View Single Post
Old 10-01-2008, 08:21 PM
  #10  
weirdbiz
Line Holder
 
Joined APC: Mar 2008
Position: Eagle FO, ERJ
Posts: 85
Default

Originally Posted by widebodyjunkie View Post
Holy Hell.....I should stick to my original plan and be a part-time mime. So then here's another set of questions, if the majors mimimums are in the low thousands...what is the incentive for a FO at a regional to stay there verses just going to a major and start working? Ex: say you're FO at eagle, and you've been there for five years and have 5K TT under your belt, why wouldn't you just go on to work for American instead of continuing to work at a regional making chicken scratch for pay?
And so I guess my question about how long is a pilot typically on reserve has already been answered huh? There's no way to know as it depends on what the general move of pilots are like at the time that you get out of training and start flying?
What about commuting pilots? Is it free to travel when even when you're off duty? Do airline pilots gets to fly for free with other airlines?
It's a lot more complicated than 'just go to work for American.' Most majors require PIC time. The ones that don't require it outright will take the guys with PIC time ahead of those without it. And major airlines go years without hiring anybody at all. But equally important is, if you've been with a regional for 5 years, you've got some stability in your life, you're probably getting older and maybe have a family or a serious girlfriend, and you maybe don't want to sacrifice more years of your life to long-term training, reserve, commuting, and the worst schedules. What if you switch to a major airline and then get furloughed? Or what if you jump over to ATA and they go bankrupt?

As a pilot, you get free travel domestically on pretty much every airline there is with the CASS program. This allows you to live outside of your base and commute, and you can also get around when you're off-duty, which is great. Commuting is not a whole lot of fun, though. It's stressful, takes up a lot of time, and you will spend nights sleeping in the crew lounge because you can't afford to get a hotel all the time. I would strongly, strongly recommend that you live in base if you ever decide to be an airline pilot. Particularly on reserve.
weirdbiz is offline