The Sea Passion hotel may be cheaper than PPR where we are staying at. Sam's Tours is a nice operation (they will give you an airline discount) where you can take snorkeling trips but overall Palau is not the cheapest place to venture to.

Good luck and have fun.

Scambo, if you find something worth looking into as far as Saipan goes, please let me know. We are months away from traveling but just want a nice beach and a place to swim, in an exotic local in the South Pacific.

Cheers

I'd go to Hawaii, Thailand, Tahiti or Bora Bora before I'd ever vacay on Guam or Saipan.

The average ALV system-wide last July and August was 81:23. Assuming that you are staffing to the high flying months, unless you use the highest ALV you can in those months, you are forced to carry additional pilots (Regular Pilots Required = Total block, credit, and planned absence / ALV), and there goes a good amount of your productivity gain.

In the meantime, if you decrease the ALV with a given amount of flying, that means you get more (not fewer) regular line holders and fewer (not more) reserves. A reserve pilot can theoretically be assigned to ALV + 15, but only if he has not exceeded his reserve guarantee.

The bottom line is that low ALVs are an indicator of position staffing relative to the amount of flying in that position -- nothing more. To the extent that a position is "correctly" staffed (from the Company's point of view), you will see the highest ALVs in the heaviest months, and vice versa.

Bohol, Cebu, or my favorite, Borocay. Planning a trip to Bohol now. Cheap, nice people, beautiful beaches, good snorkling.

NRT to MNL, spend the night, get up in the morning and take PIA-Express or Cebu-Pac to the closest island airport. Coming back you can go through NGO if NRT not looking so good. Inter-Island, pack light. The local airlies have gone all "Ryan Air" and charge nearly nothing for your ticket (think my last ticket was $8 with a $95 bag fee, it's nonsensical, but that's the PI's, the land of not quite right, but fun)

Some of our customers have VISA issues because we hub in NRT. It usually knocks few passengers off the airplane, making for better Non Rev opportunities than what it looks like.

Humbolt,
Took the family of 5 to Palau last spring break and we had a blast. We stayed at the crew hotel PPR (actually the only "resort" that I saw on the islands) and I thought they charged fair, around $250 a night with taxes and fees etc plus food. We did three dive days and my wife and son did two snorkel/kayak tour days and they had a blast on their trips, saw lots of stuff with snorkel that we saw diving.
Don't know if you have kids or not, but they also had a dolphin interactive area that was fun as you could swim with the dolphin etc and it was very inexpensive for airline id'd people. (kids loved it).
Now if you wanted to save more money, the hotel up the hill from the PPR had access to all of PPR's beach and amenities but was much more hotelish and less resortish, and I believe their rooms were about 1/2 price compared to PPR. We actually ate dinner up there one night as they had a Korean BBQ dinner buffet that was awesome for $20 a head with everything included.
It depends on what you want to see with snorkeling, as Guam will have clear water usually, but much less life to see. On that trip we ZED'd back from Palau to Guam and stayed on the Navy base for 3 days and did some diving there too.
I've snorkled/dove all over Hawaii, parts of Guam, and Palau and for seeing very interesting and unique things in the ocean, Palau wins hands down.
BTW all the locals speak english and currency is US$, no visa needed.
LUV

Lastly,
I found Palau to be just the right amount of "exotic" but if your looking for lots of beaches, it's only has a few and the PPR has one of the best ones. You could snorkel right off the beach and there are some of those giant clams you only see on TV in about 12ft of water out off the shore, even the snorkeling from the beach at PPR was interesting. On one of the dive trips (sam's dive was awesome and flexible by the way) we had lunch where they filmed one of the original survivors shows, now a picnic lean-to.

For all you NYC commuters, the Airtrain is down for at least another week at the airport. You have to take a shuttle bus to Federal Circle. Just took my youngest daughter to see Motown last night great show! Berry Gordy wrote and produced it.

Saipan (Japans cheap man's Hawaii) is a good cheap vacation but far away. Our crew hotel gives us good discounts on food and board. The golf is relatively cheap and you have a plethora of massage options to relax you.

The hotel is a Hyatt Regency on the beach, the food is very good and affordable (Seafood Buffett, Sushi, steaks etc). There are historical tours you can take and rent scooters for cheap with your Delta ID.

With that it mind, an all inclusive resort in Mexico or Caribbean is also very good. It is easier to get to and easier to get out.

TEN

I was given a room at the JFK Hampton and took the hour-long bus-to-Federal Circle-to-hotel shuttle this week during the snowstorm. It was a cross between "Slumdog Millionaire," and "Frozen."

And then when I checked in I was told, "Oh, you didn't have to do all that. We pick up crewmembers at the terminal"