Originally Posted by
Mill
Been looking for answers on here but can't find what I'm looking for. I'm getting ready to retire from the AF and I'm a bit undecided about whether I want to fly for the airlines or not. The thought of being away from my family for half of the next 20 years causes me pause. So my question for all you out there in APC land is: is it possible to fly part time for a major? I've heard you can sell trips and reduce your days to around 8 a month. Any insight is much appreciated.
Mill,
Mostly answered, but I'll toss in my 2 cents.
If airline management sniffs that you want anything less than "all I can fly" hours a month, you will probably not get hired. Your competition for a slot is a starving regional Captain who's wife drives a 10 year old car and kid needs braces. Delta's staffing is very thin on during the peak months ... they certainly do not build a staffing model around part time. I've no experience of how much you fly during war, but it seems major holidays and the summer are deployments where we are just barely winning.
Like others have stated, you can get senior in category, eventually, and put your assigned trips on a swap board for others to pick up. Also realize among junior pilots you have some who have been "junior" now for almost 15 years ... others were junior, saw some seniority briefly and are now junior again. It depends on where and what you want to fly, business cycles and mergers. So while it looks great right now, it looked pretty awesome in 2000 too and not a whole lot has moved for the junior guys since then.
Not only that, but the pay system (making a generality here) is a pretty strong motivator. At Delta our benefits are expensive and not very good (compared to most other jobs). Your mid month paycheck is where all of this gets deducted, but the mid month paycheck is also where your per-diem and your extra hours gets put. So, you end up working to try to maximize that mid month paycheck. Also, your 401K (no retirement) and profit sharing (which has been pleasant) are directly tied to your pay which is directly tied to your productivity.
Finally, we have a bunch of senior pilots, over age 60, who claim they are going to use the "drop all my trips" strategy until they are age 65. But, when you ask them "so what's your schedule like this month?" their answer is always near 100 hours.
A potential answer is to go to an international category where they have a big drop off in hours over the shoulder months. But lately, even those guys have been flying.
I would say averaging 8 days on the road is impossible. In a domestic category averaging 8 nights on the road (16 days) is about average.