There should be no specific time limit between flights. Should be worded as "reasonable" or similar.

15 min in podunk airport might be reasonable if there are only 6 gates within a minute walk. 30 min in O'Hare might not be so reasonable but it could be if they happened to be nearby gates.

If I can explain myself and show that it works why is that an issue? 2 hours has to go.

One, the call in honest policy, is in the contract:
A commuting pilot who travels to his base by air will not be eligible for treatment under
Section 23 X. 2. unless he has attempted to travel on at least two flights (on and/or off line) that:
a. show adequate actual seat availability within 24 hours of the departure, considering the pilot’s seniority and the normal load factor of the flight; or, on which the pilot has a jumpseat reservation,
b. are scheduled to arrive at his base at a reasonable time before his scheduled report, and c. are separated by at least two hours.

The other is in the FOM chapter 3 and doesn't have the two hour requirement for getting positive space if you miss your primary flight.

As a side note, the FA's, which have the same unable commute policy as us where they get positive space to work also have been getting the ability to book their own positive space outside of that policy when IFS deems it necessary for say thunderstorms or other potential IROP's. They just put out a blanket make your own positive space to work on the Deltanet IFS site. Makes commuting or nonreving on heavily commuted city pairs interesting when it happens.

So do we have to abide by both? Is one just less punitive? I guess I just fail to see why we have two policies regarding commuting as it makes it a bit more confusing....

Sounds like this is spoken by someone who has never had a min day credit. I also think you dont fully understand how a daily credit works by your comments. This is my 3rd airline. I've seen plenty of contract provisions; how thet effect QOL, and what they do to trips. I can say that ADG is the main culprit with the current trips. Having an actual min day wouldn't hurt commutability it might, might lessen the number of 30hr overnights we do. But personally if I'm on a 30hr overnight I'd rather get paid for it.

Unlike the current system where I work so hard on fly days that I give the company a free day. Where they don't have to pay me and I am still obligated to be where they need me. Min day trips will increase credit, thus trips will be worth more or they will no longer make trips with 2 or 3 days with 8+ hrs of flying!

They essentially have 2 shifts, morning and afternoons. Their 8 hour day happens in 10.5 duty hours while ours are more like 14. Apples and gorillas - false equivalence.

Anyone consider that another reason the optimizer is so “successful” (particularly A320 category) is because the MD88 is actually being retired? All the short segments have to be covered by something, now they can match (#destroy) the nice easy 320 trips with extra, short turns or short extra legs to an overnight.

Spoken like an ATL guy.

Every trip on the NYC 73 is easy-peasy. 1-2 legs/day.

Unless you transit ATL. Then you get 4 legs that day.

And if the trips are worth more we'd get more days off all things being equal.

I'm for min day, but talking to "the Olds" there may be a sneaky advantage to this low trip value, you're not working hard. 21hrs spaced over 4 days? Giant blocks of doing nothing on the overnight.

Maybe we just up the ADG a little and if the union could take control of pairing generation like at some regionals we could ensure a healthy mix of trips.

It's gonna be a while though, so far everything from a regional is bad because delta alpa didn't think of it. Five or eight years and the new guys can reset thing, however, we may start agreeing with these senior guys and thinking "boy they were right and I was wrong".

I understand all this stuff perfectly. I'm not as up to speed on "other" airlines as you might be, but here is the crux of this discussion.

1. The ADG is a vast improvement over what we used to have at DAL. We would all be flying at least 1-2 days a month more, with worse trips that paid far less, under rules that we used to have. In fact I would love to see the pilot reaction if the company proposed rule changes taking us back to just where we were in the early 2000s. Riots come to my mind.

2. Other airlines, whether regional or SWA, can easily accommodate a min day pay guarantee, because they have few--or even one--fleet type. Having such a fleet doesn't lend itself to 30 hour layovers. Our incredibly complex fleet, plus RJs mixed in, lends itself to 30 hour layovers, because our quite clever network guys know how to max the resources. If we only have one 717 a day to Evansville and all the rest are RJs, for example, and it is the last flight in at midnight and first flight out at 0600, guess what? 30 hour layover it is. That's not a plot to make our flying lives less than ideal (though sometimes I like the long layovers). It is network maximizing resources, revenue and eventually, lots of profit that you and I enjoy, especially every Feb 14.

3. I'm not saying the ADG is perfect. I have flown plenty of these ridiculous three leg 8+hour days, when what used to be a very nice 7+ hour one-day turn now has an ATL-TPA leg tagged on to a crappy short layover. I don't like that at all. I'm not saying we shouldn't advocate for a min pay per day provision. It may turn out to be everything we hoped and then some. However I will be curious to see how our bid packages look if we implemented them. For the most part there is no "min pay per day fairy" out there, where the trips all look the same but we get paid more. They WILL change. Whether it is for the better or not of course is the big unknown.