Approach1260

Exactly this. In July sap I traded an 11 hour 4 day for a 15.5 hour 3 day. If I'm going to be away from home make it worth it, and if my alarm is set for 3am I better not be doing one leg to deadhead to the overnight for min day credit.

Not to mention commuters have a devil of a time finding commutable trips anywhere other than Charlotte since our out station lines tend to start early and end late. Which results in them just sapping down to 65 with max days off.

WhiteMorpheus

Let's see if R2 this month produces hybrid lines again. That was certainly a step in the right direction. The less open time that remains at the start of the month, the better. I much prefer that people who want to fly get R2/BU/Hybrid lines and allow those that want to chill on reserve to stay home.

I think it's all about control. Looking over the Crew Mobile "auto assignment" left me wanting an explanation of how it can be called automatic if CS still gets to send trip availability notifications to whoever they choose.

A properly designed/implemented piece of computer software can do all of this without the human factor. At the end of the day, with such a system we (the union) would get access to see the rules the system uses and CS doesn't want that. They don't even want us to be able to see the full trip history from pairing generation to assignment because we would have more ammunition toward contract grievances.

rickshaw

Keep in mind, CLT has a greater number and mix of trips, hence PBS can work with more granularity than a small base. I’d say YES in CLT and NO if based in a loc w small number of pairings with little variety. It’s a junk-in junk-out system so rigs have never been more important.

Thedude86

PBS may or may not reduce reserves. I’m not really sure. But what I do know is that we will still be way overstaffed regardless.

Right now we are pretty close to 50% of the pilots being on reserve or in training. When I started here in 2014 and up until 2017 we were around 20-30% all that time. It wasn’t really until late 2017 when we started hiring a lot more than just what was required for the additional airplanes. Yet, besides the IT meltdown last year we’ve never had a problem staffing the airline. When I started reserves were averaging 40-60 hours a month. Not 20 hours like they are now. And again, we never had a problem manning all the flights. If we could staff the airline fine back then there is absolutely no reason today that the reserve grid shouldn’t be green every single day in every base in both seats. Yet, for CVG CA, it’s red everyday the rest of the month. I’m a numbers guy, and that obviously does not make sense to me.

Even if PBS reduces reserves it won’t be much. Maybe reduce it by 1-2 months tops, if that. We will still have a ton of reserves. My theory is they’re planning on the big 6 ramping up hiring and maybe taking more flying via more 900s and/or a mix of Mesa’s flying being that we’re starting to operate into DFW in a few months.

Irishblackbird

Where did this 1% rumor come from? Not saying it isn't a possibility, but I flew with a member of the union who said that this has never been discussed by company management in any meeting.

Also heard that flow is going to stop temporarily as AA transitions from the MD80 to allow for training as these pilots transition to other fleets. Any idea how long this will last or when this will begin?

irrelevant

It may simply be because the original preferential interview program, which became the flow, took approximately 10% of the pilot group annually, or almost 1%/month when it started. It has degraded from that point as the airline grew, and is now just over 6% annually.

chrisreedrules

It’s roughly the same flow language as Piedmont and Envoy. So it would only be logical to draw that conclusion.

And no, flows are not stopping. Any month that they have a new hire class they have to flow. I think new hire classes in August aren’t happening to help with the transition off the 80.

Chunk

Line bidding, SAP, PBS...doesn’t matter if the pairings are inefficient. Garbage in, garbage out. Without a good trip/duty rig with an accompanying significant min day without carveouts, this is all academic. Until that day, I need SAP to avoid the garbage pairings

stillcantfly

Nope I don’t but I read how amazing it works and all the denials it does every month. And how the system crashes🤣

Lovemywife

True. Then after several denials/delays, a simple trade goes through &breaks a logjam and you seem to get your “SAPcation”!

Almost NEVER have I not gotten close to what is desired. KEEP SAP!