What kind of seniority did these people have and what regional did you work at?

Best regional for least amount of overnights?
 

First off, don't predicate your future relationship on promises you can't keep. You can plan as best as possible, then the whole world will change and what you thought would be no longer is. You could find the perfect regional setup, only to get a job at mainline that requires more time away. How many millions of dollars over the course of your career is this going to cost you?

Second, some women aren't cut out to be pilot spouses. If she can't handle the day to day without you, or needs a constant stream of phone calls, texts, etc, well, that would stress me out. And could stress your crew out as well.

Lastly, if you're a Round 1 lineholder and live in base at PSA it is possible to limit your time away from home. PM if you want to talk about it.


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If you live in an HQ base for a particular regional you could research opportunities for pilots offered by the company outside the cockpit. Ask about qualifications to be a recruiter, work at the training center, work in the safety department, etc.

Yes that's why we get into flying. Planning to fly a desk, or become a recruiter or work in the safety department. Those guys are lifers or plain don't like to fly.

If you want nights at home you definitely don't want DPJ or companies like that... Not even sure why that would be on your radar but whatever. If you've scheduled for one regional they are pretty much all the same so you already know what you're up against.

Seriously, look into 91 jobs in a city you or your spouse have family if you want home time. That way you can be stay at home dad until there's a trip. With everyone going to the airlines there are decent gigs out there that fly 200-400 hours per year and have a lot of home time. You're on call every day but will probably only go to work a couple times a month. There's a corporate jobs fb page that's good or network where you wanna live. Look up people you trained with, etc. that are in corporate now and see what's out there, you might find something that works for you!

Thanks man. I have the experience from my regional as a scheduler. They had a "first out/last out" reserve protocol, and they also contractually had to use ready reserves as little as possible. They also had to get the ready reserves back to base ASAP. We were very streaky in reserve usage. We would have a month or two where a reserve would fly maybe once, and we'd have a month or two where the reserves would fly every day, and then some. I'm sure utilization at other regionals is/was similar, so I guess I was looking more for contractual language at the various regionals regarding reserve/ready usage. I'm definitely going to look into the 91 gig. Maybe I can get a deal making enough money (down the road) to just buy tickets and/or rack up airline miles. I don't care what I fly. I'll fly oil filters in a Cessna 152 for all I care. I'm just looking for quality of life, time at home, enough money to support the (future) family, and either travel benefits or the ability to buy tickets. I'll definitely start researching the part 91 operators and see what's out there. Thanks for the suggestion, man!

I hardly ever do overnight trips. Last time was two nights back in January. And I'm not senior in base. About 50%. OO/SLC.

Plenty of variety at our different domiciles.

Island Air in Hawaii. All day trips, home every night. 1 base in HNL.
https://www.islandair.com/pilot-careers

Island Air | AirlinePilotCentral.com

To be fair...50 percent in SLC means you've been here a long, long time. If you're a CA, you're probably approaching retirement age ;)

I bid in the top 20 percent in my base. I can't hold most locals as there aren't enough to hold and make up a full line, plus the guys above me get them all. So for the OP, realistically, this is a job in which you will be gone at minimum 10 nights per month. More, if you commute. It's just the way it is.

I just left Horizon Air and was typically sleeping in my own bed over 20 nights a month. Most of the trips out of the Boise domicile were 2 day trips, in Anchorage it's pretty much all day trips. However, if you go to PDX or SEA you will fly the more traditional 3-4 day trips. As far as 121 flying goes only 7-8 nights away from home per month is pretty good in my opinion. Good luck on the job hunt.