Yeah, you’re grabbing at straws. FYI, every category I have been in the last 3-4 years, it’s almost impossible to drop trips. No room on anyone a line for swapping and no reserve coverage to drop.

Send a reserve or GS in that scenario. There are so many cases where a RR could (should) have been flown by a reserve pilot or GS. I agree that it isn't practical in ALL scenarios, but there are many cases where RR is one of multiple options in trip coverage. The direction we are heading and what the company would love, is we sign in at a prescribed time, fly what they tell us and go home X days later. We are almost to the point where everyone is a reserve pilot, Line holders are the first step in coverage on days they have a trip, next up are the LC pilots, finally we fill in with SC and GS.

Exactly. This is a trend that needs to be reversed.

Does anybody have actual data on how many rotations are RR? Some hard facts as opposed to anecdotal "evidence"?
Info for say 2019 (fairly normal (pre covid at least)) and 2021....all broken out by month. Any ALPA long time listeners want to chime in?

The company has that data. I would feel pretty confident reroutes are up over the last 10 years because the company has realized just how valuable on time performance is. Prior to Anderson we kind of ran a sloppy operation. Still as I have posted in the past we used to feel we got rerouted ever time we passed through ATL or DFW. It probably was not near that bad but perception is everything. Have you noticed how different the number of legs flown per day perception was from this forumwith the actual data the company posted?

They want/need more productivity because the airline is hoirribly understaffed, as usual. QOL, reroutes and rotation construction have all tanked because we simply don’t have enough pilots and squeezing the ones we do have is the only solution currently.

Perhaps we need to tighten up the PWA language concerning required number of qualified pilots per block hour the company plans to fly each month.

As an atl73nb in 2021 I dropped nearly all my trips every month and picked up easy WS during the week and GS whenever I felt like it. For nearly all pilots aside from the very very junior there is a fleet and/or category somewhere in the system to go to maximize QOL. If a pilot is hell bent on QOL sacrifice the pay and bid 717B, 220B, Widebody B etc



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Thank You!! for emphasizing the point we are all in agreement on. The last 5 years of optimization and understaffing have driven QOL into a few silos. The domestic QOL categories rotate on a quarterly basis, which puts them outside of the AE OODA loop. You can't chase domestic QOL, it is a random experience based on staffing. Widebody B is the closest to a consistent QOL option, which is why it is senior to NB A in many instances.

Any chance you're single or living on your own? Nothing wrong with that...I just don't recognize your schedule flexibility in my own life. My spouse only works part time, and our kids are in school. I envy your ability to do as you state but don't imagine that flexibility is the norm for any folks with family, co-habitating working spouses and all the associated activities and obligations.

Also, "bid XYZ" is easier said than done. Is that category going to remain stable? Is it going to expand or contract before or after my seat lock expires? Will other categories in the same base change significantly to affect my own QOL in a separate category? When is that training going to happen? OE? Again - cool to be able to say "don't care, I'll go when they send me", but alas sometimes life gets in the way. Many of these things can be fixed in negotiation without hamstringing the company - hopefully it gets done so we can all breath a sigh of relief and get back to printing money. There's no reason we can't have QOL in every category - as defined by any number of different people in different situations. An air line this large can and should make that a reality.

I'm all for folks working themselves to the bone, or prioritizing work over a more traditional family focus...I just don't want to get pulled under by those rip tides myself.

This hits on a far more significant issue than the false martyrdom of pilots having to do overnights, oh the humanity.

By far the number one concern with many if not most pilots for most of their career is shelling out 100K+ per head for college. Including many, many known in advance to be worthless degrees. Plug those numbers into the time value of money calculator and someone is getting screwed out of millions and millions of dollars over their lifetime from lack of compounded returns over time to light all that money on fire in the short term for an "experience" in fake adulthood. All for the make believe "you'll make a million more over your lifetime" out of context statistic.

Nothing makes a union weaker than its members being strapped living paycheck to paycheck and our collective fascination with "college at any cost" does just that. And robs everyone who participates often millions of dollars in end state wealth, either for themselves or their heirs.

Moreover, its highly common in our profession for children to be programmed and conditioned from near infancy for college and nothing else. That makes our profession disproportionatly weaker than it does society at large.

As far as overnights are concerned, that's clearly a huge and unavoidable part of the job. "But muh Allegiant" is just silly. Tiny niche ULCC out and back airlines are rare for a reason. I've had far better QOL overall at times commuting to NB domestic multi day trips than at other times living in base with crap rotations across every other metric, including schedules that technically had fewer overnights.

Also, its somewhat silly to compare highly disparate professions. But the "sleep in my own bed" aspect doesn't even come close to telling the whole story of QOL. Many high income professions require endless strings of 12-16 hour work days with no concern if you're sick or fatigued. Work often comes home with you one way or the other. Us taking a Ricky Bobby all or nothing, there can be only one, if you're not first you're last approach to comparing different occupations retroactively isn't productive because it makes no sense.

If someone can't handle overnights then move to a base, stay in junior equipment and bid short trips or become an SLI, CP, etc. One (usually more than one) of those options will be available to you in a few years if not much sooner, and you'll still make well into 6 figures by then.

We absolutely need to focus on improving rotations across all aspects, including more shorter rotations. Not just so that there will be more "home every night" positions, but because sometimes pilots need or want an extra day or two to build a line and don't want to be pushed into another 4-5 day, etc. All aspects of our domestic rotations need work for commuters and in-basers alike. Especially in the post-Optimizer world we find ourselves in. But bellyaching simply over the fact that there are overnights is just silly. And comparing and complaining retroactively about compensation of totally separate occupations while continuing to light 6 figures per child on fire often never to be seen (or compounded) again makes it that much harder for us to be taken seriously at the negotiating table.