Originally Posted by
FR8Hauler
I have spoken to JL about this and he always says he would close LAX today because it does not meet system form. Whatever that means. He says the bean counters like it, so it continues to exist. I would not move there thinking it will be around forever. Hope this helps. It kind of sucks too if you are a commuter which I did for quite a while. Flts leave weird times of day making you rent hotel rooms on a frequent basis.
LAX never really made sense to open as a crew domicile.
There isn't a true Day/Night sort to the tune of OAK or EWR.
OAK would have much more sense because you can Deadhead to just as many INTL Destinations from SFO as you can LAX and there is a true Day/night Sort there, which LAX doesn't have.
Maybe there were some Big scheduling changes that were planned for LAX but later scrapped. Heck why does the DC-10 do alot of flying in/out of LAX when there are MD-10 crews there? Go figure.
As Far as an INTL BASE goes, LAX never really panned out either.
That being said, if you live (or plan to live) inside of a 3 hour drive ( or whater JP sez is OK) life wouldn't be too bad. From what I understand, reserve goes more Senior in LAX than MEM. If you plan on commuting to LAX, you will have to do much more Offline jumpseating that being based in MEM, (which is a pain in the A$$). You can't jumpseat on a FedEx jet to LAX unless you live in OAK, MEM or IND and with the schedules, often you will have to come in the night before and buy a hotel, unlike jumpseating live into MEM to begin your trip. If you Live in the Bay area, it would work out OK because 1/2 of the LAX trips have DH's to/from OAK/SFO. As far as their trips go, they do not have a lot of variety, LAX-MEM-LAX, LAX-HNL-OAK-LAX, ONT-OAK-ONT, OAK-PDX-OAK, PDX-IND-PDX and OAK-AFW-OAK and 1 or 2 Long INTL trips are pretty much all you will ever do. There are some very Sweet RFO trips out of LAX (if you like RFO). You can always Bid it and if you don't like it, you can always bid back to MD-11 MEM or ANC since you won't incur any training freeze.