You might want to double check your allotment. It IS 4 credits per year. You get the additional 2 PSTs if you forgo your guest passes (buddy passes)

Valid for 4 years, so it is possible to bank them. Employee, spouse/primary traveler and children are allowed to use the PST. All except children are eligible to list companions with the PST, meaning your wife could travel positive space with her mom, using 2 credits in each direction.

Where it becomes a good deal and not a great deal, is that there has to be availability in the lower fare buckets. For example, if you want to travel somewhere tropical the weekend before or after Christmas, New Years, Thanksgiving, spring break, etc., probably not going to be available. There is a search function with a calendar. If you’re flexible, it’s possible to find prime locations on off peak dates with an undesirable connection.

A new use for PSTs expiring soon is that you can elect to have them turn into 12.5k Mileage Plan miles at expiration. 12.5k miles isn’t super useful, but it’s a lot better than the 0 we used to receive at expiration.

 

Aren’t you like, the bottom 95% of captains in SEA for the past year or two and the most seniority you got on the FO list before you upgraded was 35%? I mean if 25% of your base on the FO side is senior to you, then I’m sure you have some holdouts that are ready to upgrade.

Not trying to be mean brother but I hear you. I’ve been at my airline now for a few years and took the first upgrade I could. I’m still stuck doing crappy redeyes on the 737 instead of flying wide bodies to Amsterdam in the left seat because my company hates junior people. I think that’s funny too.

 

Yep. It’s not nearly as bad as the reality of basically being the plug in SEA for two years. At this rate it will easily be 3-5 more years and I’m not sure if I have that in me.

Ive been converted to 0100 reserve all week and this weekend they assigned an ANC red eye turn. Good times…

 

Here's an idea, something I might consider in your shoes...

You're stuck for a year or two. I agree that there will be pent up demand for upgrade so even when things do start moving you personally won't be moving much for a while longer.

Hopefully you've been banking the money, bank some more for another 1-2 years and then downgrade at the first opportunity. A decent chunk of cash in age-appropriate aggressive investments can really set up to be in a good place in a decade or two. After downgrade enjoy QOL until your relative CA seniority gets to a tolerable place... at this point you have a good idea what "tolerable" looks like, and does not look like.

Turn lemons into lemonaid... you'll still be financially much better off than if you had never upgraded.

 

I think this says a lot about the quality of trips and career progression at my place of employment. I'm just waiting to see how things shake out with the SLI. If things are still looking the same in a few years I'll be making a decision on doing exactly what you suggested.

 

Protip: It won’t shake out well for you. You bypassed hundreds of FOs who realized your QOL would be bad,and they were right, and let you take the last few spots in the left seat. At a certain point, you have to realize the forth stripe isn’t worth the awful QOL you suffer on a daily basis, which you’ve made clear is awful for years. No amount of hating your company or union or politics will realize the fact that your DOH can’t hold your dream trips. It’s also deceptive to tell new hires they can’t hold any good trips because you decided to be near the plug for years, while refusing to downgrade.

 

I think the OP is getting a really good idea of what the culture is like.

Nice work!

 

Do you ever get tired of playing the victim?

 

So everyone is basically pretty happy with a few grouchy outliers?

 

That's the reality everywhere but it doesn't fit his narrative.