11.07.25 – APFA DFW Base Brief – December 2025 Staffing and Allocations

December 2025 DFW Staffing and Allocations

Friday, November 7, 2025

Happy Holidays!

We’ve officially entered holiday season. We hope you take note—and advantage of—the opportunity to earn banked points and holiday pay as we finish out the year. As we progress through the winter travel season our heaviest push obviously revolves around the holidays for the next couple of bid packets. Holiday adjustments are plentiful in both domestic and international pairings. Be sure to double check your PBS bids as normal routings may have shorter or longer layovers than you have grown accustomed to seeing.

December brought an unwelcome outcome to the pairings mix as all bases saw increases in 3-day trips except for BOS. Here in DFW, our increase in 3 day pairings caused a decrease in ODANS and 2 days. We immediately asked for an explanation and correction and were told possibly not until the early spring. Management put the blame solely on Network Planning and their alterations to early departures and late arrivals. Additionally, the massive seasonal loss in PHL of IPD flying and the increase in wide body flying in LAX caused the domestic hours to shift across the system for line averages to comply with CBA obligations. Your DFW team has made a few suggestions to alleviate the pressures placed on the optimizer but as of this writing we have had no response yet regarding future bid packets.

It was a welcome sign, however, that reserve numbers were lower this year than December 2024, even with the increase in system-wide block hours. While January tends to run high due to the first week pressure, we are working to keep those numbers down. Thank you to everyone as the reliability of our DFW crews has helped to drive the numbers in the downward direction.

Keep up the good work! We hope you’re able to find time to spend with your friends and family as you celebrate the various holidays that fall within the month.

December Contractual Month runs from December 2nd – December 31st (30 days)

• iOS 26 – Effective date October 29
• IFM 18.2 – Effective date November 5
• Comply365 13.3.1 – Effective date November 12

PBS Preliminary Manning Plan, DFW – December 2025

Fly safe and know your contract!

In Unity,

Robin Reitz
APFA DFW Base President

Luis Vasquez
APFA DFW Base Vice President

Fierce advocates for over 7,300 DFW Flight Attendants