Originally Posted by
WhiteMorpheus
What type of schedules are feasible as a Senior FO? Will that change greatly under new reserve rules and PBS (drop to zero, etc)?
Is there a push for senior FOs to upgrade, or are pilots at Spirit left to their own devices?
Spirit is on my short list as a final stop. I'm hoping to "retire" in 13-18 years which makes every year count. I'm certainly willing to upgrade when the time is right, but I'm doing my "worst-case" planning as if it will never happen. Due to my age I'll never max a legacy CA group/pay scale (just too many younger pilots there already). I don't need to make $250k per year anyway and think I'd prefer to make about $150k with a phenomenal QOL. Thus, higher pay sooner with good retirement contributions and good QOL later are more important to me than end-of-career pay.
I'm being told that once I have enough seniority, my QOL options will allow doing "retiree" things while continuing to work, so my plan of retiring by 55 doesn't make much sense (and the QOL is why so many pilots work until mandatory retirement date or medical issues cause retirement).
Dropping to 0 in the current system has almost NOTHING to do with seniority. (IOT is the only time seniority matters for dropping. And as far as starting out with more days off, our lines range from 13 to 17 days off.)
If you are trying to drop to 0, you could have the best line or the worst line, and you'll have the same luck.
The quality of lines from worst to best is very very very little difference. PBS will make it so seniority actually means something.
You could be a 30% bidder here and still have a line with a working weekend or two. Line bidding the way we do it is archaic. If we had the southwest system, I would defend it to death, but we are only a few steps away from the atrocity that is Alaska line bidding.
Don't worry about dropping to 0, you pretty much can do that anywhere on the seniority bracket depending on the staffing of the base. (LAS, not gonna happen. ACY/DTW/DFW, all day)