Half of their problem is the total abandonment of the traditional Section 23 coverage ladders. They seem not to realize that many of their “reserves” were actually line holders picking up WS trips. As the month went on, those would become short-notice GS trips. If you don’t run WS coverage, a lot of pilots are sitting home because they simply aren’t being called.

Specifically regarding GS, to the extent they’d ever run that step regularly again, many actual reserves are ineligible for them due to this wildly stupid “pre-posted rest” program. They put cancelation codes in for flights that blame pilot staffing, while many reserves sit unused at home, with GS slips in, and are not even getting a call because they are “on rest,” having worked precisely 0 hours before the “rest” was assigned.

What we’re left with is a situation where people are happy earning just the reserve guarantee, or the minimum LCW on a regular line, and riding it out. We have discussed at length how ridiculous the 23M7/IA/CNO debacle has been, so there is no need to rehash why that is not a solution to this problem.

All of this speaks volumes about our leadership, or lack thereof. “But but but…Crew 360!…The Asterisk!…Auto-Accept!…Pods!…We’re Smart!” They yell all this while burning a rumored $100m a month on a clearly failed experiment. Even for a profitable company, that type of egregious decision making should mandate a significant shake up.