Originally Posted by
flyguy81
we have a lack of airplane problem. They are trying to squeeze juice from a turd so added red-eyes. Those planes have to come from somewhere. Instead of overnighting in a base, they’re flying to the east coast. Nobody has an issue with that. What people are ****ed about is that because the RON plane is working instead of resting, they think they need to shrink the base where the plane was overnighting.
There’s prob a dozen things they could’ve done before kicking people out of their base to do a multiple time zone commute…but they don’t care.
Hiring, more airframes, red eye reserve might help fix things…they should also make redeye pairings more efficient than a 2 leg 3 day that doesn’t beat the rig.
Someone told me they heard a rumor the company wants several more bases in high hotel cost cities….floating a Frontier/Allegiant model with mostly day trips. Hope it’s BS, because people would lose their ****.
The way SW builds redeye pairings is highly inefficient and not industry standard at all. That being said, they are great from a pilots perspective. I flew one a few weeks ago, and I get the appeal. For someone in a single/empty nest or older kids type of situation, they are amazing. Go home, sleep it off, party all night, rinse and repeat. I don't want them to change, and if they do, they are going to get put on junior pilots and there is going to be a lot of fatigue.
Network planning is throwing stuff against a wall and seeing if it sticks. SWA is PTP until they aren't PTP. It's a hybrid mess right now. The way they move bodies around the system hasn't changed, just the number and frequency. They used to move 10 pilots to MCO every winter and reverse it in spring and there would be grumbling. I have never seen the way they just gutted the west coast to build up the east coast all while reducing ATL. It was truly insane. The company simply doesn't care. They are following the CBA and won't change until it hurts them or until they are forced to.