The new airline thread

[hindsight2020]

2 hours ago, discus said:

  I thought I was retired for two years.  Turns out I was just unemployed.  It'll happen.  

 

I'm sorry, I missed the punchline. What do you mean by that?

[discus]

54 minutes ago, hindsight2020 said:

I'm sorry, I missed the punchline. What do you mean by that?

I retired from the Air Force. I financially planned for 20 years to be fully retired at the age of 41. I sat around doing whatever I wanted for two years. Then I got bored, and the wife got tired of me always being around. So I went and found gainful employment that was also fun for me. 

Edited February 12, 2021 by discus
Couldn’t resist meme

[Lord Ratner]

10 hours ago, discus said:

Sure,

In a nutshell, scope basically is a union negotiated strategy to save mainline jobs. Since we are a dirty contractor flying under the banner of United, American, etc, it says that we can only operate xx number of 50 seat aircraft and yy number of 76 seat aircraft in the fleet. Additionally, it says that we can only fly a certain percentage of mainline narrow body routes. It’s cheaper for United to contract with us, and have us fly say the DEN to IND route, but we can’t do it because of union restrictions, so they have to put a 737 on it with a mainline pay flight crew, even though that route traditionally only has about 64 people booked on any given flight. 
 

Scope was further reduced after ‘Rona in the union contracts with their parent companies. There is nothing the regional companies can do about these agreements, they just have to eat the shit that’s given to them.

 

to be fair, in my opinion I think it’s a good thing. There should never, ever be a contracted regional jet  carrying more than 50 PAX. Everything else should be at mainline pay.  But your ticket prices would reflect that if it were to happen. So, I continue to fly my regional 76 seat jet which has been “scoped” to 70 seats by the ‘Rona. 
 

TLDR; Unions

There's one part that the company never wants you to discuss. Nothing stops them from buying as many regional jets as they want and flying them under mainline. 

 

The battle between labor and the airlines is a fascinating one for sure.

[hindsight2020]

6 hours ago, discus said:

I retired from the Air Force. I financially planned for 20 years to be fully retired at the age of 41. I sat around doing whatever I wanted for two years. Then I got bored, and the wife got tired of me always being around. So I went and found gainful employment that was also fun for me. 

Gotcha. Thanks for the clarification. I thought you were implying one couldn't gainfully retire as an FGO without the need for a full-time occupation; premise which of course I vehemently disagree with.

To bring it back on topic of the airline talk, as someone who will be circa 46-49 with a check in hand, a kid out the house, and a working spouse, I'm going to be wanting to prioritize time-off over pay, full stop. I've debated a lot what potential avenues I'd be willing to take at that time (GS stamp licking job, FW EMS, part 135/91, sim jobs, even expat .mil contracting), and so far have come up fairly empty-handed for one reason or another. 

The only construct I've been able to research that remotely touches on the kind of work-life allowance I seek in a  post-mil pursuit, is some airline outfits. But a place where I can't readily drop trips/schedules as a **perma-junior guy and still eek out 70-80K, is just not worth the trouble for me. 

(**not working past 60, so less than 11 years longevity from .mil to when I quit all work life full stop)

 

-break break

 

Congrats on AD retirement btw! I have two things I rather be doing right now as a young man that my work impositions are getting in the way of: (1) The hobby  and (2) more time back home. Suffice to say, the wife is tripping over herself to partake in both, which is probably why she's my second wife and not my first one. 😮 And I digress. Cheers! 🍺

Edited February 12, 2021 by hindsight2020

[discus]

2 hours ago, hindsight2020 said:

Congrats on AD retirement btw! I have two things I rather be doing right now as a young man that my work impositions are getting in the way of: (1) The hobby  and (2) more time back home. Suffice to say, the wife is tripping over herself to partake in both, which is probably why she's my second wife and not my first one. 😮 And I digress. Cheers! 🍺

So I never spend my AD time PLANNING to go to the airlines.  I litaraly just got bored and had a friend applying to Skywest.  When he showed up for his interview, I decided to go through class with him, so I applied.  (Keep in mind that this is 2017 pre 'Rona). I was in class two weeks later.  Here are things that I learned in the first six months, keeping in mind that I ignored all the airline talk in the squadron cuz I was gonna be retired and only half listened.  All advice I am about to give is based on your stated preferences, which are remarkably similar to mine:

-Living in base is EVERYTHING.  Commuting sucks.  Don't do it unless you just can't stand living in one of the bases of your desired airline.  I had to commute DEN to ORD for all of a month.  After that, sitting reserve at home was awesome!  Putz around the house with the phone on.  NBD.

-Once I got a line, the advantage of a regional is that there are a lot of kids who are super hungry for hours, so I gave away enough trips a month to work 30-40 hours (8 ish days away) per month.  That was also perfect for me.  Working just enough to still enjoy it just became easier after COVID.

-Disadvantage is pay.  Skywest starts out at $50/hour when a major airline doubles that.  But, I was a Nav, so I didn't have the turbine time requirement to go straight to the "Majors".  I think the same work schedule is possible at the Major Airlines fairly quickly, but I can't speak to it, I only have second hand knowledge, which is probobly the same as you have from the beat up old reserve LtCol who works for Southwest that you hang out with.

-Huge advantage is travel benifits.  My wife and I have produced no crotch fruit and don't plan to.  Kids out of the house is same thing.  Wanna go hang in Hawaii for the weekend?  The price is zero.  Want a beer in Germany?  $Free.95.  You get the idea.  We actually ran the calculations, and with my time off to free time ratio, we hit the road so much that the math said it trippled my paycheck in '19 in that benifit alone.

YMMV based on crash 9/11, crash of '08, 'Rona, Godzilla attack, etc.  Bottom line is that I love it.  Best part is going into work, getting on the jet, doing airplane things, and walking off with about 5 min of time spent on briefing/debriefing.  You go to work to go FLY.  The way God intended it.  Appologies to anyone here for my threadjack, I hope it's good info.

 

Come stop by my airpark home with your fancy RV sometime.  I'll provide the beer.  7CO0 is the airport ID just NW of KDEN.  

 

 

[SocialD]

13 hours ago, hindsight2020 said:

I'm going to be wanting to prioritize time-off over pay, full stop. 

The only construct I've been able to research that remotely touches on the kind of work-life allowance I seek in a  post-mil pursuit, is some airline outfits. But a place where I can't readily drop trips/schedules as a **perma-junior guy and still eek out 70-80K, is just not worth the trouble for me. 

 

I'm sure you've heard this before, but if you choose to go to the airlines, you'll want to get to a wide body ASAP.  It's about as close to retirement as you can get while still gainfully employed.  

 

 

 

[brabus]

It’s amazing how many WB guys I’ve talked to who haven’t been to work in 60-90 days, only flew 6 days in a month (and went to somewhere awesome), all while getting paid great money. I can’t wait...please don’t fuck this up for us Rona!

[Lord Ratner]

7 hours ago, SocialD said:

 

I'm sure you've heard this before, but if you choose to go to the airlines, you'll want to get to a wide body ASAP.  It's about as close to retirement as you can get while still gainfully employed.  

 

 

 

Counterpoint, there are *lots* of hustles depending on how much you are willing to learn. 

 

I dump my whole schedule before the month starts. Zero hours, zero pay. I then pick up day-of or next day trips as they come up due to sick calls, weather diverts, maintenance, etc. There are all sorts of trips that come up like this, but unlike regularly scheduled trips, these can be *very* inefficient for the company. As an example, I just grabbed a trip leaving tomorrow after dinner. One leg to Tulsa (1:07 hours, includes taxi), overnight, one leg back to DFW (1:25). That's 2:32 hours of on-the-clock time, but 10:30 hours of pay due to our minimum-pay-per-day provisions. 18 hours from the time I get to the airport to the time I'm back in my car driving home. 

 

That's all I fly (mostly). One out, overnight, one back, legs of 2:15 or less. So when I get paid for 90 hours of work per month, I only worked 30-50 of those hours. 

 

Now, you gotta live at the mega base to pull that extreme off, but my point is, you have options. And the biggest point, repeated over and over and over here, is that living in base *vastly* improves those options. 

 

On my third year at AA, during a pandemic, I made (not perfect math):

$179k pay + $23k 401k = $202k

That's for 300 hours of actual flying on a *non-reserve* schedule, meaning I only fly the days I want and the trips I want. Away from home ~8-9 nights a month, no holidays, no Friday/Saturday night trips (unless the wife wants to come along).

 

The more you put into it, the more you get.

[hindsight2020]

2 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

Counterpoint, there are *lots* of hustles depending on how much you are willing to learn. 

 

I dump my whole schedule before the month starts. Zero hours, zero pay.

At AA? I may be misunderstanding what they mean, but speaking with my AA "associates" at the sqdrn, coverage rules at American are supposedly horrible (the whole red/redder thing), which would make that airline a terrible one to be a low-credit/trip-dropper guy. I remember asking that specifically as someone who'd be in the trip dropper category as a junior guy without the MLOA crutch non-retirees still have at their disposal.

Your anecdote runs completely counter to everything I've been told about the schedule-germane work rules at AA. I'm completely open to stand corrected since you work there of course, but is this a 'Rona specific nuance? 

At any rate, agreed driving to work is the cat's meow, but like everything in life, everyone has different flex/priorities/circumstances. No right/wrong answer on that one.

[Lord Ratner]

13 minutes ago, hindsight2020 said:

At AA? I may be misunderstanding what they mean, but speaking with my AA "associates" at the sqdrn, coverage rules at American are supposedly horrible (the whole red/redder thing), which would make that airline a terrible one to be a low-credit/trip-dropper guy. I remember asking that specifically as someone who'd be in the trip dropper category as a junior guy without the MLOA crutch non-retirees still have at their disposal.

Your anecdote runs completely counter to everything I've been told about the schedule-germane work rules at AA. I'm completely open to stand corrected since you work there of course, but is this a 'Rona specific nuance? 

At any rate, agreed driving to work is the cat's meow, but like everything in life, everyone has different flex/priorities/circumstances. No right/wrong answer on that one.

I have been dropping my schedule to zero (I'm LGA based) for about 2 years now. I've been here for three. Like all airlines, the more time you are willing to invest into learning the system and the contract, the better able you are to make it work for you.

 

I can't even count how many guys I've explained my system to, guys who claim they want to be able to drop more of their schedule, and after walking them through it they tell me it sounds like too much work. And it's true, it's certainly more work than just filling out your preferences for the month, and getting a schedule to fly. But as I said, on an okay month I fly 50 hours and get paid for 90. To do that I spend about 20 minutes on my monthly bid, and about 15 minutes a day from the 18th to the 28th working the trading systems to dump my schedule. Then let's say 10 minutes a day during the month keeping an eye out for trips to fit. I'm no mathematician, but I think I'm still ahead doing that. 

 

There's a joke here, American Airlines pilots only hate two things. The wAAy things have always been, and change.

 

The airline is never going to make it easy for guys to have an empty schedule. In their mind that's exactly what reserve is for, and the trade-off is that you don't get to pick what you fly. Ultimately I'm glad that more people aren't willing to take the time to learn to do what I do. Most of them are much more senior than me if they were all running the same hustle, I wouldn't be able to.

 

There's no right or wrong answer on commuting, but it is a simple discussion. You don't get to do any of the things I'm talking about as a commuter. The best you can hope for is to drop your schedule to zero at your assigned base, and pick up regular trips at the base you live closer to. That's an improvement, but it's still a grind. 

 

Often it seems like the conversation comes down to a military spouse wanting to live by his or her family after a decade or two of following the member around the world. I try to explain that they're making a choice between who they're going to see more, their family or their spouse. I guess if you're only going to do it for 11 or so years before you have to retire maybe the numbers balance out. It's often hard to convey to someone just how different the job is between commuting and not commuting. It's way more than just driving to work. It's more nights at home. Less stress. Exponentially more opportunities for easy money. Flexibility for how you balance work and family life. I was always able to conceptually understand that before I was a commuter, but after even just a year of finishing a trip and immediately transitioning into "how the hell am I going to get home" mode, hoping someone else didn't have the jump seat, hoping that a passenger wouldn't show up, watching my commuter flights get canceled due to weather, it wears on you. 

 

But anyways, yes it's possible, and no it's not a pandemic thing. 

[Hacker]

On 2/12/2021 at 6:01 AM, SocialD said:

I wasn't NQ, just a Guard fighter guy not getting enough hours and ended up at regional.  I actually had a good time, but then again I was home based, flew with Captains my age (mid-late 20s) and the FAs were mostly in the early 20s....good times.  Pay sucked, but I had lots of fun and learned a lot about the airline world.  That airline (Compass) is now no more..

I did a stint at CPZ, too, after I retired non-current and had a great time yanking gear and hanging out with the 20-something Capts and FAs as an ol' 40-something dude.

I enjoyed every day except payday; made under $17,000 my first year.

Most importantly, learned a ton about 121 operations that made the leap to the majors much easier than it would have been directly from Big Blue's loving arms.

Edited February 14, 2021 by Hacker

[SocialD]

4 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

Counterpoint, there are *lots* of hustles depending on how much you are willing to learn. 

I dump my whole schedule before the month starts. Zero hours, zero pay. I then pick up day-of or next day trips as they come up due to sick calls, weather diverts, maintenance, etc.

The more you put into it, the more you get.

 

Well true, there are hustles to be had everywhere...but I'm speaking strictly QOL without having to "hustle," especially for commuters.  There is a reason guys get on a WB and don't upgrade until they can move to the left seat.  Same reason we see guys bid off NB Capt back to WB FO.  It's truly like working for an entirely different airline, and it's also a great place for commuters.  Even reserve (at DAL anyway), is a great deal...so much so that often times even the plug gets (sometimes forced into) a line because so many senior guys bid reserve.  Even on short call on a WB, I'd go fly my cub around...can still get cell signal at 500 ft lol.  

But since you brought it up, on months I bid a line, I'd do the same thing.  I'd drop my entire schedule to zero, then pick up more efficient trips.  Generally for me that meant a 4-day trip that was actually 3 days of work due to being able to deviate DH on the front or back end.  Most months I'd just do 9 days of actual work, while being paid for an additional 4 days (~63 hours total).  I'm more of a days off type of guy...63 hours is more than enough for me.  At DAL, due to staffing, it's generally MUCH harder to drop your entire schedule on a NB fleet.  

Edited February 14, 2021 by SocialD

[Ryder1587]

United announced today they are starting to hire immediately.  Once all the majors start the train the USAF is going to see the pain that they are causing themselves.  I just hope I bail before any type of stop loss is implemented.  

[HuggyU2]

1 hour ago, Ryder1587 said:

Once all the majors start the train the USAF is going to see the pain that they are causing themselves.  

At least the 11R retention rate will be fantabulous. 
But The Air Staff apparently knew that already. 

Edited April 2, 2021 by HuggyU2

[tac airlifter]

2 hours ago, HuggyU2 said:

At least the 11R retention rate will be fantabulous. 
But The Air Staff apparently knew that already. 

What do you mean?

[afthunderchief16]

1 hour ago, tac airlifter said:

What do you mean?

Reference the 11R community being left off of the bonus list this year.

I wonder how long it will take HAF to fix that glitch for this year? Or maybe next year they will sneakily add them back on.

[MEMguy]

5 hours ago, Ryder1587 said:

United announced today they are starting to hire immediately.  Once all the majors start the train the USAF is going to see the pain that they are causing themselves.  I just hope I bail before any type of stop loss is implemented.  

Can’t wait for the Air Force to fall flat on its face. Again. 

[AZwildcat]

On 4/1/2021 at 5:32 PM, HuggyU2 said:

At least the 11R retention rate will be fantabulous. 
But The Air Staff apparently knew that already. 

Hey that just means more flying for you! 🤪 

[brickhistory]

Best figure in your "transitioning" time to your USAF bailout equation...

 

https://onemileatatime.com/united-airlines-diversity-goal-pilots/

[Gazmo]

Best figure in your "transitioning" time to your USAF bailout equation...
 
https://onemileatatime.com/united-airlines-diversity-goal-pilots/

Riiiiiight.... and how will they recruit this 50%?

[nunya]

1 hour ago, Gazmo said:

Riiiiiight.... and how will they recruit this 50%?

Take everyone with the right DNA from the regionals and give everyone that applies to Purdue, ERAU, NDSU, MGA, every HBCU, with the right DNA a scholarship and a CJO into your ab initio program.  Pay for their 1500 hours and put them in indoc.  There will be way more non-white males than females, but it won't be hard to meet that PR target.

Edited April 7, 2021 by nunya

[Smokin]

It's ok, just identify as both a male and a female when you fill out your app.  Now you're in on both sides of the 50% quota.

Actual race and sex discrimination in an attempt to fix perceived race and sex discrimination...

[TreeA10]

I think the KKK has become race and gender fluid and is back in business. 

[xaarman]

Y’all shouldn’t care about any of this. You are the other 50%. 
 

The key is availability. I bet all 6 destination jobs will be hiring by the end of the year. 

[tac airlifter]

3 minutes ago, xaarman said:

The key is availability. I bet all 6 destination jobs will be hiring by the end of the year. 

What are destination jobs?  I’m trying to get smart on all things airline.  I’m currently ignorant.