Originally Posted by Aquaticus

Just a little bit of insight from UA but traditionally our highest earners were narrow body Captains that played the system. The widebody flying has the prestige and the better hotels. It hoovers the very senior off of the narrow body fleets allowing more "junior" people to do quite well and bid a higher % in their seat. The narrowbody fleets have much smaller trips that you can piecemeal into a very productive schedule that just isn't possible on the widebodies. Living in base allows you to pick up premium pay and work less days for the same pay at pretty much any airline.

The best thing about United is the fleet mixes and different flying. You can experiment and see different types of flying from island hopping Guam, to polar flying, or short and long Europe. The comments about flying with grumpy ex-mil aren't true but we do have militant pro-union people and a more pronounced union than I think I was expecting. I left a LCC to come here and uniteds domestic operation only feels like a small part of the airline. The international and widebody flying is a completely new and fun to learn side of the airline for most of us. We are a small cog in a much bigger machine where we just fly the plane. Flight attendants handle most everything before it comes to us, maintenance/dispatch/scheduling all just work, and any reasonable expense will be reimbursed (aka your not waiting for hotels/vans/meals). I do feel like a professional when I come to work. At smaller airlines I felt that they relied on pilots to chase down and beat the square peg into the round hole to make things come together. Best of luck with your decision!