Originally Posted by
Airbrake
As the title says I’m a 717B living in DTW. I’m considering a change and a Captain I flew with recently said I’d be crazy to not bid NYC330B. I’d be 80% BES. His advice was to either bid/pickup trips that start with a DH, or drop my sched in NYC and rebuild it with OOBWS in DTW. Worst case scenario I commute (told myself I never would) which wouldn’t be terrible since the vast majority of NYC trips are commutable on both ends.
1) How bad is the DTW-NYC commute?
2) Should I expect to sit RES with several SC’s a month?
3) Wide report seems to show I could hold a line easily in Jan, what about the rest of the year?
3) I know OOBWS is somewhat frowned upon, is that strategy even feasible and if so will it upset people?
4) I assume trips that start with a DH will go Sr to me correct?
5) SWAG on when I could hold DTW outright?
Any advice would be appreciated.
I volunteered to commute to NYC rather than drive to
work. To make it work you need a mindset that sometimes the commute will suck and that’s ok. For me LGA was easier to get to/from than JFK, so I did a lot of back and forth. It was pretty rare that I got totally stuck in NYC.
The NYC WB flying is far superior to my home base in MSP. The same could probably be said about DTW.
At 80% you should hold a line most months if that’s what you want. However you might prefer reserve as pairings that start/end with a DH should be easiest to achieve on reserve. The strategy is to bid 4 or 5 days of availability. CS will break up 6 day trips into two 4 day trips. Each of those will have a DH day.
To do the OOBWS game you need to be incredibly flexible with your schedule as those trips are
assigned close in.
It’s hard to guess when you will be able to hold DTW 330. I’d say wait to bid 330 until you can hold NB A in DTW. If you don’t like the WB sleep schedule or NYC commute, the upgrade will allow you an out.