Pilot morale
 

Anyone else dreading going to work knowing you'll be exhausted at the end of each duty day?

Nope. Fatigue calls are really easy to make.

Not me. Delta thanked me. A lot. Almost every day. That’s all I need to keep me going.

This is the only way things will change.

How much money you making there at Delta?
You could always go somewhere else and make less.

Yes I don't look forward to trips anymore, because 12 hour days are now the norm instead of the exception. Short nights mean I'm slam clicking anyway. The joy of a good layover was gone before Covid for me.

I don't dread going to work because it was way worse other places. Plus, I hold the keys. That doesn't mean I wish it was like it was in the mid 2010s.

You need to call the union and have them call the company out on their lies. They are putting out that the 320 average duty period is about 8:30 and the 7ER 8 hours. Average layover for both about 16 hours.

I can’t quite say I’m dreading it yet, but I sure as hell don’t look forward to it either. Used to really enjoy layovers. Finding a good restaurant, local beer, taking a long walk to see something new/interesting.
Now it seems many trips you’re either in your underwear in your room or in uniform, lots of “working” meals (if you can find food).

Come to think of it, maybe I am dreading that next trip.

I liked it better pre-optimizer but it’s still a damn good job. I’m pretty junior on the 73 and average less than 2 legs a day. Cant speak for the other fleets but it seems the trips are a whole lot better if you don’t touch Atl. I would chalk that up to the 88 effect.

Not hard to drag the average down when you have 3 days of 11-12 hour duty with short layovers to then flip the clock with a 24-30 hour layover into a red eye to end the trip and catch up on sleep during your off time. The long layover at the end and short duty day makes it actually more fatiguing, but helps your precious numbers. Numbers don’t tell the whole story as much as you like to opine about it.

2x 11 hour layover + 1x 25 hour layover = 15.67 average
3x 11 hour duty + 1x 5 hour duty = 9.5 average

That describes pretty much every trip I’ve flown in the last 3 months. DTW320. No credit at all thanks to the optimizer so you need to fit all that flying in the first 3 days 3-4 legs a day to pay the company for the privilege of doing a redeye

Thankfully my union speaks for me

this is where averages vs median debate comes into play. In the past 2 weeks my average overnight length was 13.3 hours, my median was 11.9

personally I think median is a better representation of where we are at vs average as it a more indicative of what a typical day entails.


one 30 hour overnight and three 10 hour overnights average to 15 hours, but you still are showing up for 75% of your duty days on min rest.

Hmm. Non sequitur methinks.

Gotta use median not average for bad layover and FDP info.

Give me a phone number for the company guy that created the trashboard. I doubt you will or that they will listen or do anything about it. Statistics are a wonderful thing because they can be used to show anything. Averages are just that averages, not reality.

I don't think Delta mgmt cares about morale. They are getting so much productivity out of us, and almost have to with the staffing shortage. They know pilots will not leave Delta or quit because the trips are bad. They may complain a lot but won't quit. From what I've heard, fatigue calls are not even up much, if any. Flying the regular bid packet trips on narrowbodies is terrible now. I don't see how anyone can really say..."This will be a fun 12 hour day and a nice 10 hour layover to recover." I feel sorry for junior/mid-pack guys flying these trips every week.

Love when they ask me to extend

Actually I’ve heard they are starting to go up recently as people are finally fed up with it. Again, if you need to call in, call in. Don’t fly fatigued when your ticket is one the line, not the companies.

That might be true for senior guys but young guys with CJOs from multiple airlines are watching. I’ve heard people say things like Delta is the new Southwest in terms of trips.

I’ll say our trips are bad, but I’m pretty sure talking with friends at UAL and AA that they are just as bad there.

Not that long ago a big complaint was that we needed trips like SW because guys wanted to work fewer days. Our trip value per day is much better now than pre 2016 but now the trips are to hard.

I haven’t really liked coming to work since 2018. I distinctly remember my wife asking me that summer, “Do you even like this job anymore?” No, I spend all my time trying to get a schedule that doesn’t have miserable trips. I’ve called in fatigued 4x since then and anticipate more as I become more aware of how tiring these trips are, and specially when things don’t go as planned.

It’s an easy answer. No. Not even for 5 minutes.

When you say "5 minutes" you actually are talking "35 minutes." What, you say? There is the FAA max duty day from the FAR 117 tables (and then the two hour extension beyond that), but there is also our contractual max PWA duty day, which at the time of trip construction is limited to 30 minutes less than that. And, there is no such thing as a "PWA max duty day extension"...only an FAA extension.

The bottom line is that we already are giving the company 30 minutes of PWA max duty day extension/flexibility for free before we go into the FAA extension even one minute. That is all fine and good, as this is the airline industry and stuff happens. However, no need to mentally fret about "it's just five minutes" when you decline going into the extension. Not that anyone does, but I wanted to highlight that. "It's just five minutes" means you are extending 35 minutes past the max PWA duty day when the trip was built in the first place.

SM………..

What if everyone was like you and just rolled over and played dead? Churchill? Musk? Washington? Jefferson?

Don’t confuse Sailing with the facts.

I get the 30 minute free extension they are already getting. That’s where I stop. They already got theirs so I’m not giving any more time past that. Stop building the schedules within minutes of the PWA max and I would be more flexible.

Fully agree.

Care to share the daily average comparison? I'm genuinely curious. My category is lower due to the international pull down. I'm working more days for the same hours, but still commuting both ends..

I'd happily have trips like SWA - but we don't - I don't imagine SWA has many long sits like we do. Recently, we had a 4:30 sit in SEA then another 2 hours in LAX on the same day. Surprise surprise, we then had a short layover because well, we were sitting around all day in the airport rather than have a long layover.

Our trip value per day might of gone up, but our duty day also went up too.

I don't think people wanting max duty days so we can get in 6 hours of flying in a day. We're talking about efficiency and no sits. I've noticed that our turns in hub have gone up a lot - where they used to be under an hour, now they seem to be more on the 1:20 side... which makes the day longer with no additional flight time.

Simple answer - Sit pay. AAL has it, 1 for 2 over 2 hours. Sit for 3 hours get 30 minutes, sit for 4 hours you get an hour. This still allows the company the flexibility to schedule sits if they really need them but it will no longer be basically a freebie for the company. By putting a cost to sits the bean counters would most likely try to minimize them.

Write your reps and tell them you want this - its already being done at other airlines. Could be a big QOL gain.

Scoop

Widebodies are obviously effected far more than narrow bodies. I was referring to domestic trips. I looked through quite a few bid packages and I was very surprised by the value of the trips. We had a thread on this. Most of that is I concede due to work rule changes we wanted and negotiated. The 5:15 average day probably being the main one. If you negotiate work rule to force the company build more productive rotations your going to work more on a daily basis. If we can get a 6 hour daily min we will be flying even more. Personally I like trips like that. I want to work hard at work and have more days off. Others might care more about the nature of the trips.

SWA doesn’t flip morning and evening duty twice in 4 days. Their duty days may be 12 hours but it’s all productive time not sitting for 3+ hours mid day. You are way off with the SWA comparison.

Is the daily value comparison that you presented as fact solely based upon your perusal of a few bid packs or do you have actual numbers to base that on?

Improve duty rig ratio. Doesn’t hurt efficiency on good days, at least improves pay on the long days.

Being short staffed is a fact of life for the next few years.

Banging the fatigue drum is all well and good but that means you are so tired you are no longer safe. I hate that a Fortune 500 corporation is relying on this level of safety threat as the limits of staffing.

Its personal experience as well as bid packages. I was on the 7ER when most of the changes were made. I went from bidding only international to probably 60% domestic trips with the jump in values. Chances of me bidding a 18 hour 4 day would be zero. A 26 hour 4 day on the other hand got my attention!

One of the best books ever written!

Scoop

Yeah, 26 hours of pay is all well and good if the trip is constructed in an appropriate manner.

Spoiler: Most of ours aren’t, and that’s why the vast majority of pilots have issues with the rotations.

So what? If they don't want to come work here, they can go elsewhere. I don't say that to minimize the plight of the narrowbody crowd, quite the opposite... I think what the company is doing in terms of these trips plain sucks, and ALPA's non-response to it is reprehensible. But I don't GAF whether someone that isn't on the property decides to come here based on any of that. If they want to come here.. great. If they don't... good for them I hope they have a great life.

I will never forget the question in my interview from the retired guy. "Why should Delta get down on their knees and beg you to come work here?" My answer was that I had no idea.. but that I would work hard yada yada yada...

Summer is going to be interesting without a doubt.

I'm gonna leave you with one other thought. I know there are some that want something like a 6 hour duty day. Be careful what you ask for. Delta will get their pound of flesh if that were to come to fruition. Delta abhors credit time in rotations. The more they have to pay per day, the harder they are going to work at eliminating credit. Those schedules will go from being SWA-like to regional-like.