Podrick, sadly that’s not true. This month BOS-LIS is all 2 man and it departs around 11:30

 

I've chatted with some pilots who wanted to push for higher ADG in the next contract. Just realize if this is what you're asking for, it's not "free money", the company will keep optimizing trips into higher block so we're not really benefiting, just working harder. Ask some of the older guys how some of the 1 leg duty days were before ADG was a thing. IMO it will always be better to have a pick of how efficient you want your trips rather than force everyone into optimized garbage. We're seeing some of this now.

 

this right here.

 

the rotations should be largely unchanged from April. Small reductions. Certainly notable going into a typically big growth month. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see small tactical reductions through the month if fuel prices continue to rise. Especially on low volume domestic routes

 

Be more senior.

 

It seems no matter how we might perceive as a win in improving trip construction, the company always find a way to manipulate it to their advantage. Seem it too many times in past contracts. The usual, “we didn’t think they’d do that”

 

I don't think so.

There's a hard upper limit on how much optimization the company can get in a single day driven by the block hour limit. And it's not a continuous math problem. It's discrete, with major, hard constraints that govern how much time can be squeezed into one day. Stage length, turn time, wind speed, maintenance delays, connection time, etc, all factor in. It's a variation of the knapsack problem. Dropping the ADG gives the company complete and total flexibility to build rotations however they want. Do you think if the ADG was 1 hour we'd have a lot of 15:45 3 days? We'd probably have a lot of 3 days that would be straight block at like 11 hours. Think 4x Vegas or Charleson turns in one day, 3 days in a row. Likewise, if the ADG was 8 hours you think they'd be able to figure out 2, 3, 4 day rotations all with 8-9 hours of block? Across the entire system? And make it work? No way. Low ADG drives pay for block; high ADG drives credit. Forcing a higher ADG creates a constraint problem for the company. Yes, they are incentivized to increase block with a high ADG - that's good for us.

Want proof? Which rotations tend to have the highest leftover credit/day? They're generally the shorter rotations because less optimization can happen given less days to shuffle work across.

 

Not on the 717. As far as bid packet trips, by far the most credit is on the 5 day trips, followed by 4 day trips. Almost every 2 day is 6 legs and ~10 hours of block, and most 3 days are 8-10 legs and 13-15 block. The 4 leg 1 days also tend to end up right at 5:1-5:15 block. We have some 4 and 5 day trips that are basically hard time, but those are the exception not the rule. Of course that is just the byproduct of having the shortest average stage length of all the fleets at DL. Whenever the 717 finally bites the dust the optimizer will be able to pinpoint rotation construction for all the other fleets since it'll have a much larger pool of short hops to work into rotations with transcons and other longer legs.

 

Thats odd, I saw next month it’s augmented. It was augmented last year on the ER as well.

The rumor when it became 3-man on the ER was that it was only for summer delays, not pilot rest.

BOS-EDI and I think DUB were unaugmented until recently as well, hopefully that doesn’t come back.

 

Ha, this is the way. I'm considering downgrading back to FO.