More flying has only helped increase trip variety and bidding options. From what I’ve seen in the NB world, trips have gotten much better over all.

Anyone bidding a NB and expecting nothing but 1 leg days is destined to be disappointed. Penalty laps may be psychologically annoying but the percent of commutable trips has been pretty good. That also includes for locals because getting up at 3-4am just sucks.

Some categories have seen changes some pilots don’t like, especially the 737. Post merger it was the queen of the NB fleet because it had entertainment and the 320’s didn’t. So marketing put it on longer stage lengths on average while the 320 did more legs per day on average. Even the Shuttle for a while. There was another shift when the 737-700 was parked that saw the 320 fleet do (because of the 319) and now we’re seeing that spill over into 717 coverage as that fleet has had planes out for MX.

What remains of the negatives can largely be attributed to the alleged optimizer, which allegedly doesn’t exist, because it’s allegedly always existed or something, etc. When that switch was (allegedly?) flipped in 2018, trips got noticeably…less good.

I guess if we wanted to increase stage lengths and decrease legs per day we could always re-outsource hundreds of jets worth of flying. But over all the NB flying is pretty good with our current work rules. I’ll always push for ever improved Scope as well at all levels, including things viewed as “RJ turns”.