ORF Questions
 

Hello all,

Looking to join PSA this summer and I had a question for current PSA pilots. I know that ORF is a junior base and I plan on living local. My goal is to fly as much as possible.

Is the ORF base at PSA a good place for this? Can a new hire on reserve pick up extra flights if desired?

If PSA is not the answer to maximize flight time, which regional would be the best option?

Thanks in advance.

I'm interested in the ORF base as well, but I'm looking more for QOL rather than maximizing flight time. Any color current pilots can shed will be appreciated!

ORF is a junior base with no signs of changing for FO's. Getting it won't be a problem.


Simple question: can reserves pick up extra flying - yes. You're still limited by FAR 117 (eg can't be on duty 7 days in a row) and in most cases you can't pick up stuff on your assigned reserve days even if you want to. ORF doesn't tend to have a lot of open time compared to other bases, especially CLT.

You're not likely to fly much on reserves - they use reserves to fill holes that nobody else wants. Like deadhead ORF-CLT to operate CLT-SDF and spend the night then double deadhead back SDF-DCA-ORF the next morning.


PSA has gone on a pilot hiring spree in 2017 and 2018. More than half of the 1800+ pilot group was hired in the past 24 months. There are signs that is slowing down significantly. IDK who else to say is definitively better, but I think you'll be hard pressed to fly more than a couple hundred hours in your first 12 months at PSA if you start mid 2019.

If you want to maximize flight time, go to Mesa and get based at IAD. It's my understanding that they are so short on pilots that there is basically zero reserve time.

They have 1200 pilots flying 145 planes. We have 1900 pilots flying 135 planes. You can figure out from those numbers where you will fly more. They also aren't forcing their FOs to upgrade, instead they are paying 200-300% for people to pick up time, actually incentivizing hard work.

Flying aside - our contract language is terrible. I wish I would have known/realized that before I started. Hindsight 20/20 and all that jazz. All in all it beats digging ditches - which I've literally done. Not by much but it beats it hahaa.

Stop and think for a moment though - we actually have someone recommending going to MESA over coming here (for a particular reason - flight hours) but that is historically something that never happens. Seriously. Spend any amount of time just looking over posts in various sectors of this forum from the last few years. It is almost universally accepted to never go to MESA and here we are... again I realize the specific reason was to get flight hours but even so in the past no one would ever say to go to MESA over most other places even if it was a specific reason like live in base or get flight hours.

Think about that for a minute before you decide to even waste time interviewing here...

Sad.... but true.

Thanks for the informative replies about PSA. Is DCA a better option for more flight time or am I better off going somewhere else?

Ouch. What specifically is so bad about the contract? Who do you wish you worked for instead?

I sat reserve in DCA for 2 months and flew 3 trips. The reserve grid there is never green so you can’t move days around to try and pick up either.

It's full of holes and vague language that the company takes advantage of. Combine that with a Union that traded first officer seniority and quality of life for a small bump in flow that mainly benefited the guys running the Union, and you can start to put the pieces together.

We were supposed to get "improved" reserve rules over a year ago, but so far zero progress has been made.

Oh and also you'll spend a lot of time on reserve sitting around doing nothing on reserve since we're so overstaffed.

As for flow I'm in the top third of the seniority list and I'm looking at at least 4 years left to flow. A new hire these days is probably looking at 8-10 years.