LASA. That's a good idea. Sometimes I'd wish the captains I'm flying with would not call scheduling and tell them something is going on and just deal with it on our won. Cause that's when things start to get screwed up. I have no experience with other airlines, so I can't answer that question, but it sure seems like that happens a lot here doesn't it?

Got nabbed at the end of a pairing so they could stick me in a hotel to roll my day off (junior manned) at 200% and deadhead me 2.5 hours from one hub to the another, fly a mid-day turn that was about 2 hours round-trip (the kind of thing anyone in that base would pick up if given the chance @200%) and then another 2.5 hour deadhead back to my hub. Here's how the math breaks down, ready for this?:

One hotel room: ~$80
5 hours of DH pay @ 200%: $750
2 hours for the turn @ 200%: $300
1 restored day off: $280
Total: $1410

Had no plans for the day so it turned into a nice bit of coin. But don't you DARE force that BS on me then tell me that I am the reason we aren't profitable.

While these things seem like a lot of money in the micro look of our world, remember the amount of money just one international miss connect at a hub costs on the inbound side of that 2 hour delayed turn. Buying hotels, re-accommodation flights, meals, ect... add up fast when you start multiplying things by # of pax. Anything that can happen to keep flights on time the better for the customer.

I don't think anyone disagrees on that point. The primary issue here is that the company uses its resources in such an unproductive and wasteful fashion that these sort of 'what the... assignments' become the norm and when multiplied across the company start to really add up. In my case, posted above, assuming a full boat each way, all those pax had better been paying $140 apiece just to cover my paycjeck before you even consider the rest of the crew, operating costs, etc.

Exactly my point in starting this thread

The biggest waste is paying two sets of management, office staff, departments, processes, and systems for two separate airlines.

But it's ok because they'll just ask the pilots and probably all the other employees to subsidize that extra cost to keep the immoral whipsaw business model going so that they can do it all over again later.

One List or NOTHING!

Be careful pointing out the inefficiency of a 50 seat jet, you might argue your way out of a job...

You couldn't be more accurate! This was proposed to Big-D by the ASA and Comair MECs in 2003-2004 time frame. When they said "no," we knew it wasn't about reducing costs.