Hello,

I was wondering, which basis offer day trips and on average how many are available per month? Do they go senior or junior?

Was also wondering about positive space travel tickets for employees. I had heard that the pilot group receiveds two round-trip tickets per year. Can anyone confirm? Thank you.

 

There are consistently day trips, when we had hard lines it was maybe 5-8% ish of lines (might vary by base).

With PBS, I'd assume similar availability, and like pretty much all airlines they tend to go senior. I understand SEA also has some "day" trips which are actually redeyes, and may involve more than two legs, into uncontrolled gravel runways north of the arctic circle. Get back just in time to drive home in rush hour traffic. You can guess how senior those go

Right now IIRC you get 20 buddy passes by default, which you can cash in at the beginning of the year for two positive space passes for immediate family. They also tend to gift us additional PST passes at various times for various reasons.

 

Turns and Day Trips generally go senior. There’s lots of more to go around in the summer and less in the winter months. Min credit turns during summer seem to be widely available in SEA at least.

 

At around 5 years I got my first day trip line as an FO. I had been bidding for these turns for at least 2 years. It was wonderful. No hotels. Afternoon trips. So I could workout or do something in the AM worth doing. Home by around midnight. Show was around 3-4 IIRC. Downside was a bit of traffic on the way to the airport in SEA but nothing crazy. Or I could leave a bit early to make it less painful.

These were all the JV turns. SNA and PSP from SEA. So 5 hours or maybe a bit more. The varsity turns go a lot more senior than 5 years. These are the MSP turns where you get really close to 8 hours a day. I've done one as a captain. It was assigned on reserve. The FO was 20 years + my seniority. He was #3 overall at the company or #3 in SEA. Not sure which one now.

Irony was that I got the month of turns as an FO the month before I was going to class for upgrade. I knew I would never see that good of a schedule again for the rest of my career. Some pilots do well with trades and can seem to adjust their schedules to mostly day turns without a massive amount of seniority. However, they are outliers. IMO.

 

If you’re in sfo we’re losing a majority of our day trips, and the ones that are left are 3/4 leg days with long sits. Absolute trash if you’re a local.

 

Nothing ironic about it, nature of the beast.

The top 20-30% of FO's are financially situated to not "need" to take the first upgrade, and they hang out in the right seat either for years or forever.

It's actually possible to be the sole family breadwinner on $300k If you're solo, DINK, retired mil, etc it's pretty easy to "get by".

If the pilots (or the company) really hate that, it's possible to negotiate a contractual provision that you have to upgrade when your number comes up, AA used to have that, maybe others too. Ripping the bandaid off would be pretty hard though, all the senior FO's would be pizzed off, and all the junior CA's would be *really* pizzed off as they stagnate for years. New hires would love it though.

 

Thank you for the reply. Are those two positive space passes total or is it two passes for every immediate family member in your household?

 

Consider which would be a better deal for the Pilot, and then choose the other - it’s how the Air Group operates.

 

I just thought it was funny how due to covid my FO schedule was never really that great and I only got to see one month of what I'd like to do all the time before I was in class to upgrade. I think the next few upgrade classes, if we ever have them this year or even next year will go super senior. 30-40% of my trips I'm flying with an FO that's senior to me and once they warm up to me they all tell me they plan to upgrade whenever those start again.

 

It is two one-way positive space tickets in total, or if you think of it this way… it’s one round trip ticket per year. It’s really not great, since if you want to travel with anyone it would be every other year you and your spouse (or other listed travel companion) could go somewhere positive space. And to get that one ticket each year you need to give up your buddy passes. Just my little opinion, but if it was four one-way passes per year it would be a good deal.