exactly right-money seems to go above all else with our pilot group. I like getting big checks too, but I also love my time off. I'd like to see a min calendar day of pay so those 3-day trips with 8 hours block day 1, 30 hour layover, then 7:45 block day 3 would actually pay 21 hours or so instead of the 15:45. This company is smart!

The problem is that we simply don't get a high enough hourly rate. If we all could make more than an average middle class income we wouldn't need to work as much as we do.

Back in the day it was a full month to do 3 4-day domestic trips. Now you have to do 4. Also those 3 trips were typically commutable, now the 4 we have to do start at 0500 and get done at 2000.

Every contract we get "better" work rules, but the company exploits them to make them cost neutral and we get screwed.

Won't be long until we are all doing 4 5-day trips a month to make what our neighbors who manage Wal-Mart make.

How about we stop getting more "efficient" work rules and just make them pay us in rates? I would rather do 3 4-day trips a month than 4 5-day trips a month for the same pay.

Good points.

Imo, being on the bottom end of any domestic category strongly resembles a regional airline lifestyle. I think captains going over 10,000 at an airline of 12,500 pilots reflects that.

"Better" is true in some areas but debatable in others. Things like increasing the TLV, changing the bid calendar for the summer months, allowing ALV +15 were sold for rock bottom dollar. They all add up to the same thing, a lot more time spent a work and a little bit extra money at the end of the month...in the end it's really not a "raise."

That. That right there is a great point.

moral of the story is touching how much we are paid or scheduling in any way to get someone to their happy spot and you ruin someone elses happy spot.

Especially if it's a cost neutral adjustment.

While its partly ADG/credit driven, a huge part of it is our million fleet types compounded with marketing's blank check to route equipment anywhere under any circumstance to save/make one penny per flight.

When you have routes where the company switches similar or even same sized planes around regardless (irregardless?) of pairing considerations and then hands off the flying to build pairings, degraded QOL is going to be the result. Ironically that pushes us to demand (rightfully so) better work rules and rigs (aka financial consequences) for QOL degradations in the first place. The company may then turn around and point to the very QOL hits that they created and say that (and the drastically increased training bubble) drives poor productivity because we're all sitting around at the airport/hotels and they want other offsets elsewhere to make up for the supposed lack of productivity.

The QOL ship has sailed.

There are simply not enough guys who care about quality of life.
Time off has clearly become secondary among Delta pilots.
The majority wants to work to the FARs.

The best thing we could possibly do would be to bring back some sort of cap.
Very few want that though. They see it as a pay cut if they can only fly 75 hours instead of 90.

The fact that they could be making more and working less by faster advancement to captain or larger equipment doesn't seem to matter. They somehow don't believe it.

As mentioned by someone earlier, the people this is really killing is the commuters. I don't see how anybody commutes that isn't VERY senior in category. Coming in the day prior, even occasionally, is just such a huge chunk of time out of your life. Nobody seems to realize that you are essentially WORKING during that time. For a payrate of $0. Plus you pay the hotel or crashpad.

BRING BACK A CAP !!

I'm completely on board with a cap.

Here's a crazy idea.

Let people drop a turn. Make thing is more commutable but the catch, someone has to first pick up the turn AND the turn is only paid in block hours.

Disclaimer
I thought that up on my own and on the fly. No research or thought was put into it. It really is just throwing something against the wall.

With a bow wave and spillback system.

We used to be all about "more money AND more time off".
We've somehow lost sight of the latter.