I second that prenup idea

Seniority to hold a base and seniority for sap are very different things.

if you do not have kids, I would heavily question the assumption that commuting to SAP is better than sitting short call at home.

There would be no commuting, I would
move for SAP once I hold seniority for SAP.

SAP is great, but, I’d rather be sitting in my home for my 13 hour SCR period any day. Commuting to a line, regardless, adds additional stress and loss of days at home in the end.

Chasing the quickest SAP as an FO is kinda difficult. Things can change quickly but there's a 2-3 month lag between bid and move.

That said, if you're chasing the first available R1
- It's not DAY (CVG closing has filled up the base)
- it's not CLT (senior)
- TYS has historically been senior, plus it's not a great place to commute from if you guess wrong
- that leaves DCA, PHL and ORF

Of those three, I'd pick DCA because it's the biggest of the 3 and the current reserve system heavily favors bigger bases.

If you want CLT then just go to CLT.

Worst case you commute for a couple months which is super easy out of CLT to our bases because of frequency of flights on your own metal not necessarily easy based on possible flight loads.

Unless you plan on living in a crash pad and not having a lease or any sort of life outside of work then bouncing around between bases gets old fast. If you're going to have any kind of life outside of work then now you are talking a leased apartment or otherwise so now you can't switch bases on a whim.

Reserve sucks but reserve in base can actually be better than commuting depending on a wide variety of things.

Not relevant to PSA in particular but just to reserve, lineholder, and commuting in general: I live 11 miles from the employee parking lot at CLT. Back when I was at USAir I was a DC-9 F/O commuting to reserve in PIT with all the associated hassles. A bid came open for 727 F/E in CLT and I took it. I rarely broke 71 hour guarantee in PIT. F/E pay rate was less but I had seniority to be the #2 F/E on reserve living in base. I almost always got my 85 hours in and held all weekends off, got my choice of vacation weeks, etc and made more money overall when factoring in the extra hours of flying and getting rid of rent on a crashpad. Plus not having the stress of commuting. I would always take reserve in base over a line I had to commute to.

FWIW, I live in base at CLT and am on month 10 of reserve. The past 3 months I have been used every day, which is nice if you want to fly a lot. Keep in mind, though, that there's not a lot of "sitting reserve at home" going on. If I don't already have a reserve assignment when my RAP starts, I end up going on HRV until they call me later that day. Also, the grid is mostly red here these days, so you can't move SCR days around easily.

It's still nice to not commute, but my RAPs are full of max crewdays with min rest for low-credit trips lately.

do you mind if I PM you ?