Every airline considers RON a/c as part of their staffing model.

Sucks for the DEN guys who are having their base downsized but it doesn’t make sense to RON 30 a/c in DEN, and have half of them go out mostly empty to outstations every morning.

Some posters here seem to be deliberately obtuse to these facts. The same people complaining about the uncertain financial future of the company seem to want to go back to a staffing model that lead us to fly empty planes all over the place every morning and night to/from bases.

 

This right here is one of the big reasons we started flying red-eyes. AW said years ago that BWI originators flew too empty to make sense, but the base was so big they had to get the pilots moving early to support the rest of the network. Each red eye helps to fill those EMOs.

 

And hotels. If it isn’t commutable, I’m not doing it. No way I’m taking a pay hit on hotel costs because planning is run by idiots.

 

Yeah, each airline considers RON as PART of the staffing model. They don’t use it for 100% of their staffing model, because that’s asinine.

You can’t consider RON only when you’ve got 3 dozen planes flying through the night, not RON anywhere. That’s why daily departures also plays a part. Instead of EMO’s, you have a morning bank…pilots can start work then. Nobody wants to go to work or get on a plane at 4 am…but they sure as hell love going to work at 8-9 am. Add some DHD’s if you need to…cheaper than playing the Titanic deck chair shuffle with people’s lives.

They decided the “best way” to do RE trips was the most inefficient, unproductive way possible….2 duty period, 3 days. It’s great for pilots that want to get paid to do little work. It’s terrible for productivity and staffing. We’re not flying a 777 from SYD to LAX….Embed the RE leg into pairings based out west…you don’t transit 0300, and don’t need 15 hrs rest. It’s a late PM. Get your 14 hrs rest in BWI and go back to work by 1700-1800. Bonus…you don’t need to displace 300 pilots to do it.

For an airline where the CEO literally quoted Herb last week about putting employees first….this place does anything but. Displacements, new JS rules, etc.

 

But SWApULL drinks for free. SAIEW. If people don’t think that was intentional they are nuts. The club of SWApULLIES are all about the club.

 

“I want everybody to focus and care about my personal difficulty. I also want to shift that difficulty to others of whom I, personally, don’t care about.” Nice perspective.

 

Southwest isn’t doing that either. Obviously there are even more factors than RON and daily departures to consider when establishing staffing levels. Otherwise ATL would have closed this year.

We are already shifting the banks of flying in DEN in the manner you describe to optimize connections. That doesn’t require more staffing in DEN. We are increasing Nashville flying as well, with no extra staffing in that base either.

You can’t properly staff red eyes from the west coast until you have red eye reserve. I don’t know about the other bases but starting in February, very few of the BNA red eye pairings are 2 legs anymore. Many are 4 days with a red eye at the end.

 

SWA at the moment is doing a half a** fix on this. They really want to be a p2p carrier at its core. But the reality is in a place like DEN, where the system they set up doesn’t work, ICO’s are a must to keep DEN viable. They ignored it for a couple years until they couldn’t. Same with RE’s. Crew planning was never really ready for it but senior management demanded it. RE’s were not suppose to happen until late 2026 when tech had its issues resolved(RE reserves). It is what it is.

DEN is #1 in passengers at SWA. I have no inside info but you can bet that yields are lower than the system average. Connectivity drives up load factors which drive up yields. That’s the goal. That has to be done in order for DEN to grow. DEN is no where near max capacity. Much more growth can happen in DEN if it gets back on a good financial trajectory. DEN peaked at 303 flights. This summer it’s about 294 flights. Almost half of the new cities they announced for 2026 are routed through DEN. That’s on the network planning of things. Crew plannings only lever is displacements. The choice for them was clear. A financially viable DEN is good for crews that are or will be displaced. If DEN gets back to a much more of a system average of yields, network planning will grow DEN. I said this on another thread, DEN ain’t going anywhere. Unfortunately the tweaks they have made had an oversized impact on crews. They should at least tried to work with SWAPA and come to a beneficial solution for both. They didn’t.

 

The amount of catastrophizing in this thread is insane.

If you want to give up your seniority here and go to any airline with large amounts of international exposure, during a time of unstable geopolitics, knock yourself out.

 

I have a crystal ball and I think things are gonna be stable for a long time. Delta and United have so much momentum, they will not be stopped!