October '10 Bid's Nuts and Bolts

Sorry the Nuts and Bolts is coming out late. I was elected to SIA a while back and ever since I was  my workload has really gone through the roof. I'm still flying 115 a month average too. Anyway, here goes the post.

September proved to be a record setting month for Colorado Springs. Three hundred and fifty-one pairings made for the slimmest month the domicile has seen to this journal's date. No doubt the tightest that many of us have ever seen in COS. Going into October many of us were concerned that we'd end up with yet another decrease since the fall months have historically been worse. I'm happy to say that that isn't the case, however, 394 pairings for October is hardly something to brag about. Especially with the block hours dropping by 10% as you'll read in the RSR report. I'm happy to say that our new RSR gives us a little more information than previous RSRs.

DEN/COS October Bid Information

Overall, October's total block hours are down slightly from September.

Here are the details for COS:

Total CRJ (200 and 700 combined) block hours for October are 2376 vs. 2641 block hours in September - a reduction of 10%.

As far as credit distribution, the highest credit per duty period on the 200 is found in the locals, with an average of 5:51 per duty period. 2-days average 5:01, 3-days average 5:19, and 4-day pairings average 4:56 credit per duty period. Although there are fewer block hours, the credit-per-duty period is higher overall than last month.

On the 700, locals are also highest credit ratio with 5:40 per duty period. 2-days average 4:22, 3-days average 4:35, and 4-days average 4:55. Unfortunately, the 700 pairings have lower credit-per-duty periods on average – especially the 3-day trips.

In DEN:

Total CRJ (200 and 700 combined) block hours for October are 16527 vs. 17,392 block hours in September - a reduction of 5%.

Credit distribution among the CRJ200 pairings in DEN is as follows: Highest credit ratio to duty period is found in 3-day trips, with average of 5:41 per duty period. Locals average 5:40, 2-days average 5:07, and 4-days average 5:08.

On the 700, 3-day trips are also leading with 5:52 average credit per duty period. Locals average 5:26, 2-days average 4:15, and 4-days average 5:04. The 2-day trips show a very low average credit-per-duty-period ratio. Incidentally, there are 100 occurrences of such trips this month, with 33 of them paying less than 9 hours credit for the 2-day pairing.

The following is an aggregate comparison of number of trips by type for each aircraft, from last month to this month. Note that the numbers reflect occurrences of a given trip type. In other words, if a given pairing number (e.g. N1200) starts on three different dates in the bid period, that pairing would account for 3 instances of that trip type in these numbers.

Bid Package Summary for the CRJ200 for September / October:

	Stnd-up	Local	2-Day	3-Day	4-Day	5-Day	Total Block
COS	0 / 0	78 / 55	10 / 15	31 / 10	22 / 29	0 / 1	1415 / 1165
DEN	79 / 79	134 / 147	112 / 135	83 / 80	335 / 301	1 / 18	10225 / 10316

Bid Package Summary for the CRJ700 for September / October:

	Stnd-up	Local	2-Day	3-Day	4-Day	5-Day	Total Block
COS	0 / 0	25 / 68	42 / 54	10 / 7	28 / 13	0 / 0	1226 / 1211
DEN	80 / 84	96 / 44	64 / 100	36 / 43	245 / 199	0 / 0	7167 / 6212

Vijaya Tensei

DEN/COS Regional Scheduling Representative

This post is a very special post for me. With this post I have been covering the COS FA bid info for one year. Last October we had 391 pairings. So not much as changed from the October 2009 as far as the number of pairings is concerned, but that's the only thing that has stayed the same. The addition of MSP and IAD flying has changed our flying so as to give us a very different look from the same time last year. Different destination help, but the reduction of block hours create some terrible looking trips. The number of pairings are there but the trips are terrible for the most part.