Originally Posted by Flapps3658

Speaking of commuting; I’m trying to wrap my head around some things. I am a new hire living in Tampa. I thought being based in Miami and bidding LC would be a no brainer. After speaking to several people, I was told that I would be better off commuting to CLT, DFW, or PHL. Reason being that I will have a hard time non-reving to MIA from TPA due to the large amount of AA commuters. Checking AA, it looks like there are 5-6 flights a day from TPA to MIA. So my question is, if the commuter policy says I only need 1 flight to get me to base on time, why do I care if the flights are full, I get bumped or can’t reserve a jump seat? I have met the commuter policy, haven’t I? What am I missing? Caveat, I understand I’ll be on probation and I’m not going to do anything to jeopardize my job. Just don’t fully understand why commuting to another base would make much sense. TIA for comments

Originally Posted by JulesWinfield

Bid long call and book the jumpseat when it opens 8 days out. Proffer for trips, and you’ll be fine. You don’t want to burn commuter misses due to laziness. You’ll take a financial hit and potentially get a chief pilot meeting if you do it too often.

Originally Posted by Brickfire

Probation probation probation

Your goal should be the chief pilot never seeing your name for the first year.

Originally Posted by Flapps3658

Speaking of commuting; I’m trying to wrap my head around some things. I am a new hire living in Tampa. I thought being based in Miami and bidding LC would be a no brainer. After speaking to several people, I was told that I would be better off commuting to CLT, DFW, or PHL. Reason being that I will have a hard time non-reving to MIA from TPA due to the large amount of AA commuters. Checking AA, it looks like there are 5-6 flights a day from TPA to MIA. So my question is, if the commuter policy says I only need 1 flight to get me to base on time, why do I care if the flights are full, I get bumped or can’t reserve a jump seat? I have met the commuter policy, haven’t I? What am I missing? Caveat, I understand I’ll be on probation and I’m not going to do anything to jeopardize my job. Just don’t fully understand why commuting to another base would make much sense. TIA for comments

Originally Posted by TallFlyer

Just looking at tomorrow, there are 6 flights TPA-MIA, half of them Envoy, one a 737, and the others 319s, which leaves you a total of 5 reservable jumpseats to work. There are 9 flights to CLT, all 321, which means you have 18 reservable jumpseats to work, to say nothing of the additional seats in the back of the aircraft. A sample size of one, I'll grant you, but I imagine the stats are similar throughout the year. MIA would grant you the ace in the hole of driving, though.

I think the idea of commuting to CLT could be a good one unless you like the drive. Now, once you can hold MIA 777, a whole other calculation.

Originally Posted by JulesWinfield

Bid long call and book the jumpseat when it opens 8 days out. Proffer for trips, and you’ll be fine. You don’t want to burn commuter misses due to laziness. You’ll take a financial hit and potentially get a chief pilot meeting if you do it too often.

Originally Posted by PRS Guitars

Wait, book which jumpseat? Are you going to book a seat every day? That would tie up many seats…that mostly would not get used. On reserve I only bid a seat when I’m pretty sure I’m getting my proffered trip, or after I’ve been assigned a trip…so day before only.

Originally Posted by Otterbox

AAs is hands down better. No second flight required, no buying your own ticket greater than 12hrs out and still arriving 90 minutes early, no requirement to maintain awareness of forecast weather and other factors affecting travel and use prudent judgement to commute extra early (and sacrifice days off and bear added cost of lodging to commute in early). And you can reserve the jumpseat at AA.

Originally Posted by Lifeson2112

I’m assuming he means the jumpseat to get there on day 1 of reserve block around 1130AM or so.