Hey guys,

I'm curious to see what the typical schedule looks like for someone who is on a smaller plane (CR2/ERJ) vs the larger (E170/CR9). For example, legs per day, leg length(hours), duty day length, daily block hours, time between legs and so forth...

I'm going to be making the jump to the regionals soon and would like to know what I'm getting myself into regarding the above topic.

Thanks!

 

Generally the large RJ's have longer legs, less "work" for the same or more pay.

It totally can depend on the airline and operation.

 

Typical schedule for a 50 seat RJ is anywhere from 2 to 5 flights a day. Usually 3 to 4 day trips. It's pretty hard work even though the flights are usually quicker anywhere from 30 min to 1.5 hours. I'd imagine doing one or two longer flights a day on larger RJs would be slightly better on quality of life. Something else you might want to consider is flying newer planes. The 50 seaters are getting pretty old now and they're tired from the high utilization. It would be nice to not have to worry about maintenance on those newer crj9 or 175s

 

Outstation basing is your enemy regarding quality of life.

RAH loves it's outstations and doesn't care about it's crew members enough to even consider changes for the better regarding it's terrible and fatiguing outstations schedules.

Nearly every trip begins at o-dark-thirty and ends after 10pm. People who commute to outstations for Republic talk about how rare it is that they see their base city during the daylight hours, unless of course, they are operating a turn out of it.

Worse yet, the rare multi-day trip that just may have the potential to be commutable is only a two or three-day, not the four day trips preferred by commuters.

Even if you don't commute, such schedules will kick your ass and you'll spend the day after your trip either sleeping to recover from the shock of such a blatant violation of your body's circadian rhythms or walking around in a zombie-like trance should your life schedule not allow such a thing. You'll also find it very difficult to fall asleep at 8pm in order to get the 8 hours of sleep needed before a 0400 alarm to start your trip. So you'll start a trip tired and you'll end a trip tired.

Republic doesn't appear to have time to fix such a significant detriment to it's crew member's quality of life. They are far too busy attempting to "changing the culture" with shiny beads and shallow flattery.