If you have any friends at NJA, I would have one of them cut and paste this on our MB. We have a lot of newhires that would benefit from the insight of your post.

Meh....

AB is a DB and I'll be telling every probie I fly with to GET OUT. So will about 35 other pilots I know.

I try not to tell them to leave but I do tell them to do the math on compensation/retirement. That will usually provide the same answer as yours. One thing I do point out is the duration of our overnights. Airlines don't have 6-8 days of 10-12 hour overnights. Somehow, the company sold the union on the idea that if we're not run like rented mules, they can't pay us and make a profit. Reminds me of similar company rhetoric when 91K was being proposed. There was no way they could be profitable if 91K became regulatory.

I agree. My last airline flight home was completely full with 50 standbys trying to get on it. I don't miss those days. Commuting is horrible at the best of times but now with the travel demand and cancellations I can magine that it's a complete nightmare. Hub to hub? Forget it. Living in base for a legacy can be a sweet deal, but then you're limited to the big cities. I'm fully aware that I could make more money and never have to vacuum a carpet at the airlines, but the trade off is worth it for me.

I remember being stuck in Newark all day going from gate to gate begging for the jump seat only to be told I'm number 2, 3 or 4 in line and the back is oversold. Do I pay for a cab to La Guardia and continue my adventure there or retreat to the Wyndham Garden and try again the next day? That happened to me on several occasions. Once I just stayed in Newark for 3 days until my next rotation started. Did my laundry at the hotel. My family was not amused. Miserable experience.

During my time at USAirways I commuted from CLT to: PIT, DCA, BOS, BWI, & PHL. Major PITA. Now when I could hold CLT (rare) it was really nice. Even reserve was OK since I was a 20 minute drive to the employee lot. Then in 2005 I started with NetJets. In 2017 I had to medically retire. I have friends from my 1989 new hire class at USAir who went back when recalled.

Had I not had to retire early I might have done better staying with USAirways/American. My friends can hold Captain in CLT now but I don't know if they could have done that in 2017. But then I made Captain at NetJets in 2.5 years so it might be a toss up as far as compensation. Being a line holder in CLT would have been a better lifestyle for sure. Two things I disliked about NetJets were the short layovers (fly for NetJets and see the world from your hotel room window); and the God-Awful early shows. With decent seniority at the airline I could have bid no departures before 9am. So it's a mixed bag. Lineholder in CLT vs. NetJets, lineholder probably wins. But anything else I think NetJets wins. And as a bonus the flying at NetJets is many times more interesting than the airlines. 80% of the time I saw a new airport while on a tour. And that's even after 12 years.

These are fair points, but the airlines have made it much easier to commute over the last few years. It isn't perfect and it is still on your own time, but some allow the pilots to reserve a jump seat in advance and there is talk about guaranteed seats for commuters in at least one of the new contracts, not that I know it to be a fact. I was never willing to commute so I just moved to my bases until the 2017 contract at NJA gave me home basing.

Now that is classic. I would feel the same way with how they treated you and the rest of the Gulfstream pilots.

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And yet there are still people who believe we're the "Golden Children" and AB is totally taking care of us....

At this point, I really don't G A S.

Commuting runs the spectrum. If I needed to commute to another base its a 1.5 hour flight from an area with 3 international airports within 30 minutes. That is a pretty painless commute compared to what some people endure.

At NJA I was often given a boarding group D, middle seat, last minute ticket with a 2-3 leg commute home across the country. I would take commuting at my airline over NJA airline travel to and from, any day of the week. Commuter clauses are getting better, airlines are adopting positive space commutes on company metal and those benefits will only get better as airlines compete for applicants.

United did not offer positive space commuting to the pilots in their latest TA, so that was an empty offer. No company is going to do that with demand as high as it is right now.

As far as boarding groups, talking to the gate agent will allow you to board in pre-board or one of the first groups 99/100 times.


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