I’m not a commuter, and haven’t paid a lot of attention to proposed commuter policy changes. Has there ever been a dynamic policy proposed…for instance, that a backup flight is not required for any rotation signing in earlier than 1100? I would think reliability of earlier flights could justify some relief to help produce more commutable rotations and retain optimizer flexibility. And perhaps there’s a soft pay stipend that could be tacked on to any rotation scheduled to release after 2000.

 

So would it create more days off? Why doesnt the company do that to make the most out of day right now? I think fatigue calls would dramatically go up and cause further issues for operational reliability.

 

I just don't see how they can squeeze much more out of us already on a large majority of bid pack rotations. We're 117 limited by FDP and block, so there's really not a whole lot of wiggle room for the company to crank up the heat on duty periods across the board.

Squeezing more juice out of the lemon just serves to reduce stability.

 

The entire point of ADG is to force the company to build productive pairings. If you raise ADG to 6, the few remaining good deals are gone and bad pairings are made worse. So why would the company ever agree to it then?

 

they do not care about fatigue. Not one bit. Because they know that if 10 trips are built to be fatiguing only 1 pilot will call them on it. But they gain the efficiency from the other 9 they would’ve lost by making them all less fatiguing. It’s just math to them. They have the software to predict fatigue and know exactly which trips are fatiguing. They do not care

 

It would be sweet if they'd actually publish what those "awful" bid packets would look like, for us all to see and judge for ourselves. This was the excuse they gave for leaving the 717 out of 1-day trip mix protections. However, the few times they've put up a fair amount of day trips, the trips were great, the rest of the bid packet was no different than normal. The trips were so terrible that even at sub-20% in seat, I couldn't even sniff them.

 

There's no reason we can't get AAs policy. No back up required. Even United just has "2 flights" ... Instead of the ridiculous 2 hours in between flights that we have.

 

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Let people have the option to bid for those if they want. Or let people bid for the high block trips. Don't force everyone into high block max duty trips.

Trust me, no one is choosing or wants those high block trips. They are being forced into it by juniority. The Junior pilots are also less likely to call in fatigued. Most of these trips come within 30minutes of max FDP not much more can be squeezed out of it unless the company goes 3/3/3 and 3/3/3/3. Now if the company responds to the increased ADG by making more or all trips worse; fatigue calls and FDP exceedances will increase dramatically as more senior pilots fly these crappy rotations.

 

I’ll bid for high block trips. I’ll take an 18.5 hour 3 day. Do 4 of those in a month and that’s over 2 days less of work for an equal amount of pay (and usually get more edp on top).

 

Why did they stop building over the years many types of trips that were very fatiguing often without being forced contractually? The fatigue changes I saw were substantial. No 6 hour sleep windows, limit all nighters per rotation, limit early east coast departures for west coast crews, no tag on flying after all nighters, increased 3 man trips and circadian rhythms incorporated in rotations. There were many more changes. some changes were after specific events like the 727 attempted lawn dart in ATL and others contractual or FAR driven but if you talk to ALPA reps the company over the years has been responsive to fatigue. They are far from perfect but also have a railroad to run.
Every change also comes with consequences some known and others not predicted. Lengthened layover time in the room forced 30 hour layovers that led to 17 to 19 hour 4 day trips. Contractual changes led to cramming as much flying as possibly into the other 3 days with the ADG increases. Pilots love turns but increased ADG values make turns hard to build without large credit increases. You can’t pull the long legs out of the pool without substantially running up credit on the 3 and 4 day trips. Pilots also want what they don’t have. When we had 13 hour 3 day trips and 17 hour 4 day trips Pilots screamed they want to go to work and fly as much as possible. When we got better work rules that accomplished exactly that the cries were where have all the good layovers and fun trips gone! Your best single tool to improve fatigue issues is to write up every single issue and request a reply. That does have an effect yet most pilots don’t bother.