Commutable Pairings
 

Can anyone give a bit of insight into how commutable the pairings are (in general) at Spirit? I know it varies from base to base, but for example, what percentage of pairings have first day show times after 1200 and last day duty off times before, say, 1600? I know it's impossible to give exact numbers, just trying to get a ballpark idea. If I were fortunate enough to come onboard at Spirit, I'd be commuting from a non-hub airport in Texas. DFW base would be the ultimate goal and an easy single leg commute even with fairly early shows/late releases. But from what I gather, new hires are not getting DFW out of class, so any of the other bases would be two leg and fairly inefficient commutes. And as a follow on question, once you hold a line, is it still fairly easy to drop and pick up trips during the improvement windows in order to get a more commutable schedule? I've seen in lots of previous posts that there's a ton of flexibility in the system, but just wondering if that has changed at all with the implementation of PBS, current staffing levels, etc. Any input is greatly appreciated!

Not sure I’ve ever done a commutable pairing out of dfw. Most flying leaves between 5-8am and returns 9-midnight. There are trips with one end commutable but don’t see many with both.

I agree. I see mostly early morning report times for DFW pairings. But if it’s commutable on the front end, usually it returns around midnight.

Pairings change quiet often depending on the month and specially, depending on the season. Pairings in smaller bases like DFW would get affected (more) by early departures and late a arrivals, these varying greatly depending on the season. I don’t have first experience with DFW but there’s no point in giving you specifics about what’s going on right now anyways for the reasons I just mentioned. You get my point. If you want to see the silver lining a 4 day trip that starts early and finishes late, it’s probably worth 23-25 hrs because our 3.5:1 trip rig.

If you’re a line holder there’s a ton of flexibility (reserve = 0). You can change your schedule constantly throughout the month. We don’t have an “improvement window”. We have initial open time, where you can modify your schedule based on seniority, and after that we have daily open time, which is independent of seniority and the latest you can trip trade/drop is 2 days prior by noon ET. You can also pick up out of base, but you’d be restricted to the green/red grid to the original Trip’s base.

The bad news is, DFW is our most senior FO base at the moment. It’s not growing at all. You might be able to hold DFW a few months after training but holding a line could take forever. If you’re a commuter, I think you’d be better off going to a base where you could hold a line, and then pick up trips from DFW. In the meantime, you just got to figure out where do you want to commute to reserve (ughh)

Thing that I’m seeing now in DFW is if you don’t snag trips from open time within the first few minutes of open time opening, there won’t be very much to choose from as time goes on as line holders from other bases who live in DFW but can’t hold DFW swap the trips from their bases and pick up DFW trips.

at least that is what has been going on the last two months.

plenty of trips to choose from in mco and fll, but very few in ord and dfw.

DFW has been a hard commute since it opened. I was a commuter my first year here. I could either drive 15 mins to a small airport close to my home and commuted to DFW or driven an hour and a half to a major airport and commuted a longer flight to FLL. I chose FLL after 3 months of getting cheap (TERRIBLE) motels and sleeping in the terminal from 11-5am waiting on the morning flight home. DFW has always sucked for commuters.

LAS will have at lease one end that’s commutable. Red eye the first day and get back late day 4, which credit 20-23 hrs. 3 day trip that start with a red eye, long layover and get back very early on day 3 which credit 10 hrs. We also have 4 day trip that leave at 9AM - Noon, and get back late afternoon which also credit 20-23 hrs. I would say LAS is very good as a commuter if you can deal with the red eyes.

All great info guys (although, that's disappointing about DFW). Looks like Vegas would be the best bet for my situation based on what I'm hearing. I'm a night owl so I don't "think" red-eyes would be an issue for me. Looks like you could do three 4-day rotations, get 60-70 hours, and only have three hotel nights (either on front end or back end of the trip). That still gives you 15 days off and a (relatively) stress-free commute. The others would be a bit tougher, but I guess the goal would be, if you can't get a commutable trip, get a trip that is as densely packed with credit as possible, so maybe you only have to do three rotations per bid period to get reasonable credit and just "bake in" commuting days as part of the equation.

Couple of other questions - I know it changes daily, but does anyone have a current idea how the bases are ranking right now from Jr. to Sr.? And maybe how long it takes to hold a line in each? (Again, I know it's a moving target, just looking for today's projections). And are new hires getting ACY? I posted a list of earliest 2 flight arrivals and latest departures for the different bases to my home airport below. You'll notice that ACY is basically impossible for me. I'd always have to go in the day before and always come home the day after, regardless of the start/end times. With the exception of Vegas, are any of the times below reasonable to expect either a front or back commutable pairing? I'm guessing most are not gonna work out (again, besides maybe Vegas). Thanks again for all the info!

earliest 2 flight arrival / latest departure
mco 1205 / 1930
fll 1205 / 1910
dtw 1353 / 1925
las 0900 / 1645
dfw 0800 / 2035
ord 1135 / 1835
acy complete nightmare

There are other recent threads with base seniority discussions, I suggest you go through them.

Is DFW the only one-leg commute from your city? Maybe if you share where you live, other commuters in similar situation could give you more insight.

No matter how you look at NK, if your commute sucks, you’ll never fully enjoy the benefits of our schedules. I know that could be said about any airline, but if you’re commuting on your own metal, or at least on the regional of the legacy you work for, things will be infinitely easier.

If moving to a base it’s out of the question, then I would seriously consider living based on 60-70hrs of credit a month. That way you’d only have to work 3 4-day trips a month. We have some commuters here that claim they don’t move to base because the high cost of living related to big cities, yet they seem eager to credit 90+ hrs. Can’t have it both ways, at least not in happily manner.

When I was based there there were tons of commutable 3 days, problem was they were always back to back, with the early start first, and the late finish last, so 3 eight day trips a month.....