around the terminal in Colombia FFS.
Zero international layovers as of mid Feb, and the bulk of our layovers for anyone not senior are in places like Romulus, MI at an airport hotel for 14 hours. Our CBA is setup so that we don't see that many long stay layovers, which are normally downtown for the few that get built into the pairings. Everything else is close to the airport.
Every so often they might build a 30 hour RNO or something like that for a month, but it's pretty rare and it never lasts.
Trust me I feel the same as you on the subject, but it's not realistic at this company.
I can either do multi day trips with 2-3 legs per day and short layovers at an airport hotel, or I can drive to my house at the end of the day.