Do you sleep in the airport on a 3 day? You still drive back and forth to the airport every day. However, instead of spending time taking your kids to school or having dinner or breakfast with them each day, you rot in a hotel.

 

okay then chicken little, enjoy your pity party.

 

thanks....

 

Your not wrong. The productivity of our trips has fallen off a cliff in the last few years. Possibly purposefully (a five hour day turn looks much better than a ten hour three day) I don't like short day turns and I don't like ten hour three days. When I come to work I want to work. That is what I miss. These days It just seems like coming to work is either a lot of driving to do a leisurely turn or a lot of time sitting around in the hotel. I don't like either. What I prefer is productive trips. I don't want to stay in a hotel for more than 14 hours, and I don't want to spend longer traveling to and from the airport then I would credit. High productivity means more time off. That time off is specifically why I wanted to become a pilot.

I understand who ever is in charge of schedule construction will never be able to make everyone happy, But 30+ hour layovers in Denver, Las Vegas, Chicago, Phoenix, Orlando, Dallas, Tampa, Miami, San Juan ,and Atlanta seems unnecessary.(In the past three years I have done Many 30 hour overnights in all of these cities) There is plenty of low hanging fruit to increase productivity which would be a benefit to all parties.

 

Yep. There are A LOT of these and A LOT of them could be solved by tacking on a turn or something. But guess what, they don't have to pay us? they keep us on the hook for 30hrs/3 days and can reschedule us as needed within that footprint for 10hrs of pay.

There are also some 4 day trips that pay 15 or 16hrs that are 3 legs 1 day, 1 leg, 30hr layover, 1 leg. It is ridiculous. The same way a 5hr turn, is fine yes, but there are SO MANY 5 hr turns, there are not many 3 leg days that are something like DFW-FLL-NYC-DFW. There are turns out of vegas that are 4 legs, 5.5hrs and almost 11hrs of duty.

Our trips are super inefficient for the bottom 80% of the pilot group. With that being said, I am sure if they were more efficient, we wouldn't have as many lineholders. We would have more reserves, and probably be "overstaffed" by more than a few pilots per plane. But instead of that, use our pilots and planes to increase frequency with these efficiencies.

 

We must have a min CALENDAR DAY….
NO split duty….
ntr must go away

 

I think it’s more important to note that the 5hr turns aren’t efficient for the company. They are not maximizing their crews. Waste of money on a large scale.

 

For sure, Our C suite painted themselves into a corner. They wanted to keep salaries low. which caused attrition to be high. Due to high Attrition ,many bases and small bases, we needed bodies and a lot of them. we may be 30% overstaffed. It was the cost of doing business with attrition so high.

The funny thing is likely it cost a lot more to be 30% overstaffed than paying the entire pilot group united rates.

This is why when people say things like "they can't pay legacy rates" or "were circling the drain" I call BS Berry is making his 8 mil so he is hitting the performance quotas. If you think we are circling the drain then tally your logs fill out some apps and move on. Stop acting like someone freaking out in a horror movie. Those types never make it to the end.

 

Agreed. The domestic market is down - that hurts everyone. Only airlines w/ significant international travel are doing well (and American isn't even doing that).

A LOT depends on what we do now to prepare for when the market comes back. Are we gonna be the same ol F9 (treat pax like sh!t) or something else? I would say, if we don't change our model significantly within the next 12 months (which includes legacy rates), then maybe I'll start to be concerned.

 

Ya'll do realize that the union already lowered our ask to below legacy rates, right?