The current practice of not having West Coast based crews push prior to 0800 is not really about productivity. Not sure how much impact that one factor had but I think it is a good policy.

OBTW it does not apply to reserves so when a LAX guys gets called out to cover an East Coast trip guess what happens? He goes from blocking in on day 1 at 2300 West coast time to a 0130 wake up body-clock on day 3. Ask me how I know.

I doubt this is a major factor and I am not even sure when this policy started but I just wanted to point out there may be some non productivity causes in the commutability declining.

Scoop

 

There are 4 narrow body fleets in NYC. It has never been an issue to substitute one for another. This was an opportunity to enhance productivity and they did. I don’t blame them for business decisions but those decisions have business consequences and commuting consequences. We know where their priorities lie. This will probably backfire during any major IROP and we will once again swing the pendulum. This is a business decision and the One Delta cost containment will eventually be unraveled to return some reliability. Meanwhile we are the thin whippy end of the whip. QOL always suffers if there are no guardrails.

Also ask yourself why are west coast narrow body pilots in NYC? Productivity. Trans-con flights blocked for 6 hours east bound allow for a second leg to put them in the central time zone. West bound early departure can be done by any other bases in any other time zones. I personally think a base should be able to do it’s own early morning departures but this is NYC and it’s about the change in commutability in the largest commuter base by far. They might have to just get used to it but that is a change for the worse (insert status quo argument here) that affects most of the base and the reliability of the product.

 

With NYC being the largest number of hotel rooms used, just have the 6 and 7 AM departures covered by crews laying over instead of originating. That would provide immense relief.

 

I'm good with them shutting down the VB option. It's really just too bad they don't open a base.

 

Makes perfect sense. We feed all their heavies there.

And shutting down the VB in MCO the way we did, was a huge tactical mistake.

 

IF they do, they won't be stupid enough to give us what they gave us the last time to get it.

 

Too bad we didn't even let them try before telling them to go **** themselves.

 

It goes back further than that. It's too bad that they couldn't do it during the originally negotiated timeline. It's too bad we agreed to extend that timeline.

Also, if they do end up opening a base, we'll look extremely foolish for even negotiating VBs into the PWA.

 

This is much closer to reality than where JB is living.

 

So you think negotiating an item (with an escape clause) and then before even TRYING the item, you pull it down and that will be viewed in the future as 'good faith'. Yeah. Real close to reality.