This right here is spot on in my experience. I was hired in 2016 and life was great. In 2018 my wife asked me if I even liked the job anymore. I told her I spent all my time trying to avoid painful rotations.

Years ago, the old head of CR Bob Smelzer(sp?), had a very MOTO observation in one of his newetters (2018 or 19) in which he stated “rotations that get bid for higher in PBS tend to stay intact.” No kidding, what an insight.

The problem is the new flight ops management stopped hiring and ran the airline hot, which prevents good rotation construction. There is no fix until we hire more and come off the aversion to inserting some soft credit to make these rotations decent. There is certainly room for high credit hard working rotations, but the number of crap trips vastly outnumbers the folks that want that kind of flying. And of course those rotations are fragile.

I think we’re seeing the limits of current fly ops leadership under their current philosophy. They just can’t address the underlying problem b/c they created it.