I guess I misunderstood you. And in the interest of intellectual honesty, getting rid of a crash pad is not a compelling vote in favor of VBs either!

No worries, it was a fairly drawn out conversation. I'd even give that saving some dough on a pad would certainly be nice, which is how the entire tangent about the quality of crash pads started.

I might have missed it, but I thought the disputed issues were OOBWS and using the swap board to circumvent ALV+15 limitations. Perhaps a few people would like to see ALV+15 reduced and then eliminate the loop holes but I think that's more a minority. I don't think many of us have any issues WSing up to ALV+15, I'm most impressed at the guys who can do that and manage to block like 20 hours for the month. Winners!

probably not a bad idea

I understand the limitations on 'over water' first-leg and through existing bases.
Question about the MCO ER flying: How many MSP/DTW/LAX/JFK/etc trips start or end with an MCO leg? Do these legs become MCO-XXX-MCO turns easily or do they just get siphoned off and built into the MCO trips? Also, the ER has 'over water' trips out of RDU, BOS and PDX (off the top of my head) that could be built into MCO trips.

My biggest concern about VB's is that the flying has to come FROM somewhere. How is it going to affect the trip construction in existing bases?

Carmine will spin all the known flying tp produce the lowest credit solution. From a trip build standpoint it’s exactly the same as if MCO was a regular base except for the overwater restrictions. There is no way to predict a outcome. One equipment swap could change the entire rotation construction.

THIS! They are perfectly capable of opening a MCO base if they want/need one. This VB stuff is going to have consequences for the other actual ER bases since this VB flying is coming from somewhere. Does anyone at a current ER base want to lose flying and have your trip mix/amount of flying reduced?

There’s no way it’s going to make trips better for any base!

How about this hypothetical rotation? Affects JFK, LAX and SEA pilots who are currently flying at least one of these legs.

MCO 7ER
Position-AB 7ER Effective June 4 Check in at 09.00

4 1659 MCO 1000 -LAX 1228 5.28
5 2531 LAX 0800 - BOS 1645 5.45
6 258 BOS 1901 - AMS 0810 7.09
8 127 AMS 14:40 - MCO 19:01 10.21

Total 28.43

Virtual bases are going to affect everyone.

While I am "skeptically neutral" on VBs, I'm guessing that there are a lot of senior MCO commuters currently commuting to ATL to fly sweet international trips. Now if they can drive to MCO, that is still a better gig, even if they can't fly international trips due to the contractual restrictions on ocean crossings.

That means that guys currently on the ER in ATL may get a BETTER trip mix than before and may now have the opportunity to fly nicer international trips previously flown by senior MCO commuters.

Of course that is hypothetical as well. But there are too many unknowns to just make blanket statements. Let's see how this plays out. Even then I am guessing each month will be its own "entity" and how one month looks won't necessarily predict the next.

Since we're playing hypotheticals... I bet there are some sweet ER trips that start and end with deadheads that even more senior guys who live near DFW love to bid. Now those trips lose the deadheads and go to MCO and the ultra senior DFW pilots now have to JS/nonrev to their base. This in turn bumps the "pretty-senior" pilots, and so the dominoes fall.

I said it before and I'll say it again. Virtual basing will benefit (in a very meaningful way) a very small minority of Delta pilots for a limited amount of time while it will hurt every other pilot for as long as they exist. It will undoubtedly help the company.

As bad as everyone says a VB will effect trip mix imagine the horror if they open a regular base with no restrictions. We need contract language to ban new bases!