matrixwalker2012

So I flew LAX-MIA-LAX on the 77W, which was a MIA based cabin crew (on a side note, I managed to get the same purser on both trips!). Since LAX and MIA are both crew bases that work 77W flights, how is it decided that this flight would be staffed with MIA based cabin crew and not LAX based ones?

Are other LAX-MIA flights assigned to crew members from one or the other base?

Are there LAX-MIA flights crewed by cabin crew from a different base such as DFW, ORD, JFK?

ThreeJulietTango

I have no idea, to be quite honest. As another point of reference, I was on an ORD-MIA flight last month that had a DCA-based cabin crew.

MSPeconomist

On DL, you can have LAX crew on a MSP-ATL flight, so it's not the case that even for flights between airports that are crew bases, you necessarily get crew from either the departure or arrival base. I've also been on flights that have a mixture of crew from different bases.

Crew scheduling is often done using units which are entire multi day trips rather than having FAs "bid" individual segments. Some airlines, such as NZ, will schedule an entire crew team together for an entire trip, cabin crew and pilots doing the whoe thing together as their SOP.

OTOH, for NRT flights, where DL has some intraAsia flights to staff too from NRT, the system is that the purser and one additional USA-based FA (called the chaser) travel together for about a week (perhaps MSP-NRT//rest//NRT-SIN//rest//SIN-NRT//rest//NRT-MSP), while the other FAs just fly USA-NRT//rest//NRT-USA, where USA = the FA's base most of the time. The intraAsia flights use more Asia-based FAs for the rest of the positions.

ty97

I don't know for certain, but my guess is that is based on the schedule of the turn. 10 or so years ago, I flew the once-a-day (at that point in time) 777 on DFW-ORD. The crew was DFW based and one of the FAs I talked to liked that bid because after an hour on the ground at ORD, the crew turned around and went home to DFW and she was home in time to put the kids to bed. (Note: the turn wasn't necessarily always the same 777, sometimes equipment would swap at ORD, but the crew would always remain the same for the turn).

If the MIA-LAX is a morning flight and the LAX-MIA an afternoon, I expect this could be a similar situation where the MIA-crew works MIA-LAX-MIA as a single bid?

matrixwalker2012

MIA-LAX is the 5pm flight to position the aircraft to LAX to operate LAX-SYD and LAX-MIA is the 11am flight to position the aircraft to MIA after an early morning arrival from SYD, so same crew, but they overnight in LAX.

ty97

Interesting. Well there goes my theory then! I would have expected them to use an LAX crew and avoid the hotel cost.

T/BE20/G

Scheduling is much more involved/complicated that it seems on the surface, so flights are not necessarily staffed by a crew based at either end of the journey. It would no be unusual, for example, to have PHL pilots and DCA FAs working CLT-PHX, or to have ORD pilots and MIA FAs working a flight LAX-DFW. The "optimizer" makes schedules to be as efficient as possible on a systemwide, not base by base, basis.

skylady

yes, it can happen, based on the scheduling maximizer, that we do not like