Now I'm as big a fan of a good Cleveland joke as the next guy, but I must admit that I enjoyed my last overnight there. Downtown was actually pretty cool!

I kid, I lived outside of CLE for about 4 year and I agree that the downtown has lots to offer. If you had a 30 hours in the summer, a rental car would be worth it, lots of nice stuff not far away, including Cuyahoga Valley National Park. I'd gladly move back to the area...too bad CLE wasn't our DTW.

Haven't been since before covid, but got any suggestions? Is there anything worthwhile within a mile or two? If I recall, the area around the hotel was pretty scummy so I try to avoid CLE layovers.

There’s a decent bbq place on fourth street i think. Their fatty brisket is pretty respectable for a place north of the mason dixon. I believe it’s called mable’s.

The Corner Alley (4th Street) over by the Arcade.
The Winking Lizard does a tour of beers if you're a beer drinker
There are lots of restaurants down in the area where the Punchbowl Social
Rock N' Roll Hall of Fame
Browns Stadium (Scratch that...you said worthwhile :D)
Indians Stadium

You mean Guardians? 🤦🏻‍♂️

Spot on. The 73 outside of ATL is really good flying. 1 to 2 legs a day for the most part and great layovers. I agree completely that a lot of the angst is from the 88 affect. It's a big shock factor doing 1-2 legs a day for years and then thrown into endless RJ flying like what has happened to the 7ER(Official plane of Florida) and the 320(basically the new 88). The introduction of the NEO should improve things for the 320 while likely having very negative consequences for the 7ER. Furthermore, if Delta introduces the MAX to the fleet the 7ER fleet's longer stage length flights will virtually be limited to 767 international and specific routes that require 757 performance (St. Thomas, Quito, Tegucigalpa etc)

Brave New World. Ironically after yelling at the top of their lungs for years about being RJ flying inhouse Mainline pilots are finally getting their wish but now are in an uproar about the schedules.

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There is a new airport in Tegucigalpa that should not require specific performance if we re enter that market. No more TGU.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coma...tional_Airport


does STT require special performance? B6 flies a321s there from JFK.

it would not surprise me if in 2-3 years most the 752s are parked and we are left with.
752 charter planes
752 TATL planes
753
763

I'm glad someone finally said it out loud.

For years I listened to mainline pilots of all companies bragging how they were going to scope out all the RJs and "take it back". I told them I hope you do but I hope you also realize what that flying will be. Not long after that the 717 was christened the Triple Nickel with 5 leg days, 5 day trips, and $5 an hour less than the 88. They all complained about overnighting in podunk places we used to fly props to. Now it sounds like that has spread to all the NB fleets. The accelerating demise of the express carriers is only going to make this worse. Somebody has to do that flying. But it's not a new thing. I distinctly remember buddies on the 9 at NWA telling me about 4 day trips that never left the state of MI.

Best thing about CLE is the Taco Bell cantina

This.


filler

As a 73 pilot not based in Atlanta I can tell you that this is inaccurate. Lots of multiple leg days, which I wouldn't mind so much if we didn't change planes so often, long sits in places with no pilot lounges, and short layovers in crummy hotels. Happy to have more flying at mainline, but that doesn't mean we should settle for a total destruction to our QOL. To pretend that things are all rosy and then blame the pilot group is just carrying management's water, especially during negotiations for a new contract.

Interesting. I didn’t get an ACARS a coupes weeks ago, although it was a strange setup.

On our last flight of the day we had to divert to the alternate. No ACARS on the way to the alternate nor when we initialized for the leg back to the original destination.

Although we knew we were extending, the only indication from the company was on the LATT worksheet on the flight plan addendum. The LATT for “without extension” was blank and the “with extension” had the correct time.

SWA doesn't have a fleet like ours, thier network is P2P not hub n' spoke, don't fly redeyes, much lower avg stage, intentionally tight turn times & higher untilization, etc. Much easier to cram more legs per duty than at DL. If we cut & pasted their workrules, we still couldn't replicate their schedules. You know this.

I'd argue since 2018 we haven't seen much increase in value per day, just increased productivity for siimilar pay. NB 3 days are usually ~15:45, 4 days ~21:00. Diference is now the block time is closer ro 15:45, 21:00...soft credit is being eliminated. They've found combining inherent unproductive days with high block days results in no increase in pay, as long as doesn't exceed min trip salaray aka ADG. SWA has ADG 5:39 & at least 4:21 MDG too, as well as a 1 for 1.55 duty rig. Compare that with our 5:15ADG, 0 MDG, & 1 for 2 duty rig. But beware of unintended consequences by ooohhhh :eek:. Tell that to the NYC fleet with 1% commutable trips working their balls off. I'm sure SWA can't wait to get rid of their MDG, so they can avg less pay each day. I'm sure their boss will voluntarily build less productive trips, all for the small tradeoff of working a few extra days a month, an equivalant of an extra bid period each year. :rolleyes:

Yup - I agree with this for sure. I don't mind a ATL-BNA turn, but putting it together with longer flight say would help productivity and make the day seem less crazy, like MSP-ATL-BNA-ATL? The days that are long are the BHM-ATL-CHS-ATL-BHM or something like that.

After thinking back to trips in the last year, it's the long sits that are killing our days. I remember few longs sits on the 737 years ago, and shorter turns. Now, we have a longer turn time typically (but with an aircraft swap of course) and more sitting in odd places, while another crew takes our plane.

How hard is it to be able to move a reserve day around right now over at DL? Short on reserves or is the grid green?

My bad. I'll admit I haven't thoroughly looked thru the bid packages outside of ATL and NYC. Even for NYC trips that report in EWR generally get sent to ATL first leg to get put thru the ringer. In nutshell, I think Rooster sumed it up perfectly, if you can avoid ATL trips are pretty nice

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STT definitely needs special performance to avoid heavy weight restrictions. Even the 757 occasionally is payload optimized. B6 often has a Tech stop for gas on the way back to JFK

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I keep seeing these posts about the horrible trips but when I go look at the actual bid packages the trips look pretty good on paper. I realize that trips often fly differently. You state 3 days are normally 15:45 and 4 days 21:00. The bid packages I looked at on the A320 and 73N that was not the case or even close. In fact I posted on here that I was quite surprised at how high the trip values are. What categories are you looking at? I suspect the 717 has lower time just from the nature of the flying but have not looked.

huh, didn’t know that (also never been)

Nobody flies the A321 outbound from STT to JFK. In fact the A320 won’t even make it. The only Airbus flights nonstop are A319’s. All Jet Blues flights to JFK from STT are scheduled STT-SJU-JFK on both the 320 and 321. The flights are nonstop going down.

Its not the "regional flying" that's the issue. Its the massively diluted BES redundancy and enhanced by relentless marketing that boosts credit and puts one penny over pilot QOL, all force multiplied by the 2018 Optimizer with the Prime Directive to reduce credit to the bone.

It doesn't have to be as bad as it is. Even regionals and LCC's don't have zero to 2% commutable trips.

This. Imagine how many millions could be saved by maintaining every Delta workspace at 80 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer and 60 in the winter. Luckily for those who work in these spaces, quality of daily life at work matters more to management than the potential HVAC dollars saved (not to mention the reduced effect on climate change that Delta says they care about). Dollars spent/invested in our pilot qol are not treated similarly.

We need to get back to certain levels of quality of life that are simply the costs of doing business. Otherwise I fear where this optimizer path takes us in the years and decades ahead…

Your soft credit claim is spot-on. Pre-sodomizer, wasn’t unusual for an 88 trip to have 4-5 hours of credit. Granted, it was a 21 hour pay trip but…it just wasn’t that busy, usually with at least one nice16-18 hour layover.

Ironically, and the company has even stated this, reducing credit (“buffers”) has had the unintended consequence of being disastrous during IROPS of any kind. Simply no make-up capability with tight turns and max duty days. I’m hopeful that reliability and on-time performance win the day soon and our rotations get better.

I think the ACARS messages only come between pushback and takeoff. If you’re already airborne and get rerouted or put in holding they extension is automatically applied…cause you’re in the air. If you diverted and signed a release with a LATT extension already applied, there’s no need for the ACARS message cause you can still be reached by phone.

Just wanted to say, well put sir.

That makes sense.

I never heard a mainline pilot say they wanted regional schedules applied to mainline flying. What has occurred here on the 737/320/757 is not what was ever desired or intended, at least not by mainline pilots.

These are great trips for whiteslipping. I'm happy to never leave the state on a whiteslip or greenslip. In fact, sign me up for the rest of my Delta career. Easy turns or two leg two days are the cat's meow.

Of course no one says that. What they say is that want RJs out of the contract and to bring that flying back to mainline. What do you think happens to the cities those aircraft serve?

Those cities will get less frequency because they won’t need as many arr/depts to cover the seats.

I have not heard anyone complain about the actual “podunk” cities. The worst layovers I have had have been the short NY layovers. When I flew to the podunks I enjoyed most all of them. The issues are the relentless schedules that have come about since the optimizer.

Right but that doesn't make their short block time worth more. That's what happens. If the program needs 5:15 per day and each leg is 1:00, how many legs do you need to eliminate credit?

Excellent point, when you become senior enough(or highly skilled with PCS) to drop a majority or all of your schedule, these short trips make for an incredibly easy schedule full of 2 day trips that pay 10:30 block 2hrs. Downside is you need to have incredible schedule flexibility and be ready at a moment's notice as majority of these trips are same day WS.

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Why do you think individual rotations have to do only those routes? I can fly coast to coast and also do a 1 hr leg on the same day for a 2 leg 6+ hr day. The regionals are “regionals” and stay in their hubs. We are not and can go elsewhere. There is no need to only do Nashville turns from ATL all day long.

Whose side are some of you on anyway? Go work in mgmt if you want to justify the high leg/duty day, low layover trips.

When the vast majority of your departures out of ATL are stage lengths less then 1.5 hours, the vast majority of the legs will be those flights. And what's frustrating is because there are so many of these short legs, we no longer enjoy the lack of variety of leg lengths so that the program can tack on a BHM turn after a leg from LAS or SLC.

And I would argue 4 legs to and from BNA is less fatiguing than a 2 leg, 8+ hour day

True if you are not changing planes in ATL every time you touch it or have a three hour sit in BNA in the middle of it.

Agreed, but what a lifestyle if you can pull it off.

I agree. And I think there are some things we need to address in our contract to help protect against fatiguing rotations. The first would be for the company to follow the data driven recommendations of the FTDT committee.

You lose credibility and seem emotional when accusing anyone with a differing viewpoint of being management.

At the end of the day, we've reached an interesting place. RJ flying is quickly returning to mainline, and mainline fleets like the 320, 737, and 757 have the ability to do transcons and 1 hr legs efficiently. This perfect storm allows the optimizer to "optimize" the pairing. More over, RJs can't do transcons so redeyes were not at the regionals. Combine all those factors and we've reached a Brave new world in the Airline Industry. With critical staffing persisting for quite some time, I don't see things changing any time soon. Pilots will just have to deal with it.

On the brightside, there is PLENTY of movement and every pilot on the list will have an opportunity to find happiness SOMEWHERE. Bid WB anything you can hold on the next AE. Sign up for SLI. Sign up to work in the CPO. If you live in ATL go be senior on the 320/717/737 in ATL drop your trips and wait for short leg out and back 2 days.

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