Hmm...good info! Hope you are well...see you soon.

R,

Listen to beech. I didn't before I came here and am paying for it now. I earn less than I do at my regional , am getting called daily now on reserve and yup, they will stop calling or bring you right up to guarantee. Bunch of BS gone 5 days home for 2 , you will get no turn lines unless you sit here for 10 years as a senior FO by the looks of it. Living the dream I guess

I’ve held many turns in and out of MSP with SY and I’ve been here a year. This job is what you make it, if you don’t live in base you are going to hate life, unless you don’t mind commuting on this schedule, but then again you should know already what to expect, I sat reserve for 6 months, held vacation relief lines and now holding normal line. Honestly I hate turn lines, having to drive to airport 3-4 days in a row just to be back home every night... I’d rather go out in 3-4 day trips. Just my two cents, though.

20 year Captain here. Worst QOL it has ever been. Gone for 5-6 days at a time with 12 days off....lucky to to have an 75-80 hour schedule and the abysmal work rules and the low hourly rate....you would make a lot more and have a better QOL at the majors on a 3rd year FO pay scale then I do.

Things sound kinda bleak there. Im just curious how long till your contract is up for negotiation and is there any timeline for PDX to be a base?

Nov 2020. But negotiations can start 6 months before that.
No news on any new base, my guess is it will be in the new contract.

Got offered an interview this week. Highly considering it, but wondering how bad QOL really is. I’d be driving about 4 hours to MSP if I got selected. Just trying to determine how the schedule actually is and how long to expect to sit on reserve before being able to hold a line. When someone is a lineholder, what are the general trip lengths? I’m used to 4 day trips coming from the regionals, is it similar? My wife and I are expecting a baby in February, so just trying to see what everybody’s thoughts are.

Reserve rules here are the worst I’ve heard of. 10 days off, 14 hr RAP, no long call or airport reserve. There’s virtually no way to make extra money on reserve so plan on guarantee plus a little per diem.

Trips, once you can hold a line are anywhere from turns to 6 days. From what I’ve seen most of those long trips aren’t very efficient. Lines run anywhere from as much as 18-20 days off for the most senior efficient lines to the minimum of 12 days off at right around guarantee.

The lines aren’t built for commuters, period. Even with a 4hr drive it wouldn’t be easy IMO.

Everything seems to be 10 years behind here. The contract is up in just over a year but it’s very difficult to predict with any confidence what the companies approach will be. Even with the worst contract for a 737 operator in the U.S. it doesn’t seem the company is interested in making negotiations easy, quite the contrary.

They do keep saying they want to grow. Right now they are planning to hire over 100 which would make the wait to get off reserve reasonable if you got in on the front end(6 months?).

It’s a good group here and the flying is better than the regionals IMO. That said, if I was a captain at a decent regional I’d hold out for a more stable and lucrative prospect.

I had an interview a few weeks ago too. I deliberated for a while before accepting the job. My family and I are just going to move to Minneapolis and make the most of it. From the outside looking in, it seems like a good place to work if you live close to the airport. But I’m an FO at a regional, been on reserve for over a year and fly about 10 hrs a month with no prospect of change for at least another 6 months. So taking the leap made a lot of sense to me. But as said before, if you’re a captain at your regional then I’d probably stick around if you have a pretty good QOL.

I’d at least go to the interview. The experience was really great and everyone I met was awesome.

I would agree with the previous 2 posts, I don't want to tell you what to do, but I can share some information. In our slow months, like Sept, we have 154 lines. Of which 85 are hard lines ranging from 18 to 13 days off. Credit between 89-70 hours. 20 vacation relief lines, which is high, mainly because they don't allow many vacations during the summer or the winter when we are busy. The other 49 lines are reserve, 10 days off, one block of 4 off, otherwise usually 2 off in-between. 14 hour RAP, start times are 3:00, 11:00 or 17:00.
I did about 6 months of reserve when I started. My guess is once the Max comes back online, majors will increase hiring and people might start to bail out of here again.
Not much info yet, and it shouldn't be a surprise, but they are looking at an IPO around April 2020. Our contract is up Nov 2020.
Good luck.