Den756
 

With the company announcement of a DEN 756 base reopening, I would like to hear what the flying was like when the base existed before. I am probably a ways from holding it, really just curious. I've flown with guys that held it and they spoke of flying 3 Hawaii trips per month. Probably transcons as well I'm guessing.

3 Hawaii does not sound right. a 3 day would pay 15-16 hours. If they did some w flying it could be a 5 day and pay 25 hours. Bottom line is you still are looking at around 15 days on like most trips.

There was probably some other trips like transcons thrown in. Just curious what the flying was like, good and bad(if any).

Short answer.. Very senior :)

When was this announced

When they shut us down, we were doing a lot of hub to hub, hub to MCO, LAS, BOS, and PS transcons. We had daily HNL (not summer), and Saturday LIH and KOA. I think today KOA is like 3 times a week. We also did OGG (not sure of frequency) and other HI trips from the LAX/SFO.

Sled

Crew Resource Report two days ago

Thanks Sled! Something to look forward to down the road.

Next time save your keystrokes Capt Helpful 😂

Will the L-UAL guys have grandfather rights or super seniority...or is that something only the Cal guys think they are entitled to? ������

There used to be wording in that contract that granted grandfather rights IF the base reopened within a certain time frame. I can't find that in section 8; anyone know the answer?

Not there anymore. See MOU 14.

8-C-6 (so called Grandfather Rights)
 

8-C-6 When a vacancy or vacancies occur in a Category from which a Pilot(s) has been displaced under the provisions of Section 8-E, the displaced Pilot(s) shall, for a period of 120 days beyond the effective date of his displacement, be offered in order of seniority the vacancy prior to awarding that position under the provisions of Section 8-C-5. This 120 day period is measured from the effective date of the displacement to the date on which the vacancy bulletin is published.

Oh no...the lual guys get it too...just ask the "400" weirdos

I missed that. Was thinking about the 24 mos, as per MOU 14.

Yep the Hawaii trips were normal three days and paid 14 hours and some change. I personally flew them three times a month and filled in with one day turns. Many here have little clue that most of us lUAL pilots did not fly more than 78 hours a month. A big time month was 83 hours unlike today's line holders who regularly manage 90+ hours.

There was a short time when the 767 would fly a Hawaii W over five days. DEN HNL SFO HNL DEN. Two nights in HNL and one in SFO, but that was a very rare trip and I believe only one summer.

If I remember correctly, wasn't line pay value capped at 85 hours with everything above that going into a bank to be payed out in the following months?

Continental had that. You could bank up to twenty five hours and draw from it in a light month or you could get it all paid out in a vacation month.

LGA-DEN..
Flown out of EWR base (75-3). 2 day, pays a little over 10hrs + crosstown pay.
About 8ish flt hours.

Another type of trip that can be flown out of the DEN 765 base.
Saves 60 hotel rooms, 60 xtown pays, 30 limos.

There's probably a bunch of turns they can do, along with 3 and 4 day trips that will pay M5D but not invoke Trig Rig.

Opening any BES is a good thing. Means the company is trying to utilize the fleet/manpower efficiently.
Up to us to make sure we have contractual protections to make it beneficial to us..
Either a higer MinPayPer Day, better Trip Rigs or better Profit Sharing.

Wonder how big the base will be?
Motch

What base is going to shrink or close? The small bases are around 100 crews.

I heard once they staffed DEN 756 fully with 150 crews, they would start to reduce IAH 756 by the same number.

I flew the 10 and 727 out of there for a brief period. London and Hawaii on the 10, alot of different stuff on the 72.

The base shrank as the loss margins widened with the LCC's invasion and marketing realized ( and admitted), that Denver is a relatively small remote city with little O and D traffic.

The reason Denver opened in the first place was that prior to jets, everyone needed a refueling stop between the coastal hubs.

Denver will open, grow and shrink again when this current group of marketing gurus admit it's a loser for anything larger than 150 seats. Always has been.

Finally to answer your question; the flying will be very inconsistent as marketing hunts and pecks for yield in a thin market.

I don't doubt your analysis of the Denver of the past...but this is not your 1980s Denver. The 10 county Denver area is now about 3M peeps. The median housing listing as of 4/17 is 420K. The unemployment rate is 2.7%. Southwest Airlines came in here in 2006 with 13 flights a day, today they have just under 200. At our flight ops pow wows, management has consistently opined that "Denver is our most profitable hub". AND there ain't no guppy or A320 that can make it to HI from Denver. So I'm guessing the 757 base will do just fine. BUT, I could be wrong. ;)

That's pretty scary. Was there peyote involved in this pow wow?
Last I heard SFO had the number one spot.

A quick check shows Denver ranked at number 18 by GDP in US metro areas, wedged firmly between Baltimore and San Diego, below other such megalopolises as Detroit, Minneapolis and Seattle.

Confirms my belief about marketing Turks.

edit;
I just realized that we could take on Icelandair to Keflavik. Nevermind..

For BMEP (I underlined DEN's O&D ranking): https://www.flydenver.com/about/pres...senger_traffic

In 2016, DEN saw a record-setting 58.3 million passengers
This ranks DEN as the third-fastest growing airport in the world, behind only Kuala Lumpur and Delhi
DEN as the sixth busiest airport in the U.S. and 19th busiest in the world (according to 2015 numbers. 2016 figures have yet to be released)
Approximately 65 percent of travelers at DEN are origination and destination (O&D) passengers, and 35 percent are connecting
Approximately 35 million annual domestic passengers are O&D passengers, making DEN the fourth-largest domestic O&D hub in the U.S.
International traffic at DEN accounts for approximately 2.2 million passengers annually – approximately 4 percent of the airport’s total passenger traffic

As someone pointed out. Southwest has done a remarkable job in Denver... of creating a market. It's just not our market.
Were these figures compiled by Denver airport authority or their lobbyists, I wonder.

Their source citation is "Denver Marketing". Curious they didn't use DoT data or link their reports.

It was on the internet so it must be true. :D

I tried to sift through the DoT data before posting that link/quote. In spite of spending half an hour or so, I wasn't able to find where DoT hides those numbers. YMMV. If you can find a current list of top O&D cities in the US, please post it.

I've seen other (older) posts on different websites where DEN was near the top of the list for O&D. Others at/near the top were NYC, LAX, LAS, MCO.

Denver has a lot of regional headquarters for Federal agencies so I could see where it generates a lot of O&D traffic, not to mention O&D from all of the skiers in the winter.

Here are the numbers for 2016 domestic origin/destination for all our hubs from the DOT:

Chicago (all airports) 2,360,000
Houston (all airports) 1,109,000
New York (all airports)= 3,391,000
Wash DC (all airports)= 2,116,000
Cle = 418,000
Denver = 1,563,000
LA (all airports)= 3,168,000
SFO (all airports)= 2,483,000

https://www.transtats.bts.gov/Oneway...d=&sort_order=

I agree with BMEP, and it is a moment in time. Assuming the current revenue Nazi's are correct, it validates the decisions our revenue nazi's made 2-5 years ago, and they shrank DEN until the connecting traffic made a lot of money.

The decisions made now won't be validated for 2-5 years. I hope it works, but I just turn the wheel, and pull the gear handle. But I do pay attention, and have skin in the game.

If the company is going to continue to make monumental staffing changes every 2-5 years, maybe a monumental change to our commuter policy might be an important bullet to start our next negotiations.

But, I agree with BMEP.

The 757 departures are already here. A base will just save a sheet ton of cash in crew hotels according to Howard. In any case, apparently it's gonna happen, and it's a boon for us Denver dwellers. Bring it on baby! Wheeeew. :cool:

Right now there are 4 departures a day during the week. I would have to assume that number is planned to increase with a base opening.

FL D_ / DEN-14JUN/ / / 757/ 767/
FL# Dpt Dest
691 -0808 :00 EWR 3120 :00 :50
1758 -1145 :00 KOA 3109 :00 :50
1736 -1150 :00 OGG 3135 :00 :50
1209 -1400 :00 EWR 3139 :00 :50

Damn. That's pretty thin. LOL. Hnl is a 777 for the summer. It'll revert back come Fall. And Lih is Saturday only. I would imagine there will be some 737-900 replacement as well. Which could lead to DEN 737 base shrinkage.

HNL was a 777 year round at least this past year and as of now the timetable shows it staying on the 777.

Well blow me down!! I stand corrected.

If that is the justification, we should have had a base in MCO years ago.

I think they have more 757 cycles in an hour than DEN does in a day.

Okay, maybe 2 hours.

Denver has been one of our most successful cities in the history of Southwest Airlines, if not the most according to Gary Kelly. I think we hit 217 flights a day this month, and we have 820 pilots based in Denver. We add about 20 pilots a month on the vacancy awards. We are adding more gates on the east side of the C concourse and we would grow more if they could hire ground ops faster. We just passed over 1000 rampers and I think they need to hire 350 more. Denver is now a maintenance base for us and I wouldn't be surprised if Southwest doesn't buy or build a hanger. Denver flight ops says the base will be a mega station. Probably over 1000 pilots some time next year. We are flying full in and out of Denver constantly, AM's or PM's it doesn't matter.

United did as well pre bankruptcy ...The Bank. Anything over 78/83 (or was it 85?) got put into a bank. So for months were you flew less then 78/83 (or 85?) then whatever it took to bring you up to the max pay was deducted from your bank.

I don't totally recall the particulars because I was on perpetual reserve and never did exceed to cap even when a line holder.

Is DEN 756 going to fly the current South America and MUC trips as a W or are those flights going to be cancelled? IAH does very few DEN overnights now, and most domestic overnights are EWR and ORD. I think EWR LAX and SFO do most of the DEN fyling now.

How many departures a day are there in DEN now? Looking at all the bid packs for may there are only a few overnights at DEN compared to EWR, SFO, and ORD. seems like plussing up ORD would make more sense if they are looking to reduce expensive overnights.

I'd take that quote with a huge grain of salt. I doubt even network planners have a final idea of what flying will be shifted to DEN from other hubs.

As far as central/south America, some of that flying could be from LA, SFO, ORD, IAD, EWR. All of those cities have a large Hispanic population.
I used to fly LAX-SAL quite a bit pre-911; the flight was always full. In order to fly that route on UA metal, one must now connect through IAH.

I wouldn't bother overthinking this.

That's awesome. Somebody must of forgot to tell Mr. Kelly that Denver is a remote city with little O & D traffic. :D

Denver is growing like a weed...pun intended. ;)