Well what did they think the pilot group was going to do when they went to batch size 100?

They could've been reasonable, but noooooo

 

"we didn't think they would do that..."

 

Just out of curiosity, does anybody have any theories (anecdotally based I'm sure) how what % of pilots just flies bid packet trips, as opposed to try to clear much of their schedule to fly OT?

 

Ill guess. I’d say it closely follows the % of commuters vs in base. And there is a sliding scale there…. As a commuter I generally fly bid package trips. That’s not to say I won’t swap to a better trip given the opportunity. But I want to know my work days, not play daily games trying to pick up.

 

I'd say it's well under 10% or less on the 717 who actually clear out their schedule and fly only/mostly broken trips. It trends more senior on the A side than the B side for whatever reason. You do basically have to live in base or have some sort of super easy commute with lots of flights because you're shut out of the last minute stuff, which also tends to be the easiest trips. If you do the rolling WS request game you're either going to get a ton of ARCOS calls every day or you're going to spend some time crafting specific PCS parameters each bid period.

I'd guess that roughly half of line holders do at least one trip swap for different bid packet trips per month. Some people can snipe a good swap out of a long crappy trip for an easy trip that reports second day before scheduling can manually cover it but you have to stalk OT right before each PCS run to try to grab that SWP.

It's totally anecdotal, and not 100% accurate, but generally I see the older CA's that I fly with just flying their bid packet trips while younger ones seem to be more willing to play the PCS hustle. Part of that is that the older pilots are normally more senior as well and get better trips from PBS anyways.

 

That's the use case for wildcard swaps.

 

I'd say 90% of pilots just fly their schedule and pick up extra time here or there. The clear your schedule and WS crew is just a small subset of pilots mostly in Atlanta that have decent seniority and schedule flexibility.

 

idk about that. In MSP B I see a lot of “credit surfing.” On the ER in NYC I was able to white slip trips to Italy. Here on the bus I can’t manage to get a deadhead to Florida and then fly back… goes to guys more senior than those being awarded Italy trips to begin with.. I get the whole junior base junior fleet concept. But. It’s not just an Atlanta phenomenon. Guys here drop their own low credit turn lines and play the game just as well and as often…

 

There are a handful of us who do that in my category, but I'd be surprised if it was close to 10%. It seems like most just fly their line and call it day. Frankly, I'd have to move seats if I had to fly a line of bid packet trips every month.


Good if you're trying to just get rid of a 5 day for something shorter. But could be a big gamble as some of the 0xxx trip can be complete crap.

 

Mostly in Atlanta. Credit surfing is possible in other bases but not as easy as ATL due to the shear volume of flights along with multiple cities within a short hop. Credit surfing is nearly impossible in NYC unless utilizing ample amounts of OOBWS.