Originally Posted by
jetstreamdriver
Good points, I will try to narrow it down.
My spouse is also a pilot and we both want children so schedule flexibility is important to us. In this regard Spirit is high on our list because of straight trip drop availability as a lineholder and am curious if anything similar is available at united. Of course senority is everything typically but we just dont have a guage on many other places and trying to do our research.
So yes, i guess you could say “thinking” about applying but just trying to do my homework.
At United you would have the ability to drop trips and reserve days. You can also trip trade through an automated seniority system and move reserve days. The only problem with this is that there need to be a minimum level of coverage to change your days off. This can be extremely difficult at some time and easy at others. It depends on your seat/equipment and base as well as the amount of flying for a given month. If we continue to hire at this accelerated pace then it stands to reason that staffing will begin to tighten up during summer and holiday periods and this difficult to drop and trade days off. In the meantime, there are many bases and seats that are offering 50 hours to take the month off. I don’t know how much longer deals like that will be around.