They buy your tickets both ways (and you keep the miles). You almost never start or end a trip at home that isn’t a paid deadhead.

Completely different operation.

Good point. I think my point was that more bases may work for one operation but not another. Delta is not Netjets.

How would a purely hypothetical AUS 320 base (for example) dilute ATL 320 flying?

Even if you live in ATL and love AUS layovers, the evening ATL to AUS flight could be operated by an ATL 320 pilot tonight, DTW 320 pilot tomorrow night, SEA 320 pilot on Tuesday, and LAX 73N pilot on Wednesday.

No category at Delta owns any flying. While I don’t see our management opening small, single-fleet bases anytime soon (if ever), they wouldn’t have any measurable impact on existing bid packs. Flying is continuously scrambled throughout our numerous categories on a routine basis.

Not weighing in on anything other than this: While I fully agree no base 'owns' any flying, there is zero chance that AUS layovers won't go down meaningfully if it becomes a base.

Said another way, do you not think any base's layovers would go UP if they closed it as a base?

Across the entire system, sure, AUS layovers would decrease. But an ATL 320 pilot (who wants AUS layovers) doesn’t care about total AUS layovers across the entire system. They care about total AUS layovers in the ATL 320 bid pack.

As it stands today, ATL 320 could have 200 AUS layovers this month and 0 next month, without any bases opening/closing.

Well, they could go to 0, but they won't. Over time, it stays relatively stable. Again, I'm not making any value judgement on the broader argument. But to say that AUS layovers won't go down meaningfully for other bases if AUS becomes a base is just wrong. Of course they will go down, as AUS crews finish rotations and come back to base (instead of a current layover crew). I'll let others argue over how much, but you can't deny it will, in your words, dilute

A category’s layover count in a specific city can absolutely go from hundreds to zero over the course of a month, especially if network decides to move the flying to a different fleet. Between network’s desire to continuously move flying between fleets and crew resources’ desire to continuously move flying between categories, chasing layovers is a fruitless endeavor at Delta.

Sorry, but the dilution argument falls completely flat.

Actually, you kinda proved in your posts. Dilution has nothing to do with X number of layovers in a certain city.

But I also don’t get why to bother getting this in the weeds about it, unless people are clutching their pearls at the idea of ATL having less (barely) flying.

I know when BOS 330 opened some people thought it would really hurt 330 bid packets in other bases, but I don’t think that turned out to be true.

living in base matters more than trip construction. if you can’t stand life without orlando layovers that might disappear if we opened that base, move there.

“dilution” of the bid pack is such an insane argument against more bases

*BOS 330 has entered the chat*