Just curious to find out pilots typical day/ month flying for SkyWest. Thinking about heading in that direction. Also do you like the company?

 

I've been with the company for over seven years. It's a very good company to work for! My schedule probably wouldn't be typical, but I hold an average of 16 days off. I bid/hold commutable four day trips on the 700/900 with a few weekends off here or there. My trips pay 21-23 hours each. Right now, we're pretty overstaffed on the jet, so I'm assuming new hires will probably be on reserve for a while. In SLC, guys with about 3+ years are on reserve as jet Captains. Schedules typically change from month to month depending on what Delta and United throw at us. Hope this helps a little.

 

Does the airline pay for your hotel if you have to stay overnight somewhere?

 

My paycheck wouldn't exist if they didn't (yes they do)

 

You have preferential bidding at SkyWest... correct? I have heard mixed opinions about it. What are your thoughts on it?

 

Thread drift danger.....

I have seen a SKW schedule and it was good. DEN based crew. 4-day trip. Commutable on both ends of if you live in base have half a day at home before and after the trip. There you have it.

I jumpseated on a Shuttle America flight a couple weeks to from ORD-ORF and talked to the crew there. They have preferential bidding. The F/O was about a 2 year F/O and the captain has been there about 7 years. Both are CMH based. Both of their schedules would blow ours out of the water. (By 'ours' I mean AWAC). The captain (admittedly senior) said he averages about 16 or 17 days off per month. I don't know about commutability for him. But even the F/O, with medium seniority, had nothing really to complain about, also getting decent off days and respectable trips.

I too am curious about pref bidding.......

Let's hear it from pilots who are affected by it.

 

pref bidding is nice if you know how the program works, and how the setting can affect you. i'm at S5 (all republic uses pref bid) and generally hold ~14 days off. it's easier to get the days off you need than hard line bidding, unless they days you need off are every weekend. those tend to go senior. i'm right about halfway in my base as far as FOs go, and as long as i don't want every weekend off or want those juicy 28hr 4-day trips, i can generally get what i want.

of course, it is possible to screw yourself into reserve even though you can hold a line due to either a very complex bid (lots of avoid and prefer requests) or bidding stuff you can't hold seniority-wise (like weekends off and commutable trips when you're in the bottom 3rd of seniority)

of course, your mileage may vary

...and now back to your regularly scheduled Skywest topic.

 

The PBS at Skywest has its ups and downs. Now that we're staffed properly (at least on the RJ side), PBS has been a little better. You really have to know what you're doing. The few times I've got a bad schedule has been when I've made some kind of mistake on my bid. All in all, I like it better than hard lines. Skywest paid to have our PBS system custom made from scratch. The bad thing about this is that it's a "work in process" and has had a few bugs here and there. The good thing about the system is that they can adapt and change it from month to month. They've added many new features since it's come out. It's hard to get a real idea of how it's treating our crews. There are some complaints, but I think the majority of crews are liking the system. I bid about 60% down the list, and PBS is treating me well overall.

 

PBS does work rather well if you know the ins & outs of the system, and try not to be too selective if you are junior.

That said, SkyWest's SkedPlus+ system makes post line-award "damage control" pretty easy. It also lets us drop parts of trips that we don't want for commuting purposes, etc. For instance, if you have a good trip that has a 515am show at ORD for an OMA turn (like I did), you can just drop that turn and keep the rest of the trip (one leg to YEG, then an SFO layover the next day), like I did.

 

Two comments:

1. Once the senior half of my base figures out how to bid on PBS I'm hosed, because I don't know how I keep getting exactly what I'm looking for on my schedule month after month.

2. SkedPlus+ is worthless to me...and it's not the program's fault, just reserve staffing.