What good would swapping do?

The trips only operated on Monday/Wednesday/Friday.

Bottom line, look at the bid results. Pilots bid highest pay per day. Whether they are a commuter or not.

Really? So all guys who bid for commutable trips are living in some alternate reality?

The OP is correct we should put a lot of effort into improving our various rigs.


Comparisons to Southwest however are mostly invalid for numerous reasons the first being they only operate a single air-frame mostly domestically in which every Pilot is qualified to fly. Southwest is a great company to work for and I am sure that they probably have tons of applications on file, but the fact is a lot more pilots leave/have left Southwest for Delta than have left Delta for Southwest. If their QOL is so much better wouldn't the reverse be true?



We have many things to improve at Delta so there is no reason to make foolish comparisons between 2 significantly different airlines both of which have different strengths and weaknesses.


As has been previously stated most QOL/Rig changes produce significant unintended consequences. With that said, as a NB guy I think we can probably tweak our rigs to improve our QOL but there will be unintended consequences.


Scoop

How about a ‘set condition’ bidding parameter in pbs that allows a certain number of pilots to bid adg and another certain number to bid min day? The threshold could follow logic like what is used for RLL. For bidders below that % seniority threshold the trips are what they are.

Or perhaps allow us to drop turns or penalty legs into open time or place on the swap board? Would we abuse that option too badly?

I don't know about separate bidding ADG/MD, but I can tell you that the partial trip drop would be a huge win for the pilots. Commuters could potentially drop their first turn or the penalty lap to make their trips commutable; domicile pilots could pick up the turns to augment their schedule; win for both.

At another carrier they've got partial drop but only if it's picked up by another pilot. Similar to our current qualified drop. But the onerous aspect of the system is that a pick up of the partial drop only pays block, not ADG. If the penalty lap is high value, it'll go, but no one will pick up a turn worth 2 hours.

Somebody mentioned the Min day with the 30 hour layovers again.

We have 30 hour layovers because the RON airplane doesn’t sit long enough to make legal rest and there is not a midday service on the right airplane type to swap the crew out.

A min day will not solve that problem. It MIGHT make deadheading crew in and out more common than sitting for 30.

It WILL have other unintended consequences.....I just hope that people run the solutions and see what the trips actually look like before we go down this road.

What i’d like to see is getting the ADG up a bit higher and some language to ensure a degree of RCC input on the rotations before changing philosophies altogether.

I was at B6...guys CERTAINLY would pick up one leg.

Scenario:
Your trip finishes with 1 day/1 leg from DEN to BOS. You then have to turn around and J/s back to Denver where you live.
So you put the DEN-BOS leg on the board. A commuter who is going to work snatches it up becaus he now gets PAID to go to work AND has a guaranteed seat.

Ok, I understand now. The top 8 pilots in order flew in on Sunday to fly non commutable trips Mon, Wed and Fri and then flew home on Sat. 6 days gone and 6 nights in a crash pad or hotel for 24 hours pay. Exactly how horrid was the rest of the bid package??

Rig improvement is the key to QOL. The trip optimization is automatic and completely hands off. All we are doing is changing the parameters the computer has to work with. In effect we are setting targets for lower credit. This would result in better trips because better rigs would change the math. The long sits would create too much credit and force a better solution.

Not correct. Swa has GDO’s. JA pays 200% and if JA’d on rsv you can take a day off of your choosing.