Originally Posted by
waterskisabersw
Junior captain commuting loses a minimum of, let's be generous, 3 days to commuting. That's assuming 3 day reserve blocks where they scrunched four of the blocks into 6 day blocks via smart trading, and left the fifth 3 day block. That's not for the transon commute where you may lose a day before and after a trip. That's not for today's typical reserve lines where it's a bunch of 4 day blocks that you can't legally bunch of.
So that's a minimum of 3 days lost to commuting, bringing that captain down to 12 days off, which is less than your 13 days you hypothesized to match a junior captain at 125. I will grant you though that it will require way less thought and living in cwa to get the junior captain pay, since you're just commuting and flying your line. But it is not incorrect to say that you can make just as much in roughly the same days off (one more day off using your numbers and my commuting numbers).
Well the reason is I don’t include commutes is everyone’s commute is different. I commute from the middle of the country and don’t lose any day off. I commute the day of on a PM (getting there by my RAP) and when I am done I take a red eye back home. I am at home by 7:30 am. Now for some that sounds brutal but I can easily sleep on a plane. I know some that do what you said above. All I am saying is this when I was a senior FO living in base. I did work a lot more to come close to what I make now. That’s from my perspective. Now without a doubt I miss certain vacation picks and having days off I wanted. But if I was going to wait for that it would be another 6-7 years of waiting before I got that in my home domicile as a captain. If commuting bothers you then without a doubt bypass. If the issue is your thinking pay wise it’s not the same.