Or maybe folks aren’t telling the whole story. Most folks have a need or interest to live and work within a time zone or two of their kids. If my family is rooted in southern California, do the transient QOL categories you allude to in NYC or ATL actually provide QOL? I’m thinking we might need a new term like “quality of real life” that accounts for actual limitations that exist in most people’s lives. We aren’t traveling nurses. A quality airline career for me clearly looks different than it does for you, and includes very few category or base changes and no iterations of whack-a-mole trying to seek or escape categories that change faster than I can (or want) to chase them.

 

As a full career commuter, that approach is easier than those who chose to live in base for QOL. I've bounced from NYC to LAX and most bases in between chasing QOL. Every base is a commute, so driving to work is out of the equation. Choosing to commute while living in base makes SOMEWHERE in the system an entirely different calculation. That approach also ignores the fact our AE cycle and training freeze keeps us outside of the timeline required for chasing QOL.

Finding SOMEWHERE and actually getting there are two different animals.
-Mark today as the time when LAX 320 B was identified as a QOL unicorn.
-From today, when can you or I get there?
-What is the opportunity cost of lost QOL during the wait?
-How long will the QOL last once in that category?
-How quickly can I leave LAX 320 B if it loses unicorn status?

Cherry picking the current QOL winners and pretending they are viable choices is like back testing a day trading program. It looks good on paper, but rarely holds up in reality.


Thanks. How do I get in the category while it is still blue? Being in a LAX 320 B February 2022 required bidding for that category in July or October of 2021. Even if you were a successful bidder for 1 of 50 positions offered, you still may not have trained and converted by FEB. I've looked back at a number of my former categories. Pilots who bid for NYC A330 B, a category with historically high QOL will be sorely disappointed to find exactly 0 blue days between now and the end of Feb.

Thanks for the bidding tip earlier in the thread!!

 

I agree with your sentiment and do the same myself. I use my seniority to get the best QOL I can, which has involved base and/or equipment changes an average of every 16 months since being hired. Being base agnostic is one benefit of commuting.

Some of the moaning is just routine pilot chatter, but most of it is rooted in devaluation of seniority. Just like inflation takes away purchasing power, the optimizer, blatant disregard for work rules and punitive MDs have devalued seniority. QOL that was available at 75% now takes 50%. I think we all agree the ideal QOL we are looking for can be found, it just costs more seniority and maybe moving to a new base to buy it.

 

Yall are making this too difficult. Every category I've been on I've used all available tools to drop trips. MD88, 73N. 717 I was on RES so I used multiple tools to get most Holidays off at 99% in category. You don't have to be ultra senior to do this. All you have to do is instead of scrutinize.... IMPROVISE

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I was just refuting the tone of the poster that everything is bad everywhere and there's nothing we can do about it. There are things. Note, I'm not at all saying this is acceptable.

And any time. It's probably going to hurt me in some way but I'm my the person to keep that a secret

 

thanks. It wasn’t when I was there. And so goes the chase

 

I think the root cause of much angst is the demise of the 88 and much of the 717. Those shorter flights are now being plugged into fleets where the pilots are used to longer legs, less legs per day. Moreover, those shorter flights can now combine with longer legs to make ultra productive "optimized" schedules.

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This is exactly what is happening but I don't know what we can do to return to less optimized flying.

 

I’ve been here almost 14 years, only been north of 60% in any category for maybe 12 months total, and I’m throwing the BS flag on your premise that at 99% you can finagle “most holidays off”. That’s not anything near reality.

 

This…

I had better QOL as a NY320B 70% in 2017 that when I got to 30% in 2019.

From commutable trips to only in the back end. From 2 legs a day, to 3-4 legs. From 15+ hr overnight at least twice a week, to 11-12hrs every night with 10+hrs of duty.