Republic and DCA
 

As I’m nearing the end of my flight instruction career, I have decided I’d like to move to DC next to start my airline career (no prior 121 experience). I had some questions about Republic and DCA.

1. With the current cancellation of American/TSA contract and the extra airframes to Envoy/PSA, will this effect Republic’s DCA flying? For ex: will the AA wholly owns pick up DCA flying hence downsizing Republic’s DCA presence?

2. Is there a variety - ex: 2,3,4 day trips out of DCA or is it mostly only longer, 4 day trips? Could one posibnly split a 4 day trip into two consecutive 2 day’s hence maximizing nights at home rather than a hotel?

3. Is upgrade time at DCA junior in the company or is it much longer to upgrade at DCA then say, LGA or EWR?

1) no way to tell until we find out where planes are based, but we are the only Ejet operator there with a base.

2), you can bid whatever you want and you will get whatever your seniority can hold. We have 1-5 day trips systems wide. You can drop portions of trips off your schedule, staffing available, as long as it's dropped from a point on the trip touching a base. Ex DCA-Sdf-MIA-DCA-BOS-PIt-DCA... you could try and split the trip after the MIA-DCA portion or even in MIA.

3) junior captain bases fluctates, currently PIT is most junior probably followed by LGA. Either way though upgrades are 3 years off without any expansion, so it could all change.

Where you based has no bearing on when you are eligible to upgrade.

The flying our code share partners (DL,AA,UA) give us is a forever changing thing. They may cut in one location and give us more in others. TSA/Expressjet lacked scale and this was counter to AA's strategy. The EMB 145s are being given to Envoy (and other wholly owned regionals) and from what I can tell we're not seeing any less flying.

Miami is our most senior base (for both CA/FO) and Columbus, Indy, LGA and PIT are more junior for FOs. DCA runs a bit more senior than CMH/IND/LGA/PIT.

As someone mentioned earlier, upgrade is based on seniority. For the September bids, the most recent captain upgrade was hired about 2.5 years ago. Upgrading to captain is one thing, holding a line is another. You can upgrade to captain but will probably be on reserve for a while if you choose Miami.

Actually, ORD is the most senior base by far.

For Captains sure, no question. For FO it's definitely Miami. New hires are getting ORD before they finish training.

Had three people in my class just do that... didn't get ORD initially but did get it on the next bid.