Hello, friends.

I know that these "help me decide my next job" threads can be extra repetitive and posted by people who generally haven't searched the forum even a little bit. Despite my incredibly low post count, I have been a long-time lurker and I pinky swear that I have done extensive searching through this forum to find answers to my questions regarding where I want to go for my final airline destination. A great many of them have been answered in my searching, but I want to ask the ones that haven't. I am specifically looking at American, Delta, and United.

First, I am a captain at one of the regionals who has been doing a trans-con commute. I absolutely know that I absolutely need to stop doing that to survive, absolutely. I'm not even sure I can make it to tomorrow somedays. With that being said, I live in LA and that means that basically any major can give me a base that stops this punishment.

I am a person who, surprisingly given my intolerable commute, is driven by quality of life. And all of my questions to you fine people are related to that:

1. How flexible is your schedule really? I understand life in this industry is tied very solidly to seniority, but I am specifically looking for how flexible I can expect my schedule to be as a junior pilot...especially a junior pilot based in LA.

2. Can anyone speak to how easy it is to take a leave of absence for personal reasons here? I have taken a gap year before I got into this industry traveling the world and have aspirations to do things like climb the world's biggest mountains and volunteer abroad for an extended period of time.

3. What is the flying like out of LA? I can read the base drops for every major here and have been, but I am really looking for what I can expect if I stay in the Los Angeles area at each place.

As a final comment, I do have interviews with all three of the airlines listed. I have friends in all of them, but I wanted to spread my questions just a little bit further.

Thanks for the advice. Flame away!