EDP counteracts many of those effects, on some fleets more than others. It’s very difficult for the company to squeeze more block per day into the 717 fleet, for instance, without increasing average EDP and negating the benefit to the company.

ALV and TLV restrict the company from getting more flying done with fewer pilots. If the company could reduce staffing requirements simply by telling Carmen to assume a 6-hour ADG, then they’d already be doing it. Nothing is stopping them.

IMHO, there’s merit on both sides of this debate. It would be interesting to see an ALPA-conducted analysis of the effects of a higher ADG across every fleet’s rotations.

 

There are contractual provisions around 1-2-3-4-5 day trips (domestic). They can throw those out the window a couple months of the year. I think it’s June Jul August.

 

I don't mean the number of days. I mean productive 4 days with 30 hours of block (if they wanted).

 

It's not incompetence. It's math. If you move the bell curve to the right, more and more trip block goes to the right. They can't fly everyone 8 hours a day because FDP, EDP, trip mix rules, etc prevent them but I guarantee they would if the math worked out in the end. There will always be a remainder when you hadn't thousands of trips but they could absolutely be worse. That's about is important to see what changes before asking.

 

with computer tools nowadays I’d be open to allowing a pbs parameter that allows us to bid for adg of x:xx. 5,6 4 whatever. Similar to the RLL limit at some point the jr guys get only 5:15 iot keep the average across the category. If someone wants to let pbs load up his schedule, go for it.

 

you can do this now.

 

Sure things like EDP, ALV, and TLV will make it a little 'more expensive' for the company to have a longer duty day, on the relatively rare occasion it happens, but it's honestly not that often in the big picture. On the macro scale it's cheap to pay EDP. There is a LOT of room left to make trips worse - the average NB trip Duty day is around 8.2 hours, leaving almost 2 more hours before the average trip hits EDP, and that really starts to limit trips. The variance is within .2 hours across the entire year. What do you think even a .5 hour bump in average duty day would do to trip construction, much less a full 1.0? The average NB "legs per duty" is right at 2.0, with a variance of 0.1. How much would we hate trips if that average went up to even 2.5? The wailing would echo around the globe twice... Look for yourselves on the "Rotation Construction Dashboard" on DLnet>Crew Resources under "Monthly Bid". Does anyone know the average layover is consistently around 17 hours? Does it feel like that to you? Heck no, because that's the macro view. There is a LOT of room for things to get worse, long before any limiting factors like EDP or TLV kick in on a macro scale.

The point several of us are trying to make is, we better actually know what changes to the system will do before making those changes. Not cherry-picking one or two micro examples where it would be a clear win, but how does it impact the whole macro system. A prime example was in C19, where the 220 and 717 were excluded from the 15% requirement for 1 and 2-day rotations in the bid packet, exactly because ALPA did their due diligence and ran that through Carmen, and it made the trips worse. Much worse. Things like 4-leg 1-day trips on the 717, dramatically less 1-leg days on longer trips, etc.

ALPA has already done this with higher ADG, and the vast majority of bidders would scream bloody murder if they had to live in that bid packet. Sure, you'd get paid more for that broken 2-leg, 2-day with a DH trip. But 98% of the trips would be trash, and we'd hate it on the whole. At the end of the day, there is zero chance the company will just leave trips alone, and simply pay us more for the same bid packet. They will adjust the trips to their advantage.

I hope this isn't coming across as dumping on anyone. While it sounds good at first blush, the reality is a different story. Again, I invite folks to talk to their Reps. Especially someone like SK, who knows his stuff.

 

I was the manual schedule optimizer at a previous job and this is accurate.

 

Raising ADG is going to kill commutable trips. Impossible to make signins after 10am and release before 6pm when the ADG goes higher. I’d expect the result to look like WN trips: long days, AMs or PMs; who knows how bad it looks with our redeyes in the bid packet too.

 

Yep, that too. There is no possible way to argue commutability won't get worse. Probably a lot worse, especially if it went to 6:00.