Originally Posted by
BagMan
Your not wrong. The productivity of our trips has fallen off a cliff in the last few years. Possibly purposefully (a five hour day turn looks much better than a ten hour three day) I don't like short day turns and I don't like ten hour three days. When I come to work I want to work. That is what I miss. These days It just seems like coming to work is either a lot of driving to do a leisurely turn or a lot of time sitting around in the hotel. I don't like either. What I prefer is productive trips. I don't want to stay in a hotel for more than 14 hours, and I don't want to spend longer traveling to and from the airport then I would credit. High productivity means more time off. That time off is specifically why I wanted to become a pilot.
I understand who ever is in charge of schedule construction will never be able to make everyone happy, But 30+ hour layovers in Denver, Las Vegas, Chicago, Phoenix, Orlando, Dallas, Tampa, Miami, San Juan ,and Atlanta seems unnecessary.(In the past three years I have done Many 30 hour overnights in all of these cities) There is plenty of low hanging fruit to increase productivity which would be a benefit to all parties.
Yep. There are A LOT of these and A LOT of them could be solved by tacking on a turn or something. But guess what, they don't have to pay us? they keep us on the hook for 30hrs/3 days and can reschedule us as needed within that footprint for 10hrs of pay.
There are also some 4 day trips that pay 15 or 16hrs that are 3 legs 1 day, 1 leg, 30hr layover, 1 leg. It is ridiculous. The same way a 5hr turn, is fine yes, but there are SO MANY 5 hr turns, there are not many 3 leg days that are something like DFW-FLL-NYC-DFW. There are turns out of vegas that are 4 legs, 5.5hrs and almost 11hrs of duty.
Our trips are super inefficient for the bottom 80% of the pilot group. With that being said, I am sure if they were more efficient, we wouldn't have as many lineholders. We would have more reserves, and probably be "overstaffed" by more than a few pilots per plane. But instead of that, use our pilots and planes to increase frequency with these efficiencies.