Haha I am seeing that from a lot of people. How was the schedule though? My hang up is that it seems with pax carriers you are gone 3 or 4 and home 3 or 4 on average. With commuting I eat up a couple of those days home each time. Just seems like more stress with that extra money. But again, this could be my inexperience talking.

Schedules in my opinion were better at the airlines. My last airline gig I bid the pm shifts. And my body handled it nicely. Here you're all over the place, different time zones and different show times.

Well I think you have to pick your poison here. At a legacy/LCC..whatever...there are a lot of 3, 4, 5 day trips. You'll end up with 2 days off here, 3 off there, maybe 7 off. If you live local...no problem. If you can gain seniority and hold day turns or maybe bid reserve with the option to bypass trip assignments....you can have high QOL. IF high QOL for you includes living in domicile.

I personally want to live in the middle of the forest on a lake where not even the mail man knows where to deliver my amazon packages. I'm not willing to live in a downtown flat...or a suburb where I have to spend hours in infuriating traffic to get to the employee lot. Then catch the employee bus which takes 45 minutes. Then walk through the terminal for 30 minutes to get where I'm going so that I can listen to pax b*tch at me because they had to spend the night waiting to fly standby on my flight for whatever reason.

I'd personally make a once monthly zero-stress flight on a paid ticket with no personal liability to start my 16 day world tour. Then I want to go back to my remote wilderness reprieve and rip walleyes off of rock reefs for two weeks straight.

YMMV. What's awesome for you....may not be awesome for me.

I, like you, am not going to live in domicile. I am moving my family to the country and close to all of our family. I thought the airline life was for me, but after reading about commuting and the schedule...well I started to have second thoughts.

The one time a month travel sounds good to me as well. And 2 weeks every months to be home and enjoy my family sounds awesome to me.

And you’re right...the right or wrong answer depends on the person. I simply want to gather as much info as I can to make sure I am getting into what I think I am getting into. I really appreciate all the replies! I want to hear all sides.

Doesn't sound awesome for the poor fishes.

So you want to get away from it all. You still have to be in position by 0500Z of your first duty day. Your first day will begin on whatever day it takes to get you into position by 0500Z. If you choose to do so you will be allowed to travel on a flight that gets you to CVG, as an example, in just enough time to make a 0905Z departure to LEJ. So there goes 1/2 of one of you 14 days off. No problem though your fellow workers will be glad to have you "working" along side them after you've been up for 24 yours. Then lets assume you arrive in CVG at 0300Z on your next to last day. Yippy, you think, you still have to get home. Your wonderful domicile might be weathered in or another travel snafu eats into you last day. 14 is usually not 14, 15 is usually not 15, see that's known as supplemental math. Only at some operators is a 13 a 14 and a 14 a 15.

It gets better. Next you'll get to do 1224 math and try to decipher the 1 N 7. R-2's are as simple as pi compared to the amazing calculus involved in the assignment of the mystical released to duty formula. The released to duty clock is probably similar to a chess clock but you never get to hit the timer. The clock arbitrarily runs forward and backward in a perverse mimic of your circadian rhythm. The clock can't have a pendulum or any other device in which momentum of energy is involve because gravity is a constant (excepting Einstein of course) and this constant would be in direct opposition to Subpart J linear functions.

There are some constants. If you are on Probation you will break guarantee. The curve of breaking guarantee flattens toward 64 (imagine a straight line drawn from the number 64 (min guarantee) on the Y axis paralleling the X axis and as the numbers on the X Axis (representing years of service) advance from 0 to any greater positive integer the line flattens so as to never to breach the upper limit. This is an irrational number, I think, and has yet to be identified or named. I think it should be called the FU ratio. (I tried to find an online graphing gouge to show this better, but I'm not that smart.) I think the closest representation is the graph of "e" except the origin would start at (0,0) insteand of (0,1) and the upper limit would be a decimal that never breaches 64.

Another constant also relates to the calendar defying 1 N 7, in other words not your unpaid 1 N 7. This is a unicorn that is usually spotted once per year. This is difficult to grasp and graph. I've know people who've been studying this for decades and they can explain the concept but not the underlying algorithm. It involves training. Lets say you have training on the 6th of the month and your first duty day is the first. And since you've chosen to live in the garden of walleye or near the mountain of nectar running streams you leave home on the 31st of the previous month. This day in the rest of the world is called a day off. You then fly relatively hard for the next 5 days and arrive in CVG with 32 hours of credit on the 5th. Guess what? You get to drive to DTW drop off a car at Dollar call the HI Express and get a van to the hotel. And on the 6th you have to be in class at 8AM. Then its 4 days of Simulator. Thats, lets see, 11 days in a row. Voila- no 1 N 7 required at all. It gets better, remember you had 32 hours to begin with and got 4 hours credit for each day in ground school. No credit for the 1 N 7 (actually a 1 N 11) and your up to 56 hours. Hey presto-you now have 5 days left and get to do a perverse series of seat support sim times for 3 days. You get 2 more 1 N 7's (huh?) and you broke guarantee. Now you get to go home, and depending on what Bochian garden you've chosen to live in get 13 maybe 14 days off.

Three more constants that aren't mathematical constants (thank god the math is hurting my head) but are ontological in nature and i'm almost positive that they are not epistemologically defensible.

All are 2 out of 3 constants:

1) The first is a 747 constant. For the first 2 out of 3 years you will be an FO and you will be paired with another FO for AQP. 2 out of 3 of these pairings will involve one FO that has spent 2 out of every 3 months of the previous year warming a seat. In other words 1 of the 2 will have to do 3 out 3 of all units of work in training to stay off OPT.

2) 2 out of 3 rebuttals to this will be of the "your mama" type and will be made by those who have about 2 or sometimes 3 years off experience with 1224 math, Subpart J math, or any other calculations that don't involve a Tinder algorithm.

3) 2 out 3 times what you thought you knew to be true 2 or 3 minutes, 2 or 3 months, or 2 or 3 years ago can all change in 2 to 3 seconds.

See- it's pretty darn simple!

I love having all my days off in a row, absolutely love it. This is not to say the LCC and majors get even more days off a month, but they are usually broken up. In my opinion, having all the days off in a row is best.
I also hate people.

How many of those that made it to the stage 2 will eventually receive the call from ACP? What if I am unable to answer the call because of flying will they leave a mesaage for us to call back?

Man! I thought I had salty down PFG. You sir are The Godfather of salt! I just come here to read all your posts. Maybe I’ll make a coffee table book of them. Legendary

emugglin,

Dude bro, aww shucks....
You could do it too. Just combine a pretty interesting bout of Travelers D a severe case of circadian rhythm disorder and running out of English movie selections on Mrates (Priyanka Chopra is so hot) and this stuff (no pun intended) just flows.

Or maybe I just dreamt it after that primo K@$H from my fav store kicked in. Can you believe it? The Lyft dude wanted a hit of'n my Comb after he dropped me off.

E dude, you are a gentleman no doubt because I know you caught the typo on the graph of "e". Not callin' me out is as cool as pretendin' you don't see a true bro with his Hong Kong wife at breakfast in Mickey D's on Nathan Road.

(I ain't sayin- but did we meet at Bryson's in about '77 when Adnan K was still, you know, helping Ollie N. out?