Quote:
Originally Posted by qball
90 hrs avg/month? Who's doing that. I've never even been close to that? I avg 78-80 and that's too much.
You do know that the MEC Committee Chairmen pay themselves the 'Average' of what line holders are flying, right? That number has been fluctuating between 87-92 hours per month, for many years. If you don't believe me, call the DALPA office and ask them.
Under our old line of time bidding, we had a fixed cap of 75-78 hours, any more than that went into your bow wave for the next month, or into our bank until you filled it up at +60.
I picked 90 hours as it's between 87-92, it also makes the math much easier. 90 is 15 hours per month more than 75, and that my friend is 20% more flying, per month, (than 75) which means they need 20% fewer pilots to cover the schedule.
And on the FAR 117 thing, as Scambo pointed out, the FAR is based on block time, my 90 hour number is not, it is credit and block.
Let's just look at one feature of PBS to see what effect it had. Let's look at vacation. When we had a 75 hour cap, we also dropped trips that touched our vacation weeks (which we had more of too...) and you could NOT pick up more flying. More reserve pilots were needed in every category to cover those trips dropped for vacation, and for training as well. Back then, our split of regular/reserve pilots was about 70/30%. What is it today? I doubt we need anywhere near 30% reserve coverage in any category, because now line holders can pick up more time, the only limit is the FAR.
Now, with our current PBS rules, you CAN pick up more flying, because the week of vacation is pay only, after the initial bid run. So most guys I know are picking up MORE flying during a vacation month! If we just changed our vacation to pay AND credit, so guys could NOT pick up another trip management would need to add more pilots to every category to cover that flying. We could also change our PBS rules back to a hard cap, and we could change the swap board pick up and swap with the pot rules back to a hard cap as well, and bring back the bow wave/bank system. All of that would require MORE pilots, just like when we had a 75 hour cap years ago.