Originally Posted by Skudrunning

great response Captainv. That has me thinking real hard about Atlas.

Originally Posted by captainv

Well, for me anyway:
- i was trapped at a dying regional and managed to escape a year before the ship went down.
- first year at Atlas, including 4 months of meager training pay, paid more than I ever made at the regionals, except the one year I was a captain for 8 months, and that wasn't far off
- i have more time at home at Atlas than I ever did at the regionals. it's almost silly.
- even when i'm working, I fly on average @ 40 hours a month and have lots more time to enjoy my layovers, and of course one leg is a huge QOL improvement over 4-5 legs a day
- when i flew corporate, i loved wondering where i might be headed next whenever the phone rang, but hated not ever having hard days off. at the regionals, i liked having a schedule, but after a while it was the same old, same old. this is the best of both worlds.
- being gone 17 days (rare for me, so far) can wear on the wife and kids, but when i'm home, i'm a lot more plugged in than when i did the 4 on/3 off 121 schedule.
- the no-stress commute is HUGE to me, easily my biggest source of stress in the 121 world. buddy of mine has been at DAL for 13 years, also on the 767 in JFK. he's still sweating the commute every week. can't hold Europe anymore. Does mostly transcons or Africa. Caribbean when he's lucky.


don't get me wrong, i know the majors would pay me a lot more, (hopefully). I know their bennies/retirement are way better than ours. but the idea of commuting on reserve doesn't exactly have me salivating. Nor does being junior forever living in base. my buddies keep telling me they'll retire 60 percent of their pilot group in 10 years. I hope they're right, but that's a best-case scenario and i see their management taking steps to, if not prevent it, at least degrade the job further. i like that that we can compete in a global sandbox, instead of just the US passenger market.

So far, it's a win/win for me. Lots of guys gave up $100k+ jobs as senior RJ captains to come here, too. I'd be curious to hear them chime in as well.

Originally Posted by captainv

and none of my trips start in base, so i don't have to commute on off days.

Originally Posted by Tanker-driver

Hmmm, I was under the impression that the commute was on days off regardless. So you are saying that if the trip does not start in base, you commute during your 17 on? Apologies if this was previously discussed.

Originally Posted by OSAVIP

If your first operating leg starts at your base on day 1 of your pattern, you're commuting on your day off. If your first op leg starts away from base, your schedule must show a deadhead from your base to get there. But you'll just go from home to the starting location, never touching base--commute on a work day while the CRT clock is ticking. That's nice.

Originally Posted by worldfr8dog

If I could summarize into one word why Atlas was the choice for me, ADVENTURE would be it. I loved the airplane that I flew for the regional I flew for, the route I flew was up and down the west coast, about as easy as flying gets but that didn't allow me the opportunity to eat Tom Kha Gai with a side of fresh mango juice in Bangkok, fresh sushi in Narita, biltong in J-burg, drink pica pica in Peru, eat Kangaroo in Australia.... (yes, I like to eat and drink as you can see). With Atlas, I will get a chance to do that and more while not having that scheduled rush-rush thing going on. (Disclaimer, Atlas is diversified in what it does and scheduled services are one of the many things they do therefore the rush-rush does exist at Atlas). What I most value in work-life can best be achieved at Atlas.

Originally Posted by akaviator

That's what I'm talking about!