Seattle Times has a feature this morning about Alaska’s Network Operations Center…

https://www.seattletimes.com/busines...-travel-chaos/

Sheesh, I’m not sure I would admit to this lol

Years ago I had an interview with one of those secondary airlines ( like skywest) and it was near their internal operations center where they are in communication with their aircraft

when it comes to crew use/ times, I wonder how much of AS flights are out and back flights done by the same crew. Some of these out and back coukd invoke stops like a SEA- central time zone city -California city airport-SEA

That would depend on what the max duty time is for AS crew and is it the same for FAs and flight crew? I talked to a FA on CVG-SEA the other day who said they work both directions the same day which made for a pretty long work day but you get to sleep in your own bed at the end of the day.

I don't think FAs can time out, can they?

Somehow the fact that Fax Machines are involved doesn't surprise me, like at all. It's probably sitting next to the Sperry UNIVAC running the upgrade processor.

*Waiting for ASFlyer to chime in*

"Maintained 10.5 hour maximum scheduled duty day" https://www.afacwa.org/alaska_flight...ine%20carriers.

FAA regs are higher: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/...sec121-467.pdf

Seems like SEA-CVG and back would be pushing the 10.5 hour limit...if it's still under the higher FAA limit maybe they get overtime and it's cheaper than paying for an overnight layover.

Per the Alaska contract, FA's can only be scheduled up to 10.5 hours in a duty period. They can, after having checked in, be rescheduled up to 12.5 hours in a duty period. Irregular operations (delays for most any reason) can require a FA to stay with their original trip indefinitely. That said, if a FA is at a domicile (any domicile) and they are projected to go past 14 hours they can opt to be removed from a trip and sent into rest. FAA rules state that FA's can't be originally scheduled longer than 14 hours but can extend indefinitely due to irregular operations. There are exceptions where a FA could be originally scheduled over 14 hours. No US airline currently does this that I know of, but it involves augmenting the crew with additional crew members. Hope that helps

CVG is more than 10.5 hours, but Alaska has a carve out in the contract for "4K trips" that allow an original duty period to be built up to 12.5 hours. There are very strict guidelines - the trip can't be any more than 4,000 miles roundtrip (hence "4K"), no more than 12.5 hours, no more than 2 legs and no more than an 80 minute sit between flights and the day has to start and end in the same city. These trips usually go very senior and are things like SEA- IND/CVG/ORD/BNA/DTW/MKE turns. You also see FA's from other bases laying over in SEA and doing one of these turns in the middle of a trip.

Interesting... that makes sense that it would be a senior trip...the super kind FA I saw on the way to CVG and again a few days later heading back to SEA looked like she could have been my grandma...lol.

Probably one of our well loved senior ladies.

Good to see you back here, AS Flyer!

She was awesome! And welcome back by the way--sorry if I ended you're vacation from posting on Flyertalk but we needed some expert information