Pretty easy. Stable rosters (meaning real rostered trips that stay that way) and some form of very limited long call reserve (whether you call it A days or whatever) which is seldom, if ever, used . This seemed to work pretty well for years and years while maximizing productivity for everyone. And letting the company flow out assets over several months versus only tomorrow or today. While also allowing an ability to deal with unforseeable contingencies (vice rostering problems of your own making which is what we are seeing now). A win-win.
I do not think the company fully realizes the damage it has caused by the perceived 'flexibility' of ever changing rosters and trying to use a form of 'continuous reserve' to cover for manning shortages. This 'flexibility' is not and never has really been there--especially in an operation that crosses many time zones with long haul ops, and it only serves to break what assets were still working up to that time. While also dramatically increasing workload for the schedulers as schedules continuously collapse.
For those hard of hearing, anytime you see an 'R' before a trip that is by definition an unstable roster. We are largely creating our own traps and our own roster instability.
So stable 'owned' rosters would go far toward maximizing what you can do with what you have.
It would also be nice for the powers to be to understand that we deal with an hours (not days) driven process and large gaps between long haul trips are not only desirable but often necessary.
Or for those needing a simpler explaination
Flying = good
Sitting on call = bad
Last edited by Shep69; 26th Dec 2016 at 23:10.