Holy Increasing Utilization Batman!
 

posted this on that other site as well, but just thought I'd share here too . . .

So I wouldn't be surprised if I'm missing something here because honestly I just looked up the numbers now and haven't evaluated any other criteria, but here's the quick info I was just looking at . . . for most folks this probably doesn't come as a surprise. It's just that I knew something was changing, but the actual numbers seem more than I expected.

Anyways -

March 2018 System Schedule Report 11,172 Domicile Pilots and 609,934 Scheduled Pilot Hours = 54.6 hr/p
March 2017 System Schedule Report 11,133 Domicile Pilots and 581,433 Scheduled Pilot Hours = 52.2 hr/p

I know . . . nothing shocking but still interesting.

The increase in block hours is probably attributed to Easter falling in April 1 this year. Last year it was in mid-April. Nothing to get too excited over.

We grew by 39 pilots!

Bingo.

Filler

If my math is correct, that's a 4.5% increase in work performed per pilot. Equal to hiring 500. Obviously significant.

I wasn't looking at it as positive growth I was looking at it as a bad increase in pilot utilization that has led to a serious decline in hiring and movement. For the record the February numbers are similar. Also someone on the other forum says the increase in utilization was equal to a loss of 513 pilot positions.

2018 619,633/11109
2017 592,273/11079

Is the magical impossible quick turn also part of this utilization increase? For example...

Brought an airplane into B (EWR). Was notified that it was a quick turn to bogota. Checked the bogota flight and found that it was scheduled to leave in :40 from C137. ...& We were :14 early. All this on a good weather Sunday. That was not the only scheduled negative turn on my 27 hour 4 day.

Its been a while since Ive seen negative turns. They really sucked. I thought were trying to get away from crap like that.


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Negative turns are due to a routing issue somewhere. Broken plane, flow delay etc. The airplane flying schedule isn’t built with negative turns. If your Bogota example was a 756 then I would bet a box of sanicoms it was due to an airplane out of service for maintenance. Negative turns are indicative of higher utilization and no room in the schedule for irrops and unplanned maintenance. This may be a long summer.

I think it’s funny to see more hours per pilot as an automatically bad thing. At some point, our main purpose is flying planes, even though we all prefer to maximize the pay/hour equation. Honest question, what was happening last March? Was that part of the glut of 747 training? We’re down a fleet so that puts a few more bodies on the line.

It also seems to me (just anecdotally) that reserves are flying quite a bit on the narrowbody side, and I recall a lot of quiet time on reserve a few years ago.

Just suggesting that, to a point, this isn’t all bad for the pilot group - though obviously not ideal for the pilot waiting for a start date.

Ok. Got it now. Perhaps we are nearing the tipping point of increasing staffing.

What he is telling you is that there are variables that you might be missing and could therefore be overstating the implications of an increase in utilization. You might also want to read Carlson's letter in which he explains why more pilot block hours in March or other low season periods don't lead to more/less pilot hiring. Summer peak block hours are what drive hiring.

No, we are not.

Especially not if more 76 seat jets are outsourced the way Kirby would like.

We didn't have 76 seat jets until C2012. Prior to that it was 50 seats max. We voted it away for money.

More like on the cusp of a steadier hiring pace starting probably late this fall. Not growth per se. But, with all recalls finished this year, increased utilization, and no more wholesale fleet retirements I'd expect to see fairly consistent new hire classes to replace retirements at least. Can't think of much other remaining slack that could prevent modest hiring.

Obviously if the economy tanks all bets are off...

Wait, what?

Continental...

Recalls aren't done until fall of 2019.

UAL did......CAL didn't

Q-400's held how may pax again?;)

I hate to tell you that you can blame the Delta Pilots for that. They established the industry standard. The 50 seat limit was effectively gone at that point.

Word! That is exactly what Linda Puchala told us to our faces. "If you want a DELTA contract, the company gets 76 seats same as DELTA.


.........

He said jets. Not gonna put a q400 on YYZ to IAH


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Worse, CAL was flying -8’s EWR-IAD.

Holy Increasing Utilization Batman!
 

Bad decisions abound. Obviously the dash 8 wasn’t a good fit. Truthfully the q400 is a nice airplane. Mgmt had their eye on replacing 737-300,500 flying. It didn’t work out long term probably because it didn’t have to...contract 2012


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I sense impending thread drift [emoji23]


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You can blame contract 2012 all you want but there was NO way you were going to stuff the genie back into the bottle. UAL got 70 seaters shoved down their throats during bankruptcy. The 70 seaters came with the merger it had nothing to do with money. In fact contract 2012 held the scope line which was/is a positive.

Holy Increasing Utilization Batman!
 

Filler......

To put it back on topic, and to compare with delta hiring numbers since that’s the comp metric, this ute increase data actually validates some things. Can’t remember the specific numbers, but wasn’t it around 400 new hires and returnees in cy17? I will argue given that the furlough returns are full time employees, and with the new mil hires being predominantly the retiring type instead of the younger AFRC/ANG obligation type, we get a little better productivity on the bodies we put in class than delta does. And with this 500 pilot equivalent Ute increase, we’re in the same ballpark.

Got a friend at delta who says they are actually about to slow down hiring soon. Union guy and connected to interviewing so I believe it carries some weight. Says they are fat in a lot of categories and up to 14.5k pilots now. They called me for a class in 2016, I’d have come on board around #13100 so that’s some pretty solid list expansion in 2 yrs time!

Us otoh, I think premium will be off the charts this summer for narrowbodies.

So much for hiring more pilots......

A total increase of just 39 pilots??? Great to see the growth, way to dominate the market.

This..
Keep in mind, while we were negotiating our (1st) joint CBA, Delta[ALPA] came in and shifted Scope under our noses.

That begs the question, what is more important-
Holding the Line as a National Union with regards to Scope(Big & Small), or
Doing what is best for an individual Pilot Group?

(Hint Hint, there is no right answer, just opinions)

Had Delta not made their deal for small side Scope relaxation for their B717 deal, would we have had to shift our Scope line further to the right? Who knows.

It will be interesting to see what happens with our current negotiations. Personally, I don't see us having a deal this year with what SK has been spouting off. So what happens when these talks slide into 2019 and Delta[ALPA] gets a deal deal before us.. that shifts Scope again?

Food for though~

Been saying this for years. Just look at our Total Pilot Numbers from the SLI and to today.
We have not grown very much.. but we have become leaner and more efficient. We have also had many pilots come back off of Vol Fur and mil leaves.
Not that there is anything wrong with that, but the reality is.. we should have been making more Profits that should have trickled down to the pilot group in Profit Sharing.

Use to be, if you got delayed into your day off (on the EWR 756 BES), you could get the 5hrs of add pay in lieu of Day Off Restoration.
Low and behold, they figured out that it's cheaper to give you the Day Off restored and save the 5hrs of pay. A reserve will fly the trip that gets dropped off your line AND maybe they will be able to put something on your AV days thereby utilizing the pilot group better.

Food for thought for our next Contract.

Always
Motch
(Fly Safe, Fly Professionally & Fly The Contract)

Sorry for the 2nd post.
Anyhooters, this is an interesting comment.
Would be just as interesting to know how we stack up with regards to utilization.
Keep in mind, we can't just do a pilot to hours comparison since Widebodies tend to slew things differently than narrowbodies.

I've always heard that SouthWest pilots work. Line pilots AND reserves! Then again, they are also very efficient and their paychecks/QoL reflects that.

Does Delta have as many guys (and gals) as us, that go months without flying on reserve? Pilots that have to go to the sim for landings?

But back to the subject at hand-
Better utilization might work when everything goes as planned.. but it usually doesn't end up going as planned!
That being said, there will be money to be made this summer, but don't forget to enjoy Life and take time off to be with the ones you love (or like..
lol)
IMSAFE (look it up)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMSAFE

Motch

Is increased utilization a bad thing? Personally I’d love for this place to be the model of efficiency. My opinion is that a very efficient (properly staffed and managed) operation would result in more consistent hiring and progression than the ever changing staffing model that we have now. It would also allow the company to better compete and be a long term success providing us with long term employment and more leverage to demand better contracts in the future. I’d love to see trips fly 6.5+ per day so I could get my hours in 12 days and go home. I’d also like to win the lottery and allow all of those junior to me to move up a number, but I digress. My guess is that either option has an equal probability of happening.

For your ulcers sake, hang your hat on your last statement and take up a few hobbies that have nothing to do with aviation.

When REAL trip and duty rigs left the property, the move was permanent. I can still seel the words posted on the original Boyle's by a few smart old retirees -

"Give them the money, keep the rigs at all costs. The money you can claw back, the rigs, never" Pretty smart guys.

My last few years driving the bus, 4-day trips at only 20 hours pay. All started early on day one and ended late on the last. Lots of quality of life, if you liked sitting in IAH and ORD. And if you like hitting the hotel on day 2 and 3 before noon. Rigs with real teeth made this job great. And a pension made it a career.

My problem is that I have lots of interest outside of this job that keep me busy and sitting in a hotel doing nothing cuts into my time. I just wish I could fly hard and spend more time at home doing the things that I enjoy. My ideal schedule would be 3 commutable 27 hour 4 day trips. This is just a dollars per day gig to me. With all that has changed over the years it is still a good job at this level, just hoping we can make it better.

2003 leaving TK on the van to the airport ... The details of the first consessionary contract had just come out ... One of the guys had downloaded the details on his computer and was reading off what we had given up to the guys in the van ... After about 10 minutes of reading off losses one guy pipes up trying to lift spirits ..."at least we saved the pension" ... Me and one other guy immediately turned around and voiced a little rain on his parade.

Some things you never get back.

Where to begin...

“I want more hours and at the same time more days off.”

A few years ago I went back and looked at some lines from the “glory days” of this business, you know when things were right and true in this world and the USA was a fair place to live.

The senior 727 lines had 20 days off and 74 hours pay, reserve guarantee was 68 hours and 12 days off, schedule cap 76 hours and max pay was 78 hours. If you happened to project more than 78 hours it required a trip drop, yes that’s right no overtime pay. (Or something really close to this, I don’t have a copy of the contract from those years anymore)

Then when tough times hit management came and got relief with a 78 hour schedule cap, effectively getting 2 more hours out of each line.

Now just think of no overtime, 78 hours max pay time (credit not actual), and reserves with 68 hours (fixed days off, none of that movable stuff) all like when we had real duty rigs (did I forget to mention HoJos hotels, 8 hours between debrief and check-in... you get the idea) the whining would be epic!

With the exception of losing the defined pension plans, these are the good old days. So let’s not give one penny up and bring back those pilots flying mainline who aren’t covered by the UAL Pilot Contract.

My 2 cents: I agree wholeheartedly with It'sajob. What's up with these god awful, crappy ass, unproductive, POS trips we're offered, that are almost all multiples of 5 hours/credit/day? (I'm on the 737 fleet). 75 hours/5 hours/day = 15 days/month at work. 75 hours/6.8 hours/day = 11 days at work. Give me the days off.

While I'm *****ing, here's another: It seems most of our 4 day trips have three 7-ish hour days with a long layover in BFE, and /or some god awful east coast departures and/or late finishes. Why do I want to sit in BFE for 30 freaking hours and go home after 4 days with 20-21 hours credit? Bleh.

Perhaps I'm missing a key component of the equation, such as how Part 117 affects us, etc. But, if possible, as a commuter, I'd love to see more productive 4 day trips offered and spend more time at home.

We had an opportunity to fix this. :D

Please expound......