Han Solo

Oh, international has a lot of 12 hour day sleeps separating duty periods?

sailingfun

Sadly yes it does occur followed by 12 hour duty days. Usually makeup trips where 13 hours is the minimum layover. Last one I did was MXP. Even the regular trips can be terrible on body cycles depending on departure times. We have lots of trips where the wake up call is 11pm to 2AM body time. Some of the Pacific flying is brutal.
We once had trips for west coast guys where we flew back east and would have 3 consecutive days of midnight body time wake ups to fly multiple legs. We flew all nighters from the west coast to land on the east coast, sit for two hours and fly another leg.
The two leg trip you describe unless I am missing something sounds like a cake walk.

Herkflyr

I strongly disagree with you. This is by far the safest of the three types of redeyes I've flown--I'm serious, by the way, not joking.

Type 1. This is the most common, where you finish a trip with a redeye from the west coast. Nothing like the "joy" of a far longer redeye than in your example, all to drive home in rush hour ATL traffic to a busy household. I actually found myself pulling off into a parking lot on the side of the road to get a catnap to avoid falling asleep at the wheel.

Type 2. Redeye in the middle of the trip, with a 24 hour layover to an early report on day 3. Total BS, unsafe, and truly does mess with the body clock.

Type 3 (your example). Redeye in the middle of the trip, but you depart that night...kind of like the same departure time as your previous day.

In either case, wouldn't you rather ride the hotel shuttle on the company's time, and sleep in the hotel away from the household busy stuff, versus trying to avoid falling asleep at the wheel on the drive home? That's why I try to avoid all redeyes.

Also, check out the LAX 73N bid package as an example. They have and always have had many of these types of trips. In fact many of their trips start with a late report and immediately begin with a redeye. "Unsafe?" Probably not. I'll bet the commuters love them in fact. The very example you are lamenting is ops normal for that category, every day, multiple pairings.

sailingfun

I agree with everything in your post. I don’t think he has ever been on a aircraft that flies more then a couple of red eyes if this trip upsets him.

JamesBond

Oh for Pete's sake. You could say we are 'basically paybanded' now using that logic. The argument is on the number of bands.

Han Solo

Then we'll continue to strongly disagree with each other. First off, commuters would hate 3121, double uncommutable with a 0804 sign-in and 21:43 block-in, but this isn't about what commuters like and don't like.

I'm not just talking body clock day sleep, I'm talking DAY sleep. You know, when it's light outside and the maids and other customers are outside your door making a ruckus. Neither situation is ideal, but trying to sleep out of body synch is a much worse situation than trying to do so at night.

The struggle is real when you're working in the 330 salt mines. Your reading for comprehension rivals your grammatical skills, lots of 2 leg trips on the 717, that's why it's such a senior plane!

sailingfun

The simple fact is pay banding like AA or UAL have would cause little training impact for Delta. We are not going to get any real cost credit in contract negotiations. What it will do is provide a large raise for the 767/400 and A330 pilots and reduce the size of the pot available for a general raise. I am on the 330. If you want to toss me a nice raise you won’t get I can live with it!

JamesBond

And as I have been saying for a long long time, NOW is the time to do it. Retirements on the smallest super premium fleets are ramping up, so those at the very top of the food chain won't be around long enough to notice it. The longer we dick around with this though, the less likely it will happen because at some point there will be a recession, and the music will stop again.

And the ER pilots should be included in that top band as well. It's a dying fleet anyway, so there is little downside to that over the long term

JamesBond

I would bet with LBP the 717 would go more senior than you think. Not top to bottom, but the upper portion of it would have more seniority than you would believe. JMHO.

Han Solo

And for grins I assumed that (as usual) most of what you said was BS, so I thought I'd look at a couple bid packages. ATL 330 for August and Nov, the only layovers less than 18 hours where either domestic only trips, or following a 1st day DH-only or prior to a last day DH-only -- which of course many WB pilots will deviate from anyway. Even if your wretched trip did exist, apparently Delta came to their senses and got rid of it. I know I wouldn't want to fly the trip you described, but just because that trip might be worse than the one I showed doesn't mean they don't both suck.

I don't disagree that international flying sucks for your body clock and there's no need to get into a junk waving contest of who has it worse. Just like almost all your posts, you have 0 empathy for any concerns other than your own. Somebody wants a RES rule improved and you need to chime in with how bad it was in 2004 -- and let me guess, you rarely if ever sit RES anymore. Somebody talks about a pay issue and you need to brag how much more money you make now than 2004 (the apparent beginning of time in the DAL universe). Somebody mentions their FCR was unsatisfactorily handled and we get to hear about your free dinner for the entire crew. I point out a trip that sucks and we get to hear about how tough life is on the 330. Must be terrible seeing as how senior it is, I'll make sure I send you my thoughts and prayers seeing as how bad things are there.