Originally Posted by
crewdawg
I agree with most of your post, but your first sentence just isn't true. There are more people today playing that game because they're comfortable in the fact that they'll still have a good month. I've been playing this game for years and pretty much know who above me do/do not play the game. (Even in my new cateogry). That number has increased since last fall. I'd wager that when the free money ends and QS dies off, many of these guys won't continue the game.
The problem is the company is in a vicious cycle of their own making. It took a long time to slowly work into the situation they've got today, and it's going to take a long time to dig out. In fact I'm not even sure they can dig out without PWA modifications via our next contract. It used to be that outside of a small percentage of credit surfers near the top of each category, most people flew pretty close to their PBS-awarded line, then the hustlers grabbed some premium and/or WS trips to boost their pay. Reserves covered the bigger trips 1-2 days out, and credit surfers snagged most of the last-minute stuff via WS. That dynamic is just straight up gone. It does start with staffing, as we don't have enough reserves in numerous categories to cover stuff even 2 days out. The company tries to entice people to fly bid packet trips via SS and GS, but many times those go unfilled, which then requires breaking trips up. In the ATL 717B category there are almost no pilots picking up any trips via WS (PCS or ARCOS) since that eats up your chances at 23m7. Generally you can't PD anything, but a lot of people are able to swap out of longer trips later in the month for shorter trips close in. That just compounds the issue as those long bid packet trips have to get broken up. As others have said, simply increasing the number of reserves won't help as much since that just allows more people to drop bid packet trips into OT. Everyone is only picking up premium flying. Somehow the company has to start to cut back on the free flow of premium pay. We're in a deep stall when it comes to staffing, and it's going to take a big pushover to restore clean, level flight. I think at this point you'd have to overstaff a category to a large degree in order to truly break the cycle, and I don't think the company is willing to hire enough to actually make that happen. We'll hire enough to stabilize the operation as far as cutting way back on our cancellations, but I don't see how they significantly cut back on premium flying in the next two years, barring some sort of black swan demand crash due to the Iran war.