Originally Posted by eagleflight06

While the CA rate is higher, you're on reserve making 70 hours with no ability to pick up. A mid to upper level FO lineholder can easily bring in 110 hours of credit in a month by picking up a couple premium pay trips. If you credit over 104 hours as an FO you make more $ than 70 hour captain, if that makes sense.



Not sure I understand your second question, but how long you spend on reserve as a captain is a function of how long you wait to upgrade. If you take first available upgrade as the bottom captain, it's going to be a while as the movement on the captain list is slow. If you wait it out and let people upgrade behind you and upgrade later, you can theoretically avoid CA reserve completely. Just depends on where you are on the seniority list.