Ratm0820

I have heard before of people that commute only getting one full day a month at home. Are the locals just kind of scattered throughout the entire month? Or are you able to work 3-4 locals then have 3-4 days off?

Margaritaville

What's a "local"? A day trip?

Schedules could be anything from 2 days a week with 5 days off to 6 straight with one day off. The higher credit trips you fly, the more days off you get. Senior 18 days off a month isn't unheard of. Junior will be 11-12 days off a month. Senior pilots can group trips, junior pilots get a shotgun schedule with scattered isolated days off.

With high seniority, you can mostly work whenever you want here.

With low seniority, you cannot.

Seniority is everything here and plays more than most airlines because of the way we fly.

flydiamond

this, exacerbated by the fact that some bases don’t fly certain days of the week much if at all in slow months of the year. Ex LAS hardly flies on Tuesday/Wednesday and Saturday. Those will be your days off as a junior pilot no matter what, the contract only guarantees 6 non isolated days off per month (eg 3x 2 day off blocks). This is further exacerbated by the horrendous in house excel spreadsheet “Pbs” system the company uses. It does not honor preferences and bidding takes far too much time as you are literally ranking individual trips on individual days versus a normal Pbs system where you put in your preferences and it does its magic. There is no box to check for something like “front load or back load my schedule” or “desire weekends off” as some other airlines might have. Here you have to go in and sort all the weekend pairings to the bottom of your list to get weekends off. It’s a pain in the rear. I imagine it’s quite easy if you’re number 1 or 2 in base but for junior Guys it’s awful.

spirit guarantees 4 days off between pairings and that sounds more like something you are looking for. The isolated days off aren’t a problem if you live in base but make commuting here misery.

And a local is what skywest calls a day trip I think.

9easy

Lol @ "locals". Pretty much every trip is a day trip. There is no cadence, although bases like Vegas fly mostly on peak days like fri/sun/mon, meaning your days off will likely be Tuesday/Wed and Saturday.

Theplug

Also, we don't have all-am or all-pm reserve lines, like most of the others airlines. Which means it's very likely you'll get a few early reserve days (typically 3-4 am start) followed by evening reserves (12pm start). Which essentially adds 2 days to your "block" of days on, if you're commuting.
Then, check this out! there's a few months out of the year with an extra couple of days of reserve days in your schedule! therefore even less days off, for which you are not even getting paid for. Yep, you read that correctly: working for free. 2 extra days.
And depending on your base you can sit reserve for years before being able to hold a line.
Welcome to Allegiant.

flydiamond

And even if you do successfully bid a schedule with consistent reserve pairings, our contract does very little to prevent scheduling from assigning you stuff outside that window, or changing your reserve window to start later, ruining early release provisions on go home day.

For example if you're 3:30 am to 3:30 pm reserve W-F, they can call you at 3:29 pm on Thursday and give you a trip that is in the evening on Friday when you were expecting to self release at 11:30 am. Practices like this have driven an increase in fatigue calls amongst our pilots as it is difficult to flip your rhythm quickly from mornings to nights.

Our early release rules are also very arbitrary and favor the company. For example, if you are reserve, then have a single day off, even if it's an immovable golden day, you're not eligible to self early release. Same if you had a standalone reserve day followed by a block of days off. You need 2 or more reserve days followed by 2 or more days off. Furthermore, self release is measured as 8 hours from start of RAP instead of 4 hours early, so when they change your RAP to start later because of rest or just because they want to, your ability to early release is diminished or eliminated.

9easy

I'm guessing the doom and gloom is directed at people thinking about commuting. If you live in a small base, it's often very nice. Flying 2-3 days a month is pretty normal, and if you do AM reserve, if you wake up and haven't been called there's an 80% chance you're already done for the day. You can pick up a few trips and still credit 100 hours while flying 6-8 days a month in a small base. It's an amazing part time job.

Reserve in SFB/PIE/PGD is a neverending nightmare and I don't know how anyone can do it. Work almost every day, endless 3-6 hour limo rides, overnights.

One mans junk is another mans treasure.

flydiamond

You’re def right about florida but I think you’re somewhat over embellishing how good reserve is in small bases. If it was so good, senior guys would bid it. They don’t. i know some am reserve GRR guys have had to go recover timed our pilots on redeyes from LAS to FNT via limo and then double deadhead back to base on AA amounting to an over 16 hour duty day.

Half the reserve schedules (the composite ones) you don’t even get paid for open time reserve pickups because of the horrible add days language in the contract. But overall you’re right, reserve isn’t that bad. We are lucky that we aren’t put back on call after an assignment like is the case at some airlines and that there are rarely overnights and no airport standby.

it the union wins the grievance over the value of an unused reserve day then reserve might be desirable here.

windshot

Might be slightly off topic here but do you guys get the miles for deadheads on other carriers like AA? And are limos paid at 50% like deadheads?

SladeTin

Yes and yes. You can add your miles number to your ticket once it’s booked. 50% deadhead pay for air or ground transportation. That is a gaping hole in our contract that must be fixed.