camper1

I'd rather commute to NYC versus a two leg commute to Dayton. When you get forced into an upgrade, thats whats going to happen. NYC is commutable from most places east of the Rockies.

One leg commute to NYC for Endeavor pay or a two leg commute for PSA pay.... In plain English, if you choose PSA you are going to two leg commute it for about $20 less per hour...

Mustache

1250 TT (need 1500), interview end of the month with 4 regionals (more if i call back and schedule), moving to base wherever it is, prefer northeast bases (CVG, PHL), building time quicker than most (10-12 hrs/day for 3 days a week then maybe an extra 10-15 hrs total for the rest of the week, may be increasing soon). I want to upgrade and move on quickly, and I am very into the SAP that PSA has. Very confident on the interview, read all the gouges, don't care about flow but its a nice fallback.

I hadn't quite understood the intricacies of the Reserve Rules until TallFlyer (i think) explained them to everyone. BTW Tallflyer that post was awesome, anymore info like that would be greatly appreciated by all im sure.

Its not the big simple factors about PSA, or anywhere, im trying to get info on. I have friends there, I've asked the all these questions also. Im looking for anything I may not have heard before, again, like the complex factors of the reserve rules previously mentioned. I have read the thread on SAP, and know moving into base will solve most of the worlds reserve problems, and that flow is decreasing, you may not get your 1 year bonus when you expect to, etc, etc.

1. Stability
2. Upgrade Time (including time on reserve and how easy it is to fly more than the 75 if possible, or where I may find postings of each bases critical flights) Also I do have the most up to date seniority base list May 18
3. Bases (I will be trying to live in the northeast/midwest, preferably in a decent size city, thats relatively affordable so CVG or PHL are best bets)
4. Routes to fly from particular bases (I want to enjoy it, I'd love to do some canada and carribbevn, etc.)
5. Schedule (SAP)
6. Now that i am hearing a lot of negatives about ALPA, id like to learn more about the union
7. Travel benefits (seemingly PSA or AA WO's are the best)
-im now understanding PHL is where most of the international flights fly out of, so for me that would be a huge bonus, however philly isn't exactly known for being the best city (yes every city has its parts...)
8. Other IMPORTANT factors i may be missing
-why do people say PSA's contract sucks?
-anything else about why people hate the Reserve Rules or do people just want to complain because they hate reserve altogether?

-no family no kids, jut a whiney gf who's coming along for the ride

these are not necessarily in order of priority


Thanks for all the input everyone. Basically im 95% going to take PSA over anything else, i just want to understand as much as possible before going in. Unless something huge arises that I didnt know before

AirlineMerc

I suppose you could always be working for a regional that is not having its contract renewed next year and having a sizable chunk of your fleet taken from you, not being able to outpace attrition with your new hires, and the best thing you have to look forward to is a flow to a sup-par major.

So there’s that....

Ski Bird

Thanks, TF. This was very helpful. I look forward to starting and can definitely deal with a few months of unpredictable.

Swakid8

Awesome man

1) Stability - Right now the plan is for PSA to 150 planes. We are getting Envoys 700s and have 15 900s that are coming in 2019. We will start to retire the 200s in some point in the near future. But as of the the way things look, PSA will check your stability box.

2) Right now PSA is senior manning upgrades. Upgrades are immediate for those have the requirements to upgrade, but in your case with no 121 time, expect easily over a year. These force upgrades is creating movement on the FO side but keep in mind, you'll be displaced to one of the outstation bases of CVG, DAY, ORF as someone mentioned once the company says it's time to upgrade. Which will bring me to my next point.

3) Bases - This what made PSA attractive for me (I live in ORF and I choose PSA before they even announced the ORF base). If you are looking to live in CVG, you'll be set since you could make both CVG and DAY work as bases for ya as they are 2 hours apart. Live northeast of CVG, your set. Plus CVG and Day our jr bases. PHL is still a new base along with ORF. It will take a few months for things to shakeout.

4) I will leave this for someone who been flying the line for a while to answer, but I from what I have heard, we have some good overnights in Florida, and South Carolina. We do fly to Canada, but no where in the Caribbean. I believe Key West is the closest. We had Austin and San Antonio Texas, but mainline has those now.

5) SAP is the best thing since slice bread but who knows how long it will be around much longer.....

6)I will leave this for folks who have been here a while

7) All the WOs have the best travel bennies out of all the regionals because we travel in the priority group as AA mainline folks. Plus it isn't seniority based, it's based by who checked in first with the clock starting at 24 hours prior to the flight. So there is no super senior guy coming in bumping you off of your commute flight 1 hr before departure. Let me remind you, American has other hubs that has international flights as well for travel.

I am on the tail end of training, feel free to hit me up with any questions that you have.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

njd1

Can you give us a detailed impression of your training, any particular issues with it (or your crew partner), quality, timeframe, etc. In particular, I'd like to know how long each segment was, how much time off you had between segments, and what you expect your total time (including SOE) to be.

irrelevant

1 Stability - for now, most wholley-owned regionals are about as stable as can be reasonably expected. The industry can and has changed almost overnight, but after 10-12 years of the industry being stagnant, the wave of pilot retirements has finally started to arrive, and will continue for the next decade in increasing strength. That alone will help with stability. Don't ever get comfortable in this career though...use your free time to prepare yourself for the worst-case scenario. At the end of the day, PSA has zero control over its destiny. AA can choose to ship the airplanes somewhere else.

2 Upgrade time for a new-hire who has no 121 time could be quite a while. There are currently about 800 First Officers senior to where you'd be who would have to bypass for the opportunity to get to your level. While there are people being awarded upgrade presently before they have even completed initial First Officer training, these are pilots who have 1,000 hours of previous airline experience. When you get to that point in 18-24 months after your class date, things will likely have changed dramatically to the upgrade times.

3 Bases - I suspect you'll find CVG is considerably cheaper than PHL....and a lot less crowded, with a lot less traffic. I'm reading your post as you're willing to move. If you're not, commuting to CVG is likely to be more challenging than commuting to PHL. It's a 2-leg commute for a lot of us.

4 Routes - Honestly pretty much every domicile ends up shuttling in and out of Charlotte...maybe less so DCA or PHL at present. I wouldn't place any value on this aspect. Canada is overrated (it's all about hotel location, and across the street from the airport is the same anywhere...except you have the hassle of customs and Canadian ATC), and I don't think we overnight in the Bahamas. PHL won't see any more international regional flying than Charlotte, I suspect...and probably less...at least originating from that domicile.

5 Schedule - Once you become senior enough to hold what PSA calls a "round 1 line", you'll have access to the SAP. You can completely change your schedule within the bounds of legality, though you may spend hours working on it during the 24 hour window. It's honestly the best thing about PSA....maybe second to the amount of growth the airline has had over the last 4 1/2 years. That growth appears to be slowing, so the SAP would be my choice for the #1 thing...though the company and ALPA are negotiating to change the bidding process, so time will tell how that impacts the usability of SAP in the future.

6 The union - There are limited things the union can influence, and in many ways their hands are tied by the "culture of cheap" that infects every level of PSA, and the Railway Labor Act. The second factor will impact any unionized labor at any regional airline, and the first is not entirely unique to PSA. I believe our union volunteers do the best job they can, though the communication could be much better. It seems not uncommon to get an e-mail at 11 a.m. about a conference call for the pilot group...that starts two hours later. The weekly e-mails seem borderline useless for providing any information of value.

There are concerns with ALPA leadership negotiating and approving amendments to our contract in secret. This seems to be the norm here, and it leads to issues like the current mess where the company is senior-manning First Officers into an upgrade and forcing them "voluntarily" into commuting to a different domicile. Had this agreement been open for the pilot group as a whole to review before it was approved, there's a much, much higher probability this issue would have been identified before it negatively impacted a lot of people. Five or ten ALPA reps are simply not smarter than the collective 1,800-strong pilot group. That's just common sense, or lack of humility on the part of PSA ALPA.

7 Travel benefits - Pretty industry standard...though they don't charge $50 or so annually like I recall Delta does. If you live in CVG they'll be a little more challenging to use, since you can't go anywhere non-stop from CVG except for an AA hub. PHL would win in this aspect.

8 PSA's contract is criticized because the pay rates for Captains, which was never good, has been surpassed by a huge margin by other regionals. Another factor that impacts everyone is the contractual language, which allows to company free reign to interpret things in a manner not in the employee's favor. "Operational necessity" is one phrase the company likes to abuse line holders and reserves alike by assigning trips and modifications out of seniority order.

Part of the problem with reserve is you report for duty day 1. Scheduling gives you an assignment, then tends to change that assignment multiple times. "You're going here now for an overnight, then you'll be going home the next day." Then the next day it's "oh, now you're not going home, you're doing a PGV turn, then you'll be going home." Then after your finish your PGV turn, they call and say "now you're not going home, you're going to HPN for an overnight"...it continues like this until you're no longer legal to use. "Filling holes" is an accurate description TF made. The problem is there are a ridiculously large amount of holes that need to be filled for some reason.

Alternatively, some who want to fly a lot but who are on reserve just don't get used. There are also commuters who want to get used constantly on reserve, so they don't have to pay for a hotel or crashpad in their domicile. You can see where it's a challenge to meet everyones' individual desires.

I've worked for another regional airline, so my perspective is different than that of someone who hasn't. PSA has potential to be a much better place...and in many areas it really wouldn't take very much effort or money to improve things a significant amount. I think there are many who try to work towards that, but there is this culture of mediocrity that is just a cancer that has metastasized throughout the organization. Roughly half of the workforce is getting paid less than $25k/year...and you're simply not going to attract and retain many quality people for that kind of money.

Best wishes with your choice. I hope this helps fill in at least a few blanks for you. I commend you for making the effort to ask some tough questions, rather than blindly diving in.

Malcolm Tent

Regarding International travel; IMO it’s better to non-rev to your international departure airport and be a D1T (highest non-rev category). Using this logic you might choose CVG then one leg to any AA International Hub.
Of course this shouldn’t be the key factor when deciding which regional or domicile to pick.

Mustache

swakid8 and irrelevant appreciate the info. definitely very useful. and yes, to whichever one of you it was (i think irrelevant) i am going to move to base regardless of where it is. only commute i may consider is choosing CVG because it seems its very junior and im interested in living in cincinnati, and id do the DAY commute or PHL commute if i had to (training and maybe a few months to start). otherwise id swap to CVG asap to live in base with a 20 min commute from downtown cincinnati area.

Also, does anyone have any insight into critical lines or access to a recent schedule containing them?

If you can pick up a line on a scheduled day off its 125% as far as i understand? assuming you don't go over your required 1-day off/wk limit. So does this mean that when on reserve its difficult to pick up a critical line, until you have a R1, or am I mistaken?

What are the trends of lines being critical of any percentage (125,150,175%)? I believe nov/dec holidays everything gets crazy but lets focus on any given month...

Is there an average number of critical lines each week (e.g. do sunday evenings tend to be critical, or maybe thursday mornings? who knows, maybe japans happy hour goes critical for PSA on Wednesdays, but thats the kind of stuff id like to find out)


and side question on SAP. Does no other airline really have SAP or something close to it? Ive heard about PBS but SAP seems to be one of the largest benefits of PSA and I've read and heard very good things about it. As in, many people choose PSA because SAP makes QoL that much better.

all helpful stuff people, im sure im not the only one learning a lot

Swakid8

Just keep in mind, if you had to sit reserve in DAY, you'll still be able to live in CVG and drive up.

Yes Republic also has SAP but it has a ton of restrictions that make it useless.