PDX Base
 

How is the movement in the PDX base? Slow? What's the most jr captain hire here? How are the trips out of PDX? Sister and her husband moved out there recently and say they love it. Looking to make the jump from F9.

PDX is slow, but I've not spoken with anyone based there who doesn't like it. Most junior CA is approximately 8 years (from memory). Seattle is about 4.5. You could drive it on reserve, if you wanted to. Might take a bit to get into PDX, but not terribly long, as long as the economy doesn't crash.

Gotcha. Yeah looking to live in Vancouver, WA (border) so if I do take SEA CA vacancy, driving commute won't be terrible. Any reason of why PDX is slow? Can someone based there chime in on how trips look like? How long for a line?

PDX is on the small side and unless it gets some growth movement will be very slow. I'd plan on at least a year to get in and 2+ years to hold a line. Good trip mix with trans-cons, Hawaii and shorter west coast hops. We also have the least amount of red-eye flying by a pretty large margin. It's a great base with great crews but very slow movement.

PS: Seattle is currently at 5 years and no upgrades in the next bid so I'd expect that number to climb before it drops. We are getting close to the pilots hired right before Covid so we'll see and 18 month jump once that happens.

Kinda feel like I need to reply since I disagree with some of the previous posts. It is true that PDX is smaller, that can be a good thing. Best airport to be based at in my opinion of all our bases. Traffic isn't that bad and the airport is a breeze to fly in and out of. Having said that, I couldn't disagree more with the quality of trips in base. They are in my opinion some of the worst trips in the system. The vast majority of our trips start early(6am ish showtimes) and release after 9pm. It makes up about 60-70% of all our trips. They have a greater tendency to end with 3 legs and long duty days on the last day. Correct about the redeyes, very few, that is good. The schedule are to put it mildly, garbage. An absoulte mishmash of single days, 2 days, 3 days and 4 days. No pattern, just smashed together. If you don't mind driving to work 15-17 days a month, there are lines of strictly turns. Individual choice I guess. I just wanted to give another opinion about the quality of lines and trips. I cannot speak for the other poster, maybe they enjoy the flying, but in the several years I have been based here, the schedules have always been very poor in my opinion. As for Vancouver, I guess it is subjective. Since we moved here several years ago, my wife and I are not fond of living here. Just our personal opinion. You having family here would be a huge help. I'm rambling, but just a different opinion to put out there. Good luck with your decision. If you make it out here, I hope you find it to your liking.

In my experience this is fairly universal industry-wide at small (non-hub) bases.

Price you pay for small town and easy parking.

Retirements in PDX look like less than 10 per year for the next several years, so factor that in to projected timing. It's also been mentioned in other threads, but right now new hires are going to SFO and LAX, next vacancy bid is scheduled for January so will see if that changes.

Good stuff right here, helps me out. Now thinking about driving to SeaTac from PDX/vancouver. Has the scheduling just always remained like that out of PDX? Still sounds better than F9 however. Also, can you talk more about the living situation there? Parents are also planning to move with wife and I along with sister and brother in law already there.

Don't speed from Olympia to Tacoma. JBLM has a ton of speed traps.

Curious where you are in the hiring process. CJO with a class date? Or on the other end, just thinking of applying?

Should have specified that. Put in the app as of now after the MTC event. Did the pilot flight ops internship back when I was a junior in college and good friends with the SEA chief pilot from that internship and told me I should get the interview call after the new year. Assuming things are a little slow right now.

The other thing to consider is PDX is by far the best base to sit reserve in as an FO if you like getting paid not to fly. I could probably hold a garbage line but I've been bidding reserve for months and averaging 2 days of work/month. Pick up 2 or 3 days work on your days off and you're now sitting at 95-100 hours of credit for minimal work. This situation could obviously change at any moment, but I'm enjoying it while it lasts.

You just want to have realistic expectations for base timing, I think it will take a while for you. There are FOs here now who want PDX or ANC that are now getting sent to SFO. They are waiting to get to at least SEA but the last vacancy bid (effective in March) only had room for 20 FOs to move to SEA. The funnel is SFO or LAX > SEA > PDX or ANC. PDX and ANC are small bases with few retirements so the math is challenging. Pick the earliest class date possible to get in the line.

Things could change but it seems like expectations for growth and movement are dialing back.

Definitely take the first class offered. I was surprised at the current hiring estimate for next year in SD's DEC Pilot Call e-mail.

Yup, 600 turned into 200 overnight.

Take the 200 and divide by two and you’ll be in the ball park of what we likely hire.

It could also easily turn into 400. Don't get too worked up about it.

Say you are based in PDX and on your way into work... If you come upon a road block due to protestors, does the Company hold you responsible for being late?

I guess the same question could be applied to the SEA base

You are definitely held responsible. A real pilot drives right through. Protests are fine, blocking roads is not.

Best effort, normal traffic
 

short answer, no. You’d be fine. Expectation is best effort, normal traffic.

Normal traffic for the time of day, so you have to account for rush hour.

That was hilarious!!!

Thanks for the laugh.

In Unity...

With the latest update, even that might be on the high side. Yikes

Pretty true to form, at least since I’ve been here. Curious to see how the stagnation affects attrition, when the other majors are reducing their hiring to “only” a thousand or so 🤣, at least in Delta’s case. Who knows United and AA may revise their numbers down near 1000 as well!

Your crystal ball so spot on good sir.

What's the latest update? I received a CJO back in early October and it's been crickets since.

If you don’t get a class date for either January or February, it’ll be a long wait. Late 2024 most likely.

IIRC April too?

Yeah that's kind of what I'm starting to realize. Ah well. I'm glad I listened to those who said "Apply everywhere".

If you still want to come here, I'd reach out and make it known. Squeaky wheel gets the grease and whatnot. Just expect to be at the bottom of the list for a while.

It looks like you're heading elsewhere, but I'm curious, did they ever give you a class date?

Nope...silence. A buddy of mine interviewed on the same day, got the CJO as I did, but also doesn't have a class date. This was back in early October.

AS has a great pilot group (I have a bunch of friends who are very happy there.) I'm sure I would have really enjoyed it. But in December they announced that they were "re evaluating hiring for 2024" and that no classes are scheduled after February. I'm sure the Max debacle isn't helping at all...

I tried, and so did my buddy. We were told Feb class is full and no classes scheduled for rest of year...

"As of today, we had one class of ten new hires start in January, and have a class scheduled and filled for February. We do not plan to start any new pilots until after what looks to be a remarkably busy summer. The current plan is to resume new hire pilot classes this fall and carry well into 2025."

Email CJO group got from Scott Day...OCT 24 is what we are hearing directly from AS so not sure who said they were not starting classes until 25

You are both probably reading from the same email and you're essentially saying the same thing. Published expectation is to start new hire classes again in Q4. Separate statement, no classes are currently scheduled. Extrapolate or word as you see fit.

That could mean hiring, or it could mean pullback out of CA.

They could probably retain more newhires in PDX as opposed to SFO...

Out of curiosity, from the sounds of the discussions here it sounds like LAX and SFO are junior bases. What makes them so, and what are trips like out of those places (as in average number of days, percent of red-eyes etc) and is there any provision to "satellite base" out of LGB / SNA / SMF etc?

CA Bases
 

LAX is senior now. With the Airbus transitions, LAX went senior. SFO is our most JR base. Best variety of trips by far are out of SEA, only because it's the highest bank of flying. Alaska doesn't service LGB, SNA has a limited number of lines dedicated to it. SMF is not a base, and I doubt will ever be. There has been pontification on trying to make SJC a co domicile with SFO. As I understand it, as of now, SFO is most JR for both FO and CA. Once hiring starts again, most likely SEA will become available relatively quickly, and now maybe PDX depending on when the growth spurt happens. All this is just a guess and I'm sure I'll be corrected somewhere!

SFO is the junior base for both CA and FO. It's a very expensive place to live and it can be very challenging for commuters. I don't feel it is difficult to imagine why this base is very junior.

It's also the junior base for an airline that has taken the majority of our pilots who have made the decision to leave. Which I feel is understandable. A junior AS pilot on reserve can not pick up extra flying to help pay for that crash pad yet at the same time due to reserve staffing rules it is difficult to trade reserve days. It's not a stretch to imagine why SFO will remain the junior base for quite some time. AS mgmt has created quite the problem for themselves. I just wish the pilots would stop trying to solve it.