USmarinepilot17

I'm new and going to republic soon. Just trying to understand this, so if you are based in boston (or say philly) and you are not happy with the little hours you are getting and you are willing to work your tail off, you can bid on trips at another base to get your hours up? Granted you will have to commute to start those trips out of that base or would you be able to deadhead? Forgive my ignorance deadhead can only start out of a base correct?

QRH Bingo

A deadhead can occur at any segment of one's trip; beginning, middle, end. It just means it's on the company dime.

The person you are referring to appeared to live in the BOS area but chose to be based in CMH for a while because they were able to fly more due to the nature of things. However, it was their responsibility to get to/from CMH. The base assignments are bid monthly, but the start date is 4 months out. So, it's not like you can just bid for a different base the next month because you are not happy where you are. You must look 4 months into the future and make an educated guess. Then, once you're at a different base and find out you do not like it there, it will be 4 months before being able to go somewhere else.

However, you can pick up extra flying (if available) out of any base, regardless of where you live or are based. You can also pick up trips from other pilots who are wanting to drop a trip already assigned to them. In both examples, you would be responsible to get to whatever base the trip starts out of and then back home when done. If, for some reason you are unable to get there, you will be responsible for the consequences (an "occurrence", which you can have a few without problems and I’m not going to get into the exceptions).

Web265

Have you met EWR? LOL

This is certainly true. But, they have been known to make exceptions if they need bodies in a base. Ask me how I know...
For instance if you are BOS but bid EWR for say April. If the company finds they have more FO's than they need in BOS and have a need in EWR, they may go through the list of bidders waiting in seniority order to see if anyone wants to change early. This happened to me. Given that, it may be possible to call Crew Resources and see if they can do this for you proactively. Will they / Can they? If it suits the company, maybe.

In my case I was awarded LGA initially, so I put in a bid for EWR as it was closer. About a month or so later I was called to see if I wanted to switch earlier.

Obviously, if you move in that direction, moving back will be the hard part...

USmarinepilot17

Makes sense, thank you; I look forward to flying with Republic. I'm thinking I'm going to just move out to CMH or IND (currently living near PHL) to do what is best for my career and fly a lot to advance to captain sooner, or at least rack up a bunch of hours to be ready when the opportunity comes to upgrade.

Googlyeyes

Seriously considering going to republic.
Can someone shed more light on the current state of flying at various bases.
End goal is not to commute which would mean a northeast base.
is BOS still a bad choice?
Will I get hours if I go EWR or LGA. I have friends I can room with in the New York area. Will those hours be adequate to stay current and satisfy contract requirements to upgrade?
I realize out of the gate I won’t have much control over base.

Web265

According to the latest figures released by the union, the bases with the highest percentage of FO's getting over 75 block hours are listed below in decending order.

EWR
ORD
SDF
DCA
IND
PIT
PHL
CMH
BOS
LGA

QRH Bingo

The wording of the contract has been amended so that you no longer need to work toward an upgrade (if I recall correctly, 5 years as an FO satisfies it).

It depends on what your real goal is, long term. If you want to get in, get out, and move on, BOS would be a terrible choice. If, however, you would be happy sitting at home, rarely used on reserve for the foreseeable future, and being paid min guarantee, with no rush to build hours, then BOS would be an excellent choice.

Googlyeyes

Interesting but great news. This comes as a surprise as it substantially differs from what I was told several months ago. Things must change frequently and drastically. Given the 4 month turnaround time to be awarded desired base, it must be incredibly difficult to make an informed decision. I was expecting IND to top the list. I didnt expect EWR and LGA to be out opposite ends of the list.

Web265

It absolutely does and yes it is. If you made a decision before training based on this info, it'd be useless by the time you hit the line. Except, some bases are more stable than others.
Others like to use metrics like the number of lines, time to a line etc.. but I think this one is a better indication of the actual flying being awarded. It likely has more to do with staffing allocation as opposed to number of departures per base. Those allocation numbers change as classes graduate.

I was surprised myself....