Originally Posted by
Herkguy01
If I may add follow on questions.. what is UALs commuter policy? And does anything change if it’s a United flight operated by Skywest?
I currently live in California about four hours driving time SFO. Local airport has 2-3 Skywest flights a day, plus one more via LAX. I imagine the jump seat on the CRJ is rarely booked out of here..but no idea if there are weight restrictions during the summer.
Long term plan would be to move to DEN or an East Coast base, but I’d likely bid SFO initially and don’t know much about how this commute would work for the first few months.
You are supposed to “exercise prudent judgment, including awareness of weather and other factors affecting travel…”, however the definition of prudent judgement is open to interpretation. You have to have 2 flights on any airline that are scheduled to arrive prior to report time. If you miss your primary flight, you have to call scheduling and let them know you’re down to your backup. Depending on reserve staffing, they might positive space you or tell you to call back if you miss your flight. My experience has been that when I was commuting to the 777, they’d always positive space me, however that rarely happens on the NB since there is usually a field standby. If you miss your backup they remove you from the trip without pay, and without any risk of punishment.
My commute has about half of the flights being CRJ 200’s and you should basically plan on them being weight restricted and unable to take a jumpseater, especially in the winter. On non-exclusive regionals like SkyWest the jumpseat is awarded at time of check in, up to 12 hours prior. On exclusive regionals, the jumpseat priority goes by seniority, behind all pilots on their own metal of course. Welcome to the machine.