Originally Posted by
9easy
Another easy solution is just to make all OT trips this summer silver slips. It would fix a whole host of their issues and probably save money from 27M payouts.
That is a really bad idea, and is actually already being put into practice in some categories. Just look at ATL 717B OT starting around the 16th. Nearly every single trip is soaking or already soaked and not picked up. I can guarantee that only a handful of the ones soaking will be picked up when their timer is up.
1. No one wants those trips. They are the garbage trips left over after the PBS awards + whatever people swap or IVD/APD out of.
2. With a high ALV REG pilots are already flying lots of those crappy bid packet trips. Jamming another crappy trip or two onto your schedule puts people past the point of exhaustion no matter how much the trip pays.
3. Premium trips (GS/QS and even IA) are so readily available that there is no point in working crappy bid packet trips for double pay when you can inevitably get a much, much easier trip for the same premium pay close in.
4. Taking a SS eats up your WS pickup limit. So you are both taking yourself out of the running for WS 23m7 and/or the opportunity to WS some of those easy broken trips (assuming they ever run the whole WS step).
Lastly, tagging every OT trip as SS permanently locks that trip out of the drop/swap/trade pool until the manual coverage window, so basically permanently. That greatly reduces REG pilot's ability to manipulate their schedule.