It's happening. Details are sketchy at best. The gist:

- You are in this fictitious base called HOM (make up your own acronym)

- Every month, you are flown to whatever city will be your base.

- You are provided a hotel room

- You will get a rental car if the hotel does not have an airport shuttle (good luck getting groceries if you are staying in a hotel with a stingy shuttle policy)

- You will bid your seniority for whatever trips are created for that city. Expect at least some reserve even if you are bidding #1

- No per diem is the rumor (not confirmed, however). But, since per diem is only $1/hr, you won't miss it.

- You will be flown either to your home airport or to your next city after the end of the month.

Some important things to know:

-Even if you have more than 2 days off in a row (highly unlikely), you will NOT be given a positive space ticket home. This differs from what has traditionally been "home" basing.

-Unless you are single with no family, no home, and no possessions, this will be a significant tax on your life.

To give you another perspective, we have FO's who have been here 5 years+. The captain slots into this HOM base went to guys who have been here 6 months. The FO slots haven't been assigned yet because that's where all the newhires are going. This has the potential of being a decent deal for commuters, but in their usual "ready, fire, aim" way of doing things, they expect the crewmembers to bear the brunt of their lack of planning.

 

Thanks for the info.

It seems that even being single, with no family and no home and no possessions that would still be a tax on my life.

 

Living in base is really a nice perk and hard to voluntarily give up. However, short of an upgrade, getting some non-RJ time (especially typed in the A320) could help move your career forward. G4 may be rough on QOL in the short term, but the pilot group is working on fixing that and even if they don't - you'll be more marketable for other carriers.

 

Don't bet on this. Now that the TDY base is staffed, expect the upgrades to go back to 5-6 years.

 

Agreed. Much of the movement will be from the bottom of the seniority dropping out due to buyer's remorse. The middle will be leaving in the near term as well, but once it all shakes out you'll be left with two main factions: the "been here too long/too old to leave" guys at the top and the revolving door at the bottom.

 

Is it 6 1/2 weeks of ground school or 6 1/2 weeks total?

 

It's anywhere from 6-8 weeks to 6 months. Depends on if the sim is broken or not.

 

The name of this thread speaks volumes.

 

It does. Who would have ever thought 5 years ago these 2 would be found in the same sentence. Sad.

 

Funny, the MIA sim worked good in the period Allegiant no-showed for in June and July.

Really sad.