Originally Posted by
Aviator147
NYC for seniority or ATL for your sanity. I’ve commuted out of CLT to both ATL and NYC and I just switched back to ATL. NYC tended to have way more uncommutable on both end trips, the weather/airspace can make the commute absolute hell. All DL RJs to LGA, JFK used to be 4 DL mainline a day. Now it’s between 2-3 flights mix of mainline or RJ. AA is all mainline to JFK/LGA/EWR which is nice for jumpseats however I see so many AA employees on our DL flights between NYC-CLT that it makes me think they are always full. My seniority was MUCH better in NYC but being able to worse case drive to ATL has relieved a lot of commute related stress. Also sitting long call for ATL from CLT is much more manageable than NYC.
I would disagree on the long call between CLT and NYC. When flights were normal and more than likely when things get back to normal AA ran a flight after 10pm to both LGA and JFK. This meant no witching hour where you could not get there. Even in normal times Delta’s last flight to ATL was around 7pm meaning a call at anything after about 6 PM for early show was going to force a 2am wakeup for a 4 hour drive to ATL. Delta’s first two flights to ATL in the AM also tended to run very heavy loads. As far as AA employees on Delta we have the easiest jumpseat policy. They can simply walk up to the gate without a listing. Most commuters simply go to the next available flight. We seemed however to carry more JetBlue than AA.
During the critical commuting time of 9 am to 2 pm there is a flight to JFK or LGA literally every 30 minutes on someone.
If you are going to commute CLT is about as good as it gets for a Delta pilot. DTW, NYC and ATL are all relatively easy commutes. Lots of choices when AE’s come out. The ease of getting to all 3 of those hubs can make flights that begin and end with DH’s very lucrative. Seek them out in the bid packages and watch open time.