I suppose other than the question of upgrade time, is home basing anywhere on the shortlist? If ATI’s pay rates were copied, is ATSG planning to do the same for ‘domociles’?

 

No. If anything, I'd say the opposite is more likely. I think ATSG would very much like to see home basing go away (and as ATI becomes more Amazon-centric, it starts to make much less sense), and there is not that much interest in home basing at ABX. Our contract approximately matches theirs in terms of total cost. We got much of the value of home basing in fewer work days and better DC contribution & matching.

 

How is ABX handling their Amazon flying without home basing right now? Have their pilots jumpseat to Sacramento to start, jumpseat home from Wilmington? Next month, jumpseat to BWI, jumpseat home from Seattle? I am not sure how ATI could do it without buying us tickets when the start and stop cities constantly change.

 

All roads lead to CVG (or ILN). Eventually, you'll be in a city with a flight that goes there. It's just a matter of building pairings that take advantage of that.


There is a 12-day pairing this month that begins and ends at CVG (technically, it ends at ILN with a limo to CVG, but close enough). It goes like this: CVG-ABE-SMF-ABE-AFW-ABE-AFW-ABE-SBD-ABE-ILN-SFO-ILN-(limo) CVG. No deadheads, company or commercial. There are several DEN pairings that are shorter, but also start & end at CVG or ILN. It looks like there is a single crew doing nothing but ABE-LAL for about a week. There may be deadheads involved on either end of that, probably on the company. Next month's pairings look very similar. There are only a very few that involve company deadheads, and a few one-off pairings that have a single commercial deadhead in them.

 

You guys work too hard.

 

It is true that total cost (ABX vs. ATI) are relatively the same. Also that the differences in where monies were applied at ABX without home basing were in total work days and retirement. Did we get the right value? Argumentative discussion at best.

Operationally speaking, for now ABX has been able to work out pairings with minimal DH on company a/c (on occasion limited positioning commercially) as indicated by Reactivity. The challenge is ensuring ABX has city pairs and schedules that continue to make it work. So far, being limited to 6 -200 aircraft makes the task simpler. I can see where ATI has more point-to-point (no transit CVG/ILN) destinations and that option make not work easily.

I have forecasted it before and continue to state...unless there is a shift in temperature with AMZ, that ABX will be out of the AMZ account upon the termination (or cycle out) of the six aircraft we operate for them.

 

When will the next classes be? Any info

 

Your retirement, schedule protection, and disability suck. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder...

 

ABX is CVG based.....all flights have to start and end in domicile. If the flight starts or stops other than CVG we get a ticket into position. How else would you do it? I have never heard of an airline that required you to get yourself to somewhere other than your domicile. And I certainly do not know any pilots who would agree to that. A large majority of the crews just ride the DHL or Amazon system to CVG. If the plane doesn't make it or you get bumped you are trip protected.

 

I didn't know that your Amazon flying started and stopped in CVG. About 492 out of roughly 500 of our pilots would be eligible for a paid for ticket to get us at ATI into position in that case,, so they would not be saving much money by getting rid of our home basing.