Chasing QOL fast
 

Specifically interested in junior people with a great QOL, but open to anyone...

For those of you that chase QOL over money:

What company:
Where based:
How have you been there:
What's your schedule (including time it takes to commute):
What do you make (ballpark):
Do you commute:

This could be helpful for those of us, like myself, that really only need to make a minimum of 100k/yr to make things work, and want to be home with the fam as much as possible.

Any of the big six should offer QOL flexibility (ie you have some trade-space between money and schedule flexibility). Some LCC/ULCC may offer good schedules (but less money).

If you can relocate and live in base, even better.

If you can relocate to a junior base in the NE US, even more better.

I would be interested in answers to this question too, but at the 50K mark, which seems to be the entry level these days.

I'm currently doing 135 cargo and the amount of time away is rather grim. I'd love to know what flying avenues provide the minimum time away from home. I'm too late in my career to care about hours building and ever bidding 121.

Minimum time away from home......Allegiant.

All day trips 99% of the time.

SouthWest has the most flexibility it seems. FDX seems to have lots of time of if you get a widebody (but long trips). Living in base will always net a significant increase in QOL. Getting to a jr base on a growing fleet can be a crapshoot but help a lot. (UAL 737 and 320 in same base doing similar flying can net wildly different reserve stints)

NK has waaaayyy better flexibility. Having said that, average hardline at SWA is 90 hours credit at $132, 17 days off, NK 75hr credit at $112 and 14 days off (both based on 3rd year FO). If you work 15 days SWA will get 15K including profit sharing, NK is less than $8K.

Why?......

Crew scheduling is required to have 75% of the days "green" (more reserves available than required) before trip trading starts. This means you can normally drop any trip (no, not Xmas) you don't want to fly. At SWA you can only put your trip in trip trade/giveaway and hope someone else will pick it up. Still doesn't make up for the insane difference in pay/culture/efficiency.

This. And the kicker is that in order to do that they have to reduce the desired reserve margin across the entire month until 75% are green. The result is very high reserve surplus above the margin for days that already had adequate staffing. Fourteen hours into Daily Open Time my base still has 28 green days in October. Requests are still being processed though so we'll see about my drop....!

My biggest factor in my job choice was quality of life over the first five years and the biggest factor in that was living in base. SWA was the fastest route to where I wanted to live, months of commuting vice years. In year three, I average 12 days of work a month, bid for early returns on last day when I can (home before noon on the last day is almost another day off). Most people at swa seem to be chasing the $, so lower paying easy trips are usually plentiful to trade with the company. Benefits for us slackers of no-pbs bidding is with monthly overlap correction can drop a day or two off your schedule and your week of vacation turns into 18+ days off. Dropping trips in their entirety is not easy. You need someone else to pick up from you and until you’re senior, probably not going to happen.

I chose SWA knowing I was giving up faster seniority and earning potential down the road (long term QOL). But with only a 15 year career, those were less important. If I was looking at a longer career, retirement numbers and variety of flying elsewhere would have made the decision more difficult.