The 757 is tall enough that you could hang a pair of big round GTFs on her. I wonder how long it would take to crank up the 757 line again.

 

That'd be nice!!

Except it'd take away from 737 orders and well, its the new Boeing. The one that thought going to Chicago was a good idea.

 

None prob until at least the middle of the year I'd say.

 

I hope you are right on that. Especially that most of the current 2 man trips will have to go to 3 man. While I knew there was some circadian protections in the proposal, I thought when I read them that those only applied to instances where you could redice below today's 3 or 4 man requirements. IOW, there would be some instances where you could reduce because of the time changes, but no times where you would have to add beyond today's required crew numbers.

As for the company pulling the AE to tweak based on F&DT rules that no one knows what they will be or when they will be it, other than a vague 3 year rollout, that seemed less than likely. Either that was total BS, or if there was any truth to it, the only reason I could see would be an impending ATA windfall.

So if this AE really is about covering summer flying, and we're not adding many if any pilots for the summer (even late spring/early summer hiring doesn't add line ready pilots for several months) then I wonder how this AE will shape up. Simply adding widebody positions (which I've heard will be the case) may be necessary, but even a tiny increase in summer flying over 2010 would have the narrowbody fleets bursting at the seams even with agressive green slips. Taking guys out of the narrowbodies to buff the widebody rosters would compound things even worse.

Just isn't adding up to me unless we hire and hire soon. Unless its just about a base alignment/transfer with no significant change. I guess we'll see next month.

 

I wonder if Boeing has been asked...

 

PBS is very step by step. If it gets to the end of the bid group and you do not have a line within the LCW, or min or max window if you've specified it and are senior enough to hold it, PBS will shuffle. Shuffling is essentially a substitution process to find a combination of pairings to fit within the window and give you a legal line without having to go to the next step of denial.

Try PBS Overview and go to frame 16/37 under Regular Line processing.

 

Not true

Under the Delta system PBS will swap a trip from a senior to a junior pilot, but only if the trip is equally satisfying to the senior pilot in the context of his bids. Let's say that there are 5 trips that satisfy a senior pilot's preferences and PBS awards two of those trips because they fit. Now let's say that PBS gets to the junior pilot and he asked for one of those two trips awarded to the senior pilot, either generally or specifically. PBS will try to make the swap and give the senior pilot one of the other trips that it could have given him in the first place, but it is only trying to improve the junior pilot's bid if it will not come at the expense of the senior pilot.

Shuffling is basically a process to find a combination of trips that will fit and does not look at junior pilots. My answer to Ferd is here: http://www.airlinepilotforums.com/ma...tml#post930334

 

Now the SHORT MCO layover hotel is nice.

 

I don't know why people complained about the MCO hotel. The hotel was clean, in a safe area, and it was located near everything you could possibly want via the city trolley. The timing of the trolley was reasonable and I believe it was free. And of course, the free hotel cookies !!!

Newport News, not so much. My room had boogers on the wall, and the mold growing in the wall paper was an added touch. The closet doors were off the hinges and stacked up against the wall. The chair in the room was torn in multiple places, and had many prominent bodily stains (edited to keep a PG rating). The hotel's restaurant (and that's an insult to call it a restaurant), served the worst breakfast bar and food I've ever had from a hotel.

But it gets better. Within reasonable walking distance, you have a steakhouse (which wasn't recommended that we go there by the hotel staff) that opens after 6pm, a pancake house, and a gas station. The pancake house owner says to me as I walk in, "you must be a Delta MD88 pilot?" "Yes, I am, how did you know that?" "Because NOBODY walks down this road but you guys." You don't even have fast food options available. Everything else requires a car because of the distance and/or the sidewalks end.

The insult to injury is that the ride to the hotel takes a minimum of 20 minutes; yet, there are malls, shopping, entertainment, good hotels, every restaurant you would want located ONE exit away from the airport. Go figure.

 

Yeah, that layover just never made any sense to me. There is a McDonald's within about a 20 minute walk from the hotel. Other than that, you pretty much covered it. There used to be a BBQ place down the street too, but I think it went out of business. The first time I stayed there, the van driver recommended the BBQ... he was really raving about it. It tasted like (but not quite as good as) that BBQ in a plastic container you buy in the grocery store. I'm not surprised they went out of business.