I'm pretty sure that one of our own(APCer) went to law school while commuting to DTW.

 

I once gave A330 CA OE to a guy who was a practicing Dentist as well

 

There's a 7ER FO in ATL that is a dentist as well.

 

Mill,

Mostly answered, but I'll toss in my 2 cents.

If airline management sniffs that you want anything less than "all I can fly" hours a month, you will probably not get hired. Your competition for a slot is a starving regional Captain who's wife drives a 10 year old car and kid needs braces. Delta's staffing is very thin on during the peak months ... they certainly do not build a staffing model around part time. I've no experience of how much you fly during war, but it seems major holidays and the summer are deployments where we are just barely winning.

Like others have stated, you can get senior in category, eventually, and put your assigned trips on a swap board for others to pick up. Also realize among junior pilots you have some who have been "junior" now for almost 15 years ... others were junior, saw some seniority briefly and are now junior again. It depends on where and what you want to fly, business cycles and mergers. So while it looks great right now, it looked pretty awesome in 2000 too and not a whole lot has moved for the junior guys since then.

Not only that, but the pay system (making a generality here) is a pretty strong motivator. At Delta our benefits are expensive and not very good (compared to most other jobs). Your mid month paycheck is where all of this gets deducted, but the mid month paycheck is also where your per-diem and your extra hours gets put. So, you end up working to try to maximize that mid month paycheck. Also, your 401K (no retirement) and profit sharing (which has been pleasant) are directly tied to your pay which is directly tied to your productivity.

Finally, we have a bunch of senior pilots, over age 60, who claim they are going to use the "drop all my trips" strategy until they are age 65. But, when you ask them "so what's your schedule like this month?" their answer is always near 100 hours.

A potential answer is to go to an international category where they have a big drop off in hours over the shoulder months. But lately, even those guys have been flying.

I would say averaging 8 days on the road is impossible. In a domestic category averaging 8 nights on the road (16 days) is about average.

 

The funny thing was that he said he was the black sheep of his family because his brother and sister were both doctors and lawyers while he was only a pilot. After two days of OE, I asked him to stop asking me questions as I had already told him everything I knew about the 330 and he was making me feel stupid. He must have had 20 type ratings from B25, DC3 to Lear. The worst part was that he was a really great guy.

 

As an aside, back in the ASA days we had a Delta jumpseater literally ask, "have you put in your paperwork with Delta? You should, unless you are one of those guys with a DUI, or no college education. I went to the Air Force Academy. Do you guys have degrees?"

The reply from the left seat was that he was an Anethesiologist for Houston Medical Center and the right seater was held a Graduate Degree from Wharton. In both cases, the guys flying the little E120 were doing so because they just liked flying airplanes.

 

And that right there, my friend, is why we have a hard time getting paid what we should. This career is looked at more like a hobby. I don't know how many guys I fly with that say something like "Can you believe they PAY us to fly airplanes?" Well yes I do. These would be the same guys that cut deals with crew scheduling and somehow always seem to know and get assigned the good charter trips.

One day we will learn but not any time in the near future I'm afraid. I enjoy flying airplanes, but I do expect management to pay for my experience.

 

FWIW DAL MD88FO, the Captain's now at U-CAL and the FO's here at Delta.

Both volunteer for union work to try to raise pay, bennies and conditions.

They like flying. They aren't fools.

 

Thanks everyone for the replies. You've all been very helpful and I have a lot of food for thought. Good luck to everyone.

 

Live in base at Allegiant. You're home every night, average 7-8 hour duty days. Being junior here sucks right now though.