ALK is the West Virginia of the airline world. Backward AF at the senior levels, inbred and patting each other on the back agreeing that ALK can do no wrong. Their stated goal is to be just a little better than SWA.

That's fair. I thought it was possible to do mostly daytime flying there but maybe I'm thinking of FedEx. Either way though, the stress of having to fight with the CONSTANT bull**** with respect to the schedules here and the INSANE amount of free time that we have to waste on step trading, line bidding, fixing illegalities, etc etc is no picnic either.

Well I mean my buddy is on first year pay at UPS and he fortunately saved up for that adventure.

Then again when he hits 2nd year it will be far greater than the 12 year FO scale at AS.

So pay wise it’s pretty clear by about month 4 of 2nd year you’re caught up to an AS FO. Not looking back after that either.

The UPS crews are at our ONT overnight hotel. They look about as wrung out and tired as AS crews coming off of our WOCL trips.

Which are 1/3 of our flying out of SEA....


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Look through the bid packets if you can get a hold of any at both carriers. Never heard of anyone leaving UPS for Alaska. Compare contracts and you’ll find the decision likely to come easy.

At AK you will probably block high 800s year and 1/3 of the flying is window of circadian low. Trip trading is made very difficult so it’s easy to miss important family events in my opinion. Good luck

Not to split hair but there was a guy maybe a yr, yr 1/2 ago that did come from UPS. Don’t know his story but in the picture of new hires, it said where everyone came from. Also, when you say 1/3 of the flying we do is WOCL, are you referring to company wide or as individuals? In your first year or so, yeah plan on flying a couple of red eyes a month depending on your “RAP” but after that they’re pretty easy to avoid. At 4 yrs in, I haven’t flown one in well over a year and that was only because it fit my scheduling needs.

Sure thing I hadn’t heard of one personally.

If you review the union line bid summary each month it lists the percentage of flying during WOCL hours, normally accounts for 1/3 of all block hours. Some bases are slightly more/less. Seniority will obviously determine if you fly those.

It’s amazing how fast people become accustomed to 50% or greater seniority in base.

Nearly every one of my trips has a segment in the WOCL. If I bid for certain days off it just gets worse.

At 4 years in you have experienced the most rapid seniority movement in the last 20 years at AS. A crew grabbed an airplane from us and cringed when we told them we wouldn’t get any BBQ in town because our van was at 4:30am. 2:30am Seattle time... The FO had probably missed that trip mix altogether because of pure, dumb luck.


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What’s your point? Are you going to bid all nighters when your seniority allows you to avoid them so you can continue to be “one with the new hires”? I speak from my personal experience here, you speak from yours. There is no black and white. My point is that, YES, as a new employee, a yr to maybe 2 now, you can plan on flying your share of red eyes. I did it, you’re doing it, any new hire can expect it. After that, you can avoid them if you want to. I don’t know too much about UPS but can you avoid flying all night within a couple years of being there? I have a buddy there that’s pretty jr. he seems to like it and hasn’t said too much about the WOCL flying. If the OP wants to fly international widebody stuff, UPS seems like a great route to take. I also know a guy that chose to stay at AS instead of going to his class at FedEx because he didn’t want to fly all night for a large chunk of his career. He too is pretty happy with his lot in life. Everybody lives their own lives my friend.

A couple in SFO as well left for VA. Mainly due to commuting and schedules. I think it can be rough on the body over time. Throw in a commute and that makes it worse.

His point is that not everyone gets to avoid red-eyes after their first year or so. There's guys here for close to a year who can't even hold a line yet. Also, if you want to upgrade you'll have at least 3-4 years of reserve before you're lucky enough to fly a line with red-eyes. Alaska is growing at 1-2% a year and maybe someday we'll have an industry standard contract so why would anyone want to go anywhere else?