Originally Posted by
dojetdriver
My company is efficient crew utilization wise for their purposes, but not from our point of view. By that I mean, it's more efficient to have us doing 12 hour days with sit times. It's opens up the length of the duty period to wedge in more flying . We're limited to a 13.5 hour day, but the norm is 12 to 12.5. If they cut the duty down for us to say 10 being the norm, they can't get 6-7 hours of flying in with our schedules. This comes into play with my point about the hotels........
What I was getting at was this with the hotels; If the day is more efficient for the pilot, say a 5.5 to 6 (average) hour day with only 8-9 nine hours of duty EVERY DAY, it may take 2.5 to 3 total crews on average to staff that airframes daily utilization. By making the duty day 12-13 hours with the 5.5 to 6 hours (on average) and 3-6 hours sit time, that airframe may only take 2-2.5 crews on average to staff. So you can have more crews in the hotels under the more pilot efficient way of doing it. Of course, that's all based on the overall average/spread of total utilization.
I won't claim to know the continental route network but the DL/NW route system airframe utilization is only 7-9 hours a day depending on the month, season, and base. The idea that we could fly 5-6 hours in 8-9 hours really isn't realistic- Memphis is a 3 bank system that allows for many 5 leg days equalling 8 hours block but it takes 12 hours to do it. Other bases are somewhat the same with 6 leg days existing in DTW and MSP. The point of discussion is if a crew is ABLE to do 8 hours of flying in a day there is only 1 crew that needs their rest, if the company tries to schedule everyone at a min day level (lets say 4 hours for the discussion) the 8 hour day that 1 crew could have done would now be 4 hours with a crew swap for the other crew to get their 4 hours. That results in 2 crews in the hotel, 2 crews getting per diem, and 2 crews who have inefficient days and 2 crews that will have to work even more days overall for the month to hit guarantee. I would venture to say that most trips are over any min day most days. The "senior" trips all seem to be 5-8 hours a day of block/credit. It's the 4 day trips with 3 efficient days and the one day with 2 one hour legs that a min day would hit.