Originally Posted by
ghilis101
Thanks gloopy for the good insight. You are right in that theres really no great narrowbody flying out of NYC. Even if I magically got a 7ER, I'd be working to exhaustion. 737 and MD88 wont fare much better but I would get a line the fastest on the MD88. I am expecting to get the MD88 and it will grow on me. The most attractive thing about the a320 is it currently has the most EWR departures (1 hour drive from my house). I could yellow slip ewr reports and it would drastically improve my QOL.
The EWR potential would be sweet indeed. Just be advised that marketing moves that around a lot. EWR trips tend to be less desirable for the category over all (although the few in each category that live there obviously prefer them) but if you have time, look at the bid packs for the last year for the 3 domestic categories (the ER usually only has one AMS per day or something like that, which often go to the few local line holders unless they sick out) so you will have a good chance to pref whatever does pop up.
There may even be someone from marketing/crew resources/etc come in to class before you lock in your bid and you can maybe pick their brain about projected EWR trips for various categories. Still though, if you track any one category for a year, you'll usually see EWR trips ebb and flow and its really hard to say which domestic fleet, if any, will average getting more than any other. That's probably why the larger domestic categories (88 and 73N) could be better; their sheer size would usually mean more EWR trips available in any given year. Usually, but not always.
In any case, living there, as long as you can get to LGA/JFK no problem, will be a pretty sweet gig for you no matter what plane you get.