Lifestyle in US aviation
 

I'm currently flying as an expat in Asia and have a few questions about the lifestyle aspect of flying in the US.

1) How does annual leave work generally? I've always been used to 35-42 days per year. I can't find a huge amount of information about this on the airline profiles, but I do remember some regional pages stating 7 days per year. With my extended family in Europe i'm concerned that if this is the case i'd be limited to one visit per year, using up all the leave.

2) I know everything is seniority based but how difficult is it to bid for or swap into duties giving longer blocks of days off (7 days-ish). When i've seen sample rosters here before it seems like blocks of 2-3 days off is the norm.

3) So far I only know of Kalitta offering a kind of 2 weeks on/2 weeks off contract (as a foreign passport, GC holder i'd not be eligible). Do any of the pax airlines offer anything similar?

4) Is part time and unpaid leave common?

I understand that these questions are very broad and may change considerably between airlines. I'm just trying to get an idea of the lifestyle working here to see whether it's better to try and fly for a local carrier (preferably LCC or pax major eventually) or to go down the route of a commuting job (aka Air Japan). Thank you for any input or advice.

For what it's worth, at spirit you do whatever you want. Want to do 10 on 20 off? sure!

Just don't expect tocredit 75 hours in 10 days of work.

As far as getting 7+ days off in a row, it's incredibly easy. I've gotten 7+ day stretches every single month for a year

Schedule varies considerably by airline, which base what equipment etc. Seniority may get more days off depending, bidding is typically by computer which may give you blocks of time off within Far 117 limits.
The cargo carriers tend to do more of the long blocks of days on and then days off.
Part time flying is not the norm.

widebody at the legacies also do this. 12 on 18 off etc which is far better than any ACMI block schedules

Usually starts at one week, and the gradually increases over the years to 4-6 weeks.

You can typically adjust the schedule to have more time off before and after vacation.

Typically (with PBS) you can do that. More seniority helps, but even junior folks can usually manage long blocks off if they want. With PBS.


No. Other cargo/ACMI carriers have similar schedules. The downside (if you have family) is being gone 2-3 weeks at a time. Hard on spouse, harder on kids.

Pax airlines typically are 2-5 on / 2-6 off by default although you can adjust that.

As was mentioned above legacy widebody schedules can be fantastic, but those go fairly senior so you wouldn't get that for a few years.


Part time is essentially not done for US airline pilots due to the expensive annual training overhead. They often allow part-time FA's because their training overhead doesn't involve expensive sims. Part time might be possible at some tiny commuter airlines, but the wages will be very tiny as well.

Unpaid leave is commonly offered when the economy is bad and they have too many pilots. Right now there is no unpaid leave available to my knowledge.

Every CBA has Personal Leave of absence of some sort. but you can't just take it whenever you want, there are rules and limits

FWIW, Endeavor is desperately offering TOWOP right now. They have been for the last three months and likely will continue for the next six plus months.
#thanksdelta
#regionalshellgames

You can usually take LOA for specific reasons, such as extreme personal hardship or being elected to congress. Unless they are over-staffed they don't offer LOA's to all comers for any reason.

I've seen them offered at legacies recently, for a month or so, based on fleet dynamics. But you can't really rely on it.

Definitely