tsquare

Funny, but I am totally against OOBS for individual trips.

RonRicco

Same here. If you think there was hanky panky (Panky ha) going on with the swap board when it was restricted to in base, wait until you add other bases into the mix.

If it were as simple as "hey, I'll take your ATL-MUC if you will take my JFK-MAD" it wouldn't be a big deal. That really isn't the desire for many who want this, they want access to out of base trips to avoid or shorten their commute.

If you are based say in NYC, since it is such a more junior base, I can see where you would be pushing for it. As an example, maybe you can't even hold the 737 in ATL, but you go to the swap board and start picking up ATL trips to fill your schedule. Not a bad deal eh?

What about that same pilot who has a "friend" in ATL who is pretty senior on the 737. How do we feel if that pilot takes a trip from open time and then turns around and gives it to his buddy through swap with friends? Again, good for the NYC guy but maybe not so good for the other ATL guys who wanted that trip, or the pilot who may have got it on a GS.

To be fair, for the ATL guy who just needed to get rid of a trip for a family event etc, it may give him that day off that he otherwise may not have been able to get.

My only point is that anytime you start going down a path like this, you certainly need to consider all the ramifications including, seniority, staffing, trip allocation, yadda yadda yadda. Sometimes things that appear to be simple, really come with a lot of hooks and I think it is easier to avoid the "hooks" before implementation than after. One only had to look at the recent CDO issue to see how many possible "hooks" CDOs had as an example of not properly vetting an issue.

Disclaimer, ATL and NYC were used only as an example.

Alan Shore

I know. That's why I'm surprised to see you bring this idea up, as I see it little more than a wholesale set of OOB trip swaps.

tsquare

However, this could easily be taken care of if all reserves in a given geographical area are taken into account for reserve coverage. For example, all -88 reserves in CVG/ATL/NYC/DTW should count for reserve availability for drop purposes because the company has the luxury to DH a reserve to another base to cover a trip. We should also have that benefit. It benefits lineholders all the way up to number 1 and down to the bottom.

Alan Shore

Great idea. You should put that in your text box.

Sink r8

Again, I agree with RonRicco, and t.

I would that you shouldn't think of OOBS just in the context of a 1-1 swap, but in terms of mining other people's flying. I'll give you an example... Say me and a few buddies have our own bidding mafia. One of us is senior. He drops a trip, then has plenty of margin to the WS pick-up limit. Anything juicy, he picks it up, and sends it via SWF/SB to whomever he sees fit. We all fill up to FAR's. Senior guy picks one up for himself. We just steered a bunch if open time our way. We can't trip park, but we don't care.

Thing is, none of wants to bid a certain junior base. It's got good flying, and better seniority. Up until C2015, none of us really wanted to be there. Now, we can send a guy there (not even the most senior guy) or get someone from there in our little circle of trust, and we can use the same technique to mine the other base's flying. In return, we can each pick up an extra trip in that base, up to FAR's, and we can do some trading among ourselves so that the guy who bid the less desirable base doesn't actually have to commute up there much at all.

tsquare

Definitely will.... of course no one else will know about it.

Alan Shore

I'm clearly missing something. You all want to fly trips out of that base. You'd all be very senior in that base. Tell me again why you don't want to bid to that base? What else is there besides seniority and good trips?

nwaf16dude

I'm opposed to out-of-base swaps, but I'd be okay with out-of-base straight pickups as long as there was some amount of minimum time (5 days, for example) it had to be on the swap board before an out of base guy could pick it up.

tsquare

We already have this. OOBWS