Hey All,

I'm interested in PSA and have an interview coming up this month, but I have a few questions for those that work there on what they think of my situation, and what they might do.

My fiancee and I are moving out east and currently planning on living in Atlanta, so I'm aiming for the Charlotte base. Does anyone commute this currently? How is it? With the SAP program at PSA, would I be able to make this commute pretty easy? With the SAP program I could just attempt to bid trips that don't leave extremely early in the morning, so that I wouldn't have to travel up the night before? What about as a new-hire (with very high seniority)? I suppose I could drive to Charlotte if I absolutely needed to, occasionally. The commuter hotel allowance is nice and would be something I too would use if I have a very early morning show and have to commute up the night before, or would people advise just getting a crash pad until I get enough seniority to hold a line? How would you sit reserve in this situation?

I really don't want to commute but I'm hoping that commute wouldn't be too bad. I would live in Charlotte but my fiancee's work is much better in Atlanta. I also have an interview with SkyWest, that has an Atlanta base, but being that they don't offer any form of a flow agreement to any airline, I think PSA is the wiser choice - unless there is something I'm missing from the SkyWest side? The Atlanta base is attractive but I also wonder how long it will be there, since SkyWest is a primarily west coast carrier.

I apologize for the basic questions, but I'm presently in the 135 world and haven't ever been on the 121 side.

Have you looked at Endeavor? I believe they have a crew domicile in ATL, and they just signed a new contract. No flow, but they have a guaranteed interview with Delta (mixed reviews on the pilots success rate). Yes we have a flow, but it will be a min of 6-7years or longer for a new hire today to flow. Guys are leaving way before the flow here. I guess it's a nice bennie if for some reason you don't get hired by anyone. Not putting down PSA, but don't come here for our flow, and the other benefit of SAP is aggressively be threatened by AAG and our union. So, SAP's existence is in question. I don't commute so I'm sorry I'm unable to answer your question about ease of commuting.

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I have also applied to Endeavor but I haven't heard anything back yet. It's been about a week. 3 other carriers, including PSA and SkyWest, all called me back within about 12 hours of submitting my app.

If you interviewed at PSA today, you'd be looking at a February class date or later if you need ATP/CTP. There's no rule that says you can't interview at multiple places.

SkyWest has no union, so while they have reasonable pay, there is not as much "protection" of benefits.

Endeavor may have been in a sort of hiring freeze during the TA process, or they may be getting a slew of "more qualified" candidates leaving other regionals for the new pay scale.

Were I planning to move to ATL, I'd definitely check the Endeavor seniority situation to see how quickly I could hold it. At PSA, you are not likely to get CLT directly out of training unless you are in the 50+ crowd, but you should get it within about 3-4 months.

On reserve, I'm loving living in base. I can see how making a commute for a reserve block would be a bummer, so I'd recommend against it.

Also, for clarification, the SAP is only part of getting a commutable line. Some lines are already pretty commutable (reserve excluded) without any swapping, dropping, or trading. The SAP would just give you that extra flexibility so you might be able to get a 100% commutable final award. Domicile can have a huge impact on whether there are enough commutable trips, or not. I'm guessing CLT has more commutable lines than one of the non-hubs like TYS or DAY.

I know of one guy that was in my training class who commutes from ATL to CLT. He has had zero issues getting to/from work. You can filter the parameters of your bid to show the coma commutable lines vs least commutable, and I’d say at least 30% of results come back commutable on both ends of all pairings in CLT. I normally set my standards on nothing before a 9am show day one and an 1800 release day four. If I was guessing, probably about 75% of trips have at least all but one or two commutable trips. This is where SAP really helps you out. So far in the 5 months I’ve had a round one line, all but one of my trips have been commutable on both ends every month, and the one time it wasn’t was because I SAP’d for a specific day off, so I took what was available to make that happen. Reserve is gonna suck out of base, but you shouldn’t be on reserve very long.

Best of luck in your decision making process!

Hey guys a few questions:


What base is a new hire expect to get?

Do you get your base prior to IOE or at that point you are just paired with an instructor and their base?

how long to CLT after done with IOE?

ATL-DCA is also a pretty easy commute and a much more junior base. Lots of fairly senior FOs and CAs commute from ATL to DCA. Getting a line a couple months faster would help commuting considerably.

The pilots that we interviewed last week, and likely the ones that we interview this coming week, will currently be assigned to February classes. All of the internal ATP-CTP class seats that we have are full for December and January and all of the ones that we contract with CAE are also full. But we do have several of the pilots with February class dates on a waiting list for earlier ones. We will hopefully confirm some additional ATP-CTP classes this week and be able to get people into classes in January.

I do think that quite a few of these pilots will get in January classes.

If you already have your ATP-MEL, there are a couple seats still available for January (2 or 3 seats, I think), and possibly one seat for the next upcoming December class. There are some people on the waitlist that will have the first chance of getting that one.

With classes being full like they are right now, getting in earlier is better. It is possible to have over 150 pilots junior to you by the time that you finish IOE. Classes of 30+ every 2 weeks means that in 3 months of training, you are likely to get out of class and have 6 classes (180 pilots) behind you.

New hires get whatever is most junior. In conjunction with each class, enough openings are announced for all the new hires. The vacancies for a class are split between most of the domiciles, sometimes one will have no vacancies. These vacancies are offered to all FOs, so if a senior person wants to switch to a base that's offered they will get it. For this reason, often much of a class will be initially awarded Dayton. My class this summer had a balance of DAY, CVG, TYS, and DCA initial awards, but I don't think anyone was awarded CLT on our first bid. When the bid for the following class came out several of my class were awarded CLT. As long as the award is published before you finish sims you should do IOE in the awarded base, otherwise you will do IOE in your initial/current base and wait until the award effective date to start in the newly awarded base.

I did all of my IOE trips with LCAs at my base, but was scheduled for one trip with an LCA out of a different base which ended up being cancelled.

Thank you sir