Airline Pilot Central Forums - SWAP-OUT Day at Baker Plus Update

I get asked from military or 121 applicants who are unfamiliar with how crew swaps occur with home-based operators. This should give you a rough idea of how that works

We get notified around Tuesday at noon the location of the swap, what airline to purchase ticket on (company credit card), if a uber or rental car is better option depending on one’s home city and swapout location. I’ve Ubered to AUS from SAT several times but flying to my swapout city is more common.

We post an airline receipt on our Slack channel so ops can see we are tracking on the plan.

Baker uses Wednesdays as our swapout day.

Other companies may stretch it between a Tuesday and Wednesday. Least amount of travelers on airlines are Tuesdays and Weds is one reason.

We ask if there are volunteers to go out a day early/stay until Thursday to go home first thing for many reasons

- Crews on plane live too far away from where the plane will end up on Wed and be able to get back to their home city midnight so new crew takes over early Wed morning by coming out early

- Remote swapout locations present same problem as above based upon airline schedules

The plan every time is to not force anyone to stay late…getting to the home airport (not driveway) after 12 AM will get u another $1500 but the goal is not to have that happen.

Every 135 operator holds their breath on swapout days because we are at the mercy of the weather and airlines.

This past week as anyone who traveled knows thousands of cancellations had the makings of a disastrous swapout day.

Our CEO put out the word early on Monday asking for volunteers and explaining the upcoming challenges. Our schedulers normally put that word out…we all knew this was serious due to the weather.

Cancelling a $40k trip because a crew is not in place to fly is a big deal to all involved…an Employee Owned Company, we all feel the pain in the long run.

Baker scheduled 27 lines meaning over 100 pilots were at the mercy of airline cancellations and delays in not making their show time.

You can tell a lot about a company in how they handle stressful circumstances to their people.

Does leadership communicate the challenge ahead?

Is there a plan a, b, c to handle it?

Safety first, is that emphasized?

When the crisis is over is there a debrief?

Below is the AAR from this weeks swapout.
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I wanted to do a follow up from Tim’s help request on the crew swap yesterday. Check out the data below with how the commercial airlines faired. This data is for our crew swap day, 1/28/26.

Our stats? 0 Flights Canceled. 0 Flights delayed due to any crewing issues. I promise you, theres not another 135 in the country that could have pulled that off with the commercial delays as they were. American CANCELED almost half of their flights. Let that sink in. Crazy.

I know many of you were held up getting home later than scheduled. I know many had much later assigned leaving rotations than normal or earlier rises than what seemed necessary. I also know one of you was asked to stick around because we had no other options, and gladly accepted getting the job done for us. I also know everyone was all stars at communicating what was happening with delays, being adaptable to the situations and making it happen, some on crazier paths than others (Multiple carriers, international swaps, long rental drives etc).

RODEO! Like no other. Great job team

I'm still proud to be able to say that we have never cancelled a charter trip because had no crew on crew swap day.
Everyone has always stepped up to make it work, 100% of the time.

This is a big deal to everyone.

Thanks for sharing

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Pilots like a mission and sometimes it isn’t just flying pax from A to B

That’s satisfying on a personal level but when the company is faced with a full up challenge like this, all hands on deck stops being a catch-phrase and becomes a call to action.

Personally having lived through forecasted wx disaster with other operators it was usually reactive versus proactive.

When you are looking at companies to consider, how well a company communicates to its employees and has processes in place to deal with such times can be hard to measure but it does demonstrates true CULTURE…next time you do an interview ask the interviewer how the company has demonstrated its culture to its own employees and to its customers. Baker has many examples.

There must be a CULTURE in place to get everyone pulling in the same direction.

This is only the most recent example of what we are trying to build upon at Baker Aviation.

More mx vans purchased for more deployed mx personnel around the country, 50+ mx personnel hired to man the 7x7 schedule for Team Baker, 4 more CL30’s brought over from FJ and flying

Still hiring typed X and CL SICs and PICs for 2Q class dates.

Apply online at https://www.baker-aviation.com

Baker profile found below https://www.airlinepilotcentral.com/...baker_aviation

How Baker Aviation brought clarity to wholesale charter chaos

1–2 hours saved / rep /day

100% demand captured

6-figure losses avoided