So it looks to me like there really shouldn’t be “two camps” regarding min max, and I’m not sure why some people say “it has nothing to do with staffing!” every time there’s a post expressing dismay at a low min.

i haven’t seen anything to dispute this: Min/max is basically the staffing level. Yes, they can massage it to meter training, but it’s the single place (other than a displacement) where they set how many pilots they need. I glanced at a couple categories that have definitely reduced numbers over the last few awards via steadily lowering min mx.

If a vacancy ends with 500 pilots on the category summary for your fleet, and the next vacancy ends with 490, they’ve shrunk the number of pilots in your category by not backfilling. Seems that’s the bottom line.