Originally Posted by
CareerPivot
My apologies for the newbie question... then again, I'm a newbie.
If I get awarded say ORD out of training, but I'm trying to get to LAX, would I have to hold a line and have bid seniority before I could get LAX or could I sit reserve there first if there's an opening? And can you bid multiple bases to get closer to the west coast (i.e. 1st choice LAX, 2nd SFO, 3rd SLC...) and slow walk it west till I could eventually hold LAX?
I'm sure this will all be answered once I have access to SWOL, but I'm another month away from being deemed worthy. Thanks for your help!
Skywest has right now 18 domiciles, (Used to be 20, but ATL and LGA closed). Some domiciles are CRJ only, some are ERJ only and some are mixed. Within that you also have CRJ and ERJ DMA domiciles (Aspen and Eagle).
When you bid, you can bid up to 10 choices, 1 though 10. Where 1 would be higher priority over 2 etc.
You can also bid for Transfer (Transfer from ORD to LAX), Transition (CRJ -> ERJ), Upgrade (FO -> CA) and Downgrade (CA -> FO)
Some other options are to bid for ANY domicile, this would be, "I don't care where you send me as long as i get an upgrade", and you can choose "BEFORE DATE" or "AFTER DATE", this is very important in case you have vacation planned etc since you will loose awarded vacation.
Once Virginia processes the awards she does it based on seniority.
So in order for you to get LAX, there needs to be a vacancy in LAX and you need to be senior enough to get the award.
Once you transfer into LAX you will either be reserve or line holder, that has to do with your seniority within LAX.
I would be highly surprised if it would take you longer than 6 months to get LAX, once there you will most probably be reserve for a while, since LAX is quite senior. Short call reserve is 2 hours, so that could be challenging depending on where you live. My buddy has to drive halfway from Temecula in order to make his 2 hour callout.
Once more thing to remember is that the ERJ is much more senior than the CRJ, so you will be reserve longer on the ERJ and it will take you longer to upgrade into the ERJ.
Good luck, and welcome to SkyWest.