I don't ask in that way.

Usually comes up that they voted "yes" for our crap contract once they start griping about how crappy it is....

And they follow with "I have had a crap career," or "it's my last contract, so I don't care." Maybe some stuff about USAPA also.

But in my experience, it's nearly 100% of those who are near or over 60.

I can remember a couple in that category who voted against it, but only a couple.

Please explain, I’m not following your logic. I agree that with ACD the company will use the optimizer to reduce “soft time” like 2 duty periods over a 3 day. They might add filler or turns to trips. What I don’t understand is your claim that they will make every trip average 5:15 a day. What incentive do they have for that? We have several 18 hour 3 days in LAX, you’re claiming those will disappear and be replaced by 15:45 trips, I’m not buying it. Why would 8 hour 1 day turns go away? Again what’s the incentive by the company?

You’re logic pretty much exactly mirrors the PHL reps on this, they where against the deal (which is fine) but they have an ends justify the means mentality and started really stretching their argument.

By the way, in CLT there are a lot of slash trips and Last year at 75% I had a month with 8 of them ten days off and 85 hours credit.

The logic is that the optimizer will have to steal time from higher time trips to bring the lower time slash trips up to 5:15ACD. That will bring down the higher time trips to 5:15. There are a fixed number of block hours and they will have to be reshuffled. The 8 hr day turn you talk about out of CLT will now be flown by another base that’s embedded in a 5 day trip with an overnight in CLT. You already see something similar to this with the 737 island flying in CLT. The incentive to the company is paying as little soft time as possible. It doesn’t help the company to have you fly an 18hr 3 day when they would have to pay a guy that just flew a redeye a bunch of soft time.

At 75% you should be able to avoid red eyes in CLT if that is something of high importance on your bidding.... things get a little weird in a vacation or training month though. I’m sure you know though that if you don’t want those 3 day slash trips you can trade them out for any other 3 day trip.

I’m not CLT based anymore for what it’s worth, yes you can sometimes trade trips (red green plotter is a big problem). At 75% trying to get weekends off, I did get that schedule once, after that I sat LCR the rest of the year.

I think your logic is flawed. I agree they will reduce soft time, but it doesn’t have to be at the expense of ALL or even most other trips. a one day 8 hour turn from LAX to MEX is more benefiting to the company than embedding it in another trip. It’s only 4ish hours down there, if it were embedded they’d have to put another turn on there anyway to get it to 5:15 to get rid of soft time. If they just keep it as is there is no soft time.

2 year contract extension?
 

I’m just relaying to you what happened at United and Delta and what both AA and APA has said will happen with the schedules here. A 1 day paring is very efficient for us, it depends when it comes to the company. Say you are DFW based..... here is an example of what this might look like.

Day 1: DFW-ORD-SFO: 8hrs
Day 2: SFO-DFW-LAX: 7:15hrs
Day 3: LAX-MEX-LAX: 8hrs
Day 4: 24hr Layover
Day 5: LAX-DFW (redeye) 3hrs

Total: 26:15

2 of the 5 days you are gone has less than 5:15. 0hrs on Day 4 and 3hrs on day 5. They make that up on the other days in this example. They stole a 8hr MEX day trip to build this 5 day to 26:15. This is an example of a term planning uses called “flying off the rig.”

Please don’t take my word for it though. Contact CM. over in AA manpower planning or even talk to the APA contract people. I promise they will tell you the same thing. They won’t dispute the facts that I have laid out about future trip construction with 5:15ACD.

APA has just decided it’s worth the hit in pairing construction to have 5:15ACD here. It’s a political win. “They fought for you to get something Delta has”!! It must be good if they have it.

You need to contact someone In APA scheduling. I would contact AW in particular since it appears you haven’t read his many summaries on ACD.

Funny how all my delta and united buddies work a ton less days than I do with the same rigs.....

AW was giving you a sales job based on unrealistic parameters that the company will never use. I never said that you personally won’t have more days off than you have now. I just mentioned that senior guys will have less days and everyone will be doing more 4-5 day trips. But like I said in my response to you earlier. It doesn’t matter. ACD is a done deal.

We can't compare anecdotal data. What's the overall numbers of the entire pilot corps in similar bid statuses?

SW posted a comparison for the Air Trans pilots when they bought them. The number of days worked by SW n/b pilots was within low single digit fractions of the number of days worked by AA pilots. A day or two difference over the entire year. From listening to guys saying "my buddy at xyz(often SW) only worked x days" it was interesting to see that the total number of days worked at SW was almost identical.

ALPA and APA have the data. It would be interesting to see the facts.

Details matter. A cargo guy said he's only been away from home one night this year. A later post explained how he did it - 0100-0200 departures, back in the morning. F me, that's not being at home! Waking up in bed with your wife, with no alarm clock, that's being at home!! Getting up at 2300-0000 to go to work doesn't count as a night at home.

For all you guys who think that the trip mix will remain the same, please lay out your math/strategy. The 3 day, 1-1 red eye with a 24hr layover will no longer exist. So no JFK-LAX-JFK 3 day worth 15:45. How do you propose that a pilot with this trip gets the other 5.5hrs? We have a set number of total block hours, so that time has to come from somewhere. It will come from more productive trips. The company will NOT pay 5:15 soft time if they can help it.

This needed to be quoted for effect. This is exactly where the high time day trips and 2-days will go (made part of a longer trip from another base). Maybe I'll move away and start commuting again. Two 5-days and a 4-day every month, about 74 hours. FML.