Originally Posted by
CALMSP
you still wouldn't have to deadhead crews, a trip would be built the same way........crew starts at XXX-FRA(overnight)-PIT(overnight)-FRA(overnight)-XXX trip over.
Yep. "W" patterns for equipment and crew are nothing new. UA does this regularly (at least it did pre-Covid and I am sure will again as necessary in the new "normal"). As does DL to get to a lot of its "secondary" cities from AMS / CDG.
Yes it does increase crew layover costs a bit but overall it is much more efficient than deadheading crews all over the place and mismatching widebodies onto short domestic shuttling legs.