LeineLodge

Sometimes it just turns out to be timing. I agree that in a large category, there "should" be more likelihood of at least someone sitting around willing to do it.

As someone else pointed out, RSV is the best way to open up your sked for rolling thunder IF you can get it rolling. This is especially true when the ALV is near it's upper limits (don't know what NYCERB's ALV is, just saying) because that will soak up another additional day, or more, for each REG pilot making them even less available for a GS.

Once you get the first 2 or 3 your sked is pretty wide open for the remainder of the month.

Another rendition of rolling thunder (though not exactly ROLLING thunder) is to bid to have all your days off at the end of the month - which is sometimes a better plan for the more junior among us. Your days all then "roll" in the PB bank and you can place them, coverage permitting, at the beginning of the following month to open things up even more - rolling from month to month. This sometimes works for the junior guys because other pilots are already past their G#1, 2, etc by the time the junior pilot hits his X days, putting him at/near the front of the line for several in a row. Of course, this assumes you didn't time out already during your RSV stretch of 17-18 in a row. It's definitely more of an art/crapshoot than a science.

Alan Shore

Agreed.

There are unfortunately many different ways to spin the numbers. In 1998, we saw the largest to date pretax profit of $1.7B, which is of course dwarfed by the $2.7B pretax income of 2013, let alone the projections for 2014. Those who argue the margin point will say that 1998 saw a pretax margin of 12.0%, while 2013 saw only 7.0%, due largely to the interest we're paying on our debt. Assuming zero increase in total revenue, a pretax profit of $4.0B would generate a margin of 10.6% - still less than that of 1998.

OTOH, the total block hours flown in 1998 were 2.1M. In 2013, we flew 2.7M block hours, an increase of only 29% while revenue increased 168%. In the meantime, Gulf Coast jet fuel went up from $0.40 to $2.92 per gallon, an increase of 630%!!

Wouldn't it be nice if our pilot cost could keep up with that rate of inflation?

In 2001, the first full year of C2K and before too many of the costs of the post 9/11 kicked in, we had a pilot CASM of 1.34 cents. That hit its high point of 1.83 in 2003, but I don't know how much of that increase was due to C2K and how much of it was due to the added costs of massive overstaffing and displacements. At the very least, I would like to see our pilot CASM, i.e., total cost of the PWA, keep up with the rise of revenue per seat mile.

Sink r8

That seems entirely plausible. It's not much to go from 1 to 2 without senior people jumping in, and once you've got two or three, as you said, the field is wide open. There really aren't a lot of senior REG pilots that have enough openings on their sched for multiple GS. Especially not when they can't drop trips.

Normally, you'd expect senior guys to be able to give up a trip via the SB, in order to swoop in on an easy GS, but in reality, everyone else is probably already maxxed out. Which explains why GS#1 are being handed out to near the bottom of the category, but that's about as far as it goes.

BTW, the person(s) that negotiated the stipulation about GS#2 not being handed out until everyone had a shot at GS#1 need(s) to have a statue erected in their honor. That was a huge improvement.

tsquare

This is exactly right. There is a huge amount of luck in getting the ball rolling. And even when that happens, you still have to have the right sequence of X days and seniority/availability/and category manning to keep it rolling. You also have to have a willingness to fly crappy trips (like MEX)... My category has practically zero GSs going out anymore. I don't think we have had more than 5 or 6 all month...

forgot to bid

thats what I thought, so how does this below factor in?

forgot to bid

we have a plethora of GSs go out every day on my category. I got a three day gslip two weeks ago and since ive had seven days of wide open no restrictions GS in and not once got one or was passed for one. I get rolling thunder and all but I wouldnt risk it. Despite all the GSs we still have a lot getting GS #1 (and many of those are senior). I saw someone with #3 or #4 but vast majority is #1 and senior guys on #2.

Alan Shore

GS/IA flying is combined with reserve flying to determine the number of reserve pilots required for each position, while total pay and credit plus known absences divided by the ALV determines the number of regular pilots required for that position.

forgot to bid

So in April 2013 we went from 10,547 pilots to to 10,681 in April 2014. The seniority list declined by about 50 numbers but the # in category is what matters. Or maybe that's just me.

The thing about the pay hours for 2013 is 531K of it was block hours and 42K was credit hours for a total of 574.5K pay hours. What I'd love to see is that same breakout for April 2014 but that's not out yet. But it wasn't published in March either. I'm just curious. Last April I flew 72 and was paid 80, this April I flew 40 and was paid 107.

Either way what's the point of your YOY increase in staffing = growth? A 746 total staffing required YOY was met by a 134 net increase with 169 new hires on the list.

At this moment, I defer to Alan Shore


dude. I totally have a bad one of you. Sex, lies and videotapes... oh when the time is right...

and Sailing. Who needs to get an avatar pic for flying out loud.

Alan Shore

At this point, I'm too busy drooling over my former self to answer.

Denny Crane

FTB,

While the greenslip numbers are pretty astounding, I'm also pretty sure that those numbers are for greenslip duty periods not greenslips total.

Denny