2010 is the expiration of the 2005 CBA (I think).
I personally think that the 5 domiciles would work if we had more pilots and more planes (NJI is too small for it to work). Less than 25% of the current pilots are domiciled...I think if more were, then we'd see more use out of the concept.
I really don't think that's the case. To start a tour out of a domicile, you'd need both crewmembers
and an airplane (of the right make and model for the crew) all on the same start day, all at the same base.
I'm in our biggest fleet, based out of PBI, and
have never picked up an airplane in PBI. Not once. If the plane were there, and the whole crew were there, it might make sense. But that just doesn't happen with any regularity. Indeed, forcing people to fly out of these cities with expensive air service (PBI, DFW, LAX) is costing the company, not saving it.
Need examples of the insanity? I spent half of my first day recently
getting to a plane at the MCO Cessna Service Center! (It's a few miles from where I live.) I started my day in PBI at 9am, got a rental car to FLL, to take a Mesa flight that got me to MCO at 405pm. Another half hour to get my bag and get to the service center, another hour or so getting the plane cleaned up and preflighted, and it's 6pm -- 10 hours after report time to get a plane ready that was parked a mere few miles from my apartment. The plane was signed off the evening prior, and was ready to fly revenue, had I not wasted the whole day getting to my MCO-based captain.
In another example, I ended a tour at SFO a while back, because that's where the plane ended up going. I spent the entire duty day getting home, with a connection in Newark. Had I been based in MCO, the company could have used me for a leg or two, and still been able to get me home, because MCO has
dramatically more frequent (and less expensive) air service than PBI, many times with direct flights from many cities.
That time I spent making a connection in EWR could have been productive for the company, but it wasn't, because I'm based in PBI instead of MCO. Instead, the whole day was shot getting me home on a $900 ticket to PBI with a 3-hour EWR layover, instead of a $403 nonstop on United.
i have no idea what went through the negotiator's head, but i highly doubt domiciles were designed just to piss people off.
The
claim at the time, as I understand it, was that planes were going to be ferried back to these bases, and routine maintenance would be done overnight. That absolutely did not happen, for the same reasons we don't pick the planes up from domiciles at all:
the planes aren't there. They're out on the road, flying owners around. When they need maintenance, they're fixed at the nearest service center or company facility. It isn't an airline. The planes don't go through these cities like airline hubs.
It was a bargaining chip to use down the road; nothing more.
not like the CBA wasn't voted on anyway...
Well, it wasn't voted on by those who would be subject of the full brunt of the domicile system. I don't at all begrudge them for doing what they needed to do at the time, but those of us
really affected by the domiciles weren't employees yet. So the suggestion that it's a good policy "because it was voted on" is a non-sequitur.
Pilots... Never fu**** happy. NOT EVER! :smash:
