Chris

I will take a shot at answering your questions.

You will not have a guaranteed seat hardly ever, and never when commuting. that does mean it is hard to commute, but you have to leave yourself with two or three other options.

When you are on reserve, you will either be "home or Airport" reserve, when on home reserve you get to sit in the crashpad all day and wait on the hour and half call out, most often times I saw, I had many many hours to a day call for a trip on home reserve. Airport reserve you have to be at the airport and ready to go at the end of the phone call pretty much, but if you do not get used you get paid five flight hours for doing it.

The lines are what you make out of them, and how you bid, ask for advice on how to bid and read the bid packet, they wont teach you in ground schools, so for the first few bid periods that you bid you will get crap schedules, you just have not learned yet.

I drive in from indiana for my trips so I do not have to do airline comutting, and I bid all three and four day trips with early shows, and early end times. That gets me the most time at home with my wife and dog. Plus the four day trips have less driving that I have to do, saves me gas.

I like doing our united trips, four days, sometimes it is not alot of flying with long overnights, again I am lazy that is what I like.

There is a plenty of day trips and two days and the like, but it seems that the shorter trips go more Sr to people that live in st louis.

I hold most often times 15 to 17 days off every month, and if I get a day trip or a two day thrown in there, I just drop it, and I get 18 or 19 days off, and I have done that every month since April.

Reserve time is real short, and upgrade time is real short too.

I am not worried about the upgrade time, I have learned I am not ready at ATP Mins.

I think you will experince the same thing too, even though they hire low time guys, it is still a big boy job, and experince counts.

Feel free to ask more questions

Reeves