Originally Posted by
DENpilot
There are only 10 lines with 13 days off for March. Unless you want to fly your line as awarded and do absolutely no trading, there's no reason you can't improve that to 15 days off.
I am a fairly junior DEN lineholder and have vacation this month and last month. I still managed 159 hours credit with 16 days off after picking up a couple trips. Point is, as much as productivity sucks, if you put the time in, you can have a decent schedule as a junior pilot.
As a junior pilot, yes. If you want to spend LOTS of time on flica, staring at the computer or waiting for your flica alerts to go off. I'm fairly senior and I don't get crap in monthly open time. Mostly due to guys with their "super seniority". But good for them for working the system. I've done it and it works well. Some of the pilots must spend half their day looking at the computer. I'll get an alert, and anything worth a crap is gone in 5 seconds. Frankly, I don't know if this pilot group has the fortitude to fly 70 hours if it ever comes to that.
My personal biggest issue is the number of days off as you get more senior. I know that may sound selfish, but with the amount of growth we have coming, we are ALL going to be senior before we know it. It would be nice if there was something to look forward to. I used to get 18 day off lines. Now I get 15-16. Not to mention, I have no clue what days of the week I'll get off. At one time, I could plan on making my kids sporting events every weekend. Not I have no clue which weekend I'll end up having off. Seniority is pretty much dead when it comes to schedules. Those poor turn guys must be really ticked. lol.
Now, I'm not trying to be argumentative with you guys. We're all in the same boat. But let's not put lipstick on that pig. The schedules suck and they are only getting worse. Now we've been told to expect worse schedules by the scheduling committee. So we have that going for us...............
But hey, at least we're the lowest paid Airbus pilots in the country.