Originally Posted by
Wolf424
That’s only for new categories that open. You can’t bid from say NYC220 to ATL320 to get out of your seat lock. They would have to open a new category or a new base (for instance BOS320 or MSP717)
Don’t get wrapped too much around the difference in pay at year 2. If you do the math, you’re talking the difference of 2-5 hours a month. Lots of ways to make that up, especially with better seniority on the lower paying aircraft. Depending on your situation (commuting to a higher paying aircraft, for instance), it may not be worth it.
You can break your initial new hire 2 year seat lock after 1 year under 3 circumstances:
1. If as you mentioned a new category opens (you might be able to do this in under a year as well, not sure)
2. You can change fleets if the base you want to bid to does not have your fleet based there (You're NYC 220, and want ATL, you can bid anything in ATL after 1 year)
3. You can change fleets even if your new base offers your current fleet but you don't have the seniority to hold your fleet. So if you're NYC7ER and you want SEA, but you can't hold SEA7ER, you can be awarded SEA73N or 220.
In any of the above circumstances you incur a new 2 year seat lock + whatever is left of your initial new hire seat lock, so roughly a 3 year seat lock to do any of the above options.
Lastly, any seat lock can be broken if you are awarded your first CA position. At one point we had a person on property 6 months awarded NYC88 CA, and that of course broke their new hire seat lock. It might not get that low again, but we'll most likely have CA awards go under 2 years seniority at some point at least in NYC.