Last year I had more hours of pay than hours TAFB…

I think I was within 100 hours either way.

Lol same, although it's much easier to do on the 717.

What fleet? Impressive.

NYC7ERA

Copy/Paste from 2025 Salary Survey thread

Year 8 pay (one week on 7)
$429,700 Flight Pay, which includes all reroute, premium, soft etc
$42,400 Profit Sharing
$472,100 in actual pay before taxes/insurance/etc
$80,300 in company contributions to 401k and MBCBP (gross x 17%)
$1700 in random stuff (shared rewards, grievance settlements, etc)
$4400 in Per Diem

$558,400 total

294:43 block for the year
1284:24 TAFB all year
$1,457 per block hour not counting PS or 401k
$1,894 per block hour counting PS/401k/PerDiem/Random Stuff
$335 per hour TAFB not counting PS/401k/PD/Random
$435 per hour TAFB counting PS/401/PD/Random


$45,300 in Green Slip/IA pay (granted 12k won't pay out until 2026)
$13,500 in Short Call Credit (36 unused SCs)
$23,000 in Reroute Pay
Didn't add up but probably $10k in EDP/SIT/CARVE pay over the year.

RES 9 months, REG 3.
Out 1 month on OJI, out just under 2 months when our insurance yanked me around for a surgery I needed (could have been only 2 weeks out, but hey UMR gotta "save" DL money)
One REG month was JAN to burn PB days from 2024
AUG got forced into a line because I needed a specific weekend off but parlayed an illegal RR while on a GS plus RR on every trip into a $51k with 30 hours flown
Bid a line for OCT and was out sick for all of it.


8GS/IA all year.

How much pay can you save cranking up the optimizer above current levels? At most, 30-60 minutes credit per day? Especially if you offset the resulting cost of zero-flexibility, more reroutes, timing-out, etc.

If that is their reason behind cranking up the optimizer, it's hilarious, because like a handful of posts above me, I've hit several 200-300 credit hour months in the last year due to the outrageous amounts of scheduling fires, illegal 23k, reroutes, EDP, premium, etc. I'm on track to pass 2,000 hours credit by the end of the year at this rate. But no surprise they are focusing on fixing the completely wrong thing. Our next major (predictable) weather event is going to be even more interesting! Prediction: they will not be adequately prepared, after passing up the chance to fix the contract at a good price. Can't wait.

According to my RCC contact, about a month or so ago they (company) reduced credit month-over-month by almost 10% in a single category's bid packages. This was back in the March-April timeframe.

DL increased credit in 2018 (?) and we ran 9 months without a cancellation. It's amazing what a little operational buffer can do.

It’s like they have to relearn these lessons all over again. ALPA tries to help them, but they rebuff the help because it’s anathema to them. So frustrating to watch happen again and again.

I believe the difference is back in 2018, busting out the TLV wasn't an issue so the company didn't care about pilots being less efficient.

But now, TLV pressure is real....the company wants some category ALV's to be higher, but they can only get them so high without running out of TLV cap in the very near future, so at this very moment, they need every pilot they do have in the category to be as efficient as possible, hence rotations with less and less credit.

They need those pilots moving widgets in the system, not sitting around getting paid not to be productive.