I hate to feed trolls, but something needed to be said about this baseless post.

QOL is relative- some people might say an extra 20k in your pocket is worth the commute. Personally being a commuter, I would probably give up 20k to be able to drive to work. With that said, next on my list of QOL preferences is days off. This new contract has given me 2-3 more days off a month.

Upgrade times are always changing- sure RAH doesn't have the quickest upgrade, but to have quick upgrades you need people leaving off the top and people coming in the door. There has been a steady stream of people leaving (granted some FO's) and this new contract has created some buzz and has put people in new hire classes. It remains to be seen how it plays out, but it's always better to be on the front end of a wave than to try and get on the train when it has already passed.

Work rules are now at least at the top of the regional industry as far as trip/duty rigs, cancellation pay, as well as other things. We'll see how SAP is implemented, but that could be a nice QOL boost as well.

Culture still has some stuff left to be desired. You're always going to have the people who (rightly so) don't trust this management after being jerked around for 8 years and BB is never going to fess or take the blame for things that happened in the past. It's a publicly traded company and the employees are more often than not going to feel like their in the dark on most "plans". Take that for what it's worth.

Pay at other regionals is the only thing I hope you're right about. It would be great to see RAH as the bottom feeder again tomorrow so we can either price the regionals out of existence or actually get paid what we're worth ($40/hour plus $20k signing bonus is getting close to a good starting yearly salary).

But to the OP- as others have said, you're going to need to make your decision based on if 20k is worth it to get based in NYC on reserve for an unknown amount of time.