Originally Posted by deltajuliet

Okay, Mesa schedules in a nutshell. Your 4-day is worth 17 hours while one at Skywest might average above 20 (sometimes well above). That means less hours of pay (at a lower pay rate) and less days off (since your total trips for the month need to equal at least 76 hours).

It's common to do 4-leg days with long sits between flights where you're essentially a reserve pilot for free. It's been speculated they do that intentionally, and often as close to your max duty day as they can.

For example, you have a 7 am showtime in Tucson, fly 45 minutes to Phoenix, sit three hours, fly to El Paso and back, sit another three hours, then go to Albuquerque. Hope your last leg isn't delayed. After all that you've made just over four hours of pay after working 12 1/2 hours. We have no trip rigs, duty rigs, or min day.

That's not every day but it's lots of days, especially with Skywest taking over more and more of the Phoenix routes.

Your month might be five 4-day trips averaging 17.5 hours giving you the minimum 11 days off and 87 hours of lower pay.

At SkyWest, you might get four 4-days at 22 hours each for 88 hours of higher pay and 15 days off. You've made more money and have four whole extra days off.

These are examples, but you get the idea. And as I mentioned before, our new contact doesn't include any sort of minimum pay per day (min day), no minimum pay per duty period (duty rig), and no minimum pay per trip (trip rig).

Don't come here just to hold Phoenix a few months faster.