Higher min guarantee or lower min guarantee?

My preference is lower... Usually you can't drop flying below min guarantee... You can more than likely pick up more flying if you need the money.

Of course every contract is different.
 
LaserRacer said:
My preference is lower... Usually you can't drop flying below min guarantee... You can more than likely pick up more flying if you need the money.

Of course every contract is different.
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Most regionals seem to allow dropping down to 65 from what I have seen.

Lowering min guarantee screws reserves over quite hard. Line holders usually have ways to reduce if they want. Reserves at many airlines literally have 0 control once they are awarded a schedule and likely wont break guarantee unless the airline is hurting for pilots.

IMO the best option is to have a high guarantee with a way to have line holders opt down to a lower level.
 
Maurus said:
Most regionals seem to allow dropping down to 65 from what I have seen.

Lowering min guarantee screws reserves over quite hard. Line holders usually have ways to reduce if they want. Reserves at many airlines literally have 0 control once they are awarded a schedule and likely wont break guarantee unless the airline is hurting for pilots.

IMO the best option is to have a high guarantee with a way to have line holders opt down to a lower level.
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Our drop limit is actually 0, but below 58:36, you will be responsible for the full costs of your benefits.

Except for a handful of senior pilots who can get their bid solutions below the default minimum credit, nobody at this airline is working that little.
 
Autothrust Blue said:
Our drop limit is actually 0, but below 58:36, you will be responsible for the full costs of your benefits.

Except for a handful of senior pilots who can get their bid solutions below the default minimum credit, nobody at this airline is working that little.
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What about your 175 reserves at ORD?
 
We cannot drop below min guarantee unless you bid a reduced credit line which would be 60 credits. It will hurt reserves, because reserve min guarantee also goes down by an hour with virtually no way to go above it.
 
Just remember, you can't change ANYTHING having to do with credit without the trips changing. "Well, if the rig was this, than this trip would pay that"....er, maybe, but it might also be that trip wouldn't even exist under those credit values.

The computer loves working in the corners to find solutions. Change one little thing, even the line construction values, and you may get something totally different and unexpected.

Back in the day, when the overall number of airplanes was limited, and airline scheduling was essentially done by hand, the emphasis was probably on something other than absolute minimum crew cost. These days, with the computing power and the near limitless combinations of hub flying, they can really clobber you.

For example...If you force a higher credit guarantee with more days off, then the computer (which are all invariably set to minimize soft time) will work to make sure your days have as little soft time as possible. This will jam a LOT of flying into the days (not necessarily bad), but it might have the side effect of making the trips uncommutable. The problem is that certain items are uncontrollable, or beyond the control of the pilots...scheduled block time, minimum turnaround time, number of banks per day, etc, etc, and that works to complicate the problem immensely from a QoL point of view.

This stuff is like a really horrible geometry problem. You have to consider all the angles. Having good rules on trip construction also helps.

Richman
 
Richman said:
This stuff is like a really horrible geometry problem. You have to consider all the angles. Having good rules on trip construction also helps.

Richman
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Another good example of that is when you move a min day value up too high. Sure, 5:30 sounds great, but that means that to reduce soft time, suddenly there are no more 7 hour/per day 4 days and instead every 4 day trip is worth 5:30 per day.

Also, a higher min monthly guarantee can screw up your vacation credit numbers. 75 hours MMG with 12 days off (industry standard) gives you a daily value of 4:10. That means that in order to get a full month off (12 days guaranteed + 18 days of "vacation") you need to have your vacation day worth 4:10. Very few places have that level of credit assigned to a vacation day so you end up having to work extra days in a month where you take vacation. It's totally counter intuitive. A lower MMG (say, 60 hours) will give you the ability to have a full month off and a more realistic daily vacation credit. The caveat though is that you need to separate your line holder MMG and your reserve MMG. A line holder can (almost) always bid up. A reserve can't so they need to be protected to whatever the realistic MMG is.
 
You really need a scheduling savant to work the numbers. I knew a guy at AirTran that could do all this stuff in his head. You'd give him a scheduling issue, and you could almost hear the abacus clicking. and the end answer was almost always right on the money.

He was quite amazing, really.

Richman
 
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