Saabs

Hub to Hub is miserable, and that's exactly what that is for SWA and UAL. For American to only have RJ's is sad.

dudeskibro

Spirit will start a second daily ORD-IAH on 9/4 and has a 3rd flight that stops in MSP, same airplane. I've had to leave behind one offline pilot once in 7 years. You're more than welcome to fly with us.

ManFlex

Rumors are that IAH is going to grow considerably as a station for Spirit. Expect a lot of additional service. As mentioned before ORD IAH goes 2x daily in the fall. No RJs to worry about here.

motormadness

I don't commute this route, but from what I've seen, this route has to rank in the top 3 of worse commutes out there. ALWAYS full and lots of high priority standbys. Heck, even lots of non-must ride PS too. I would say plan for SWA and see if you can find something like a one-way zip car deal. I read a while back that would be possible soon.

sawtooth500

Do the spirit buses have 1 or 2 jumpseats up front? I've only ridden on Spirit once and it was in the back, but someone told me they only have 1

ManFlex

A320's have 1 cockpit jumpseat. A319's (except for two in the fleet) have 2 cockpit and 1 FA jumpseat(available to offline pilots in uniform). The remaining 2 A319's have 1 cockpit and 1 FA jumpseat.

hindsight2020

sorry for the derail and newbie question, but why would hub-to-hub commutes be hard for online jumpseaters? I get the OP isn't in that category, but everybody seems to agree hub to hub is terrible. Isn't there JS priority established for online pilots, and commute clauses that only require you list for a couple flights before you're off the hook?

freezingflyboy

Doesn't matter what kind of priority you have. If the seats are full of revenue or deadheads, then the seats are FULL. So I'm sure you're thinking "Well I'll just end up in the jumpseat...no biggie." And you're right, it's a great idea...that the 10 other online guys senior to you all had. The long and short of it is this: hub-to-hub commutes suck because of the sheer volume of folks trying to go between them to include online and offline jumpseaters, non-revs, revenue standbys, deadheads, etc.

In addition, the loads can vary rapidly. A quick anecdote: One night I was trying to get from IAH to ORD on United. I was an offline guy and got bumped from 2 proceeding jumpseats by online guys. There were also 2 junior online guys who had gotten bumped and we had been making the gate walk together all night. Yaddy yadda, we're down to the last flight of the night. An hour before there are 15ish seats open. Fine. I had hoped to be gone 4 hours earlier but at least I'll make it that night. Nope. A tour group had missed their connection earlier to Cabo San Lucas and United decided to reroute them IAH-ORD-Cabo (!?) rather than put them on the nonstop flight in the morning. Poof. All seats gone. And the one jumpseat on the guppy? Taken by one of the online guys. And me and the remaining online guy sent packing off to our respective airline crew lounges to try and grab a few fitful hours of sleep before trying again in the morning.

Also, "off the hook" generally means "out the pay" as well, at least from most commuter clauses I have seen/worked with.

freezingflyboy

I did that commute for a while as a UAX guy and since the UA/CO merger it is TERRIBLE. Tons of online jumps and last minute deadheads and revenue standbys not to even mention the piles and piles of non-revs. The most consistent luck I had was to find through flights on my airline that went between the two. It took some digging and research but if you could find a flight that goes say, IAH-MCI-ORD with the same crew and the same airplane, then that is gold. You will (should?) have jumpseat priority on your airline's metal. Two caveats though: watch the weather. Worst case is really bad weather at the end-point requiring a distant alternate and now you're bumped for weight in the outstation. Ouch. One other issue I encountered was a cracked windshield that grounded the plane in the outstation. Luckily, I was able to snag the last flight back home rather than get stuck at the outstation.

flyboyike

I would think one flight you can get on is better than a TON you can't get on.

I could be wrong...