While the CA rate is higher, you're on reserve making 70 hours with no ability to pick up. A mid to upper level FO lineholder can easily bring in 110 hours of credit in a month by picking up a couple premium pay trips. If you credit over 104 hours as an FO you make more $ than 70 hour captain, if that makes sense.

Not sure I understand your second question, but how long you spend on reserve as a captain is a function of how long you wait to upgrade. If you take first available upgrade as the bottom captain, it's going to be a while as the movement on the captain list is slow. If you wait it out and let people upgrade behind you and upgrade later, you can theoretically avoid CA reserve completely. Just depends on where you are on the seniority list.

Absolutely correct! Quite easy to credit 110-130 plus, In addition, you have generally a significant amount of control over your schedule!

If you upgrade at the first available, plan to be in reserve for 2.5-3 years. Once you can hold a line, plan on min days off along with uncommutable and inefficient five and six day trips (that are difficult to drop and replace with premium pay trips) for a few more years. You can plan for long (>24 hours) layovers in garden spots like PIT, AFW, or GPT, along with a lot of offline deadheads (“middle-seat-express”). And significant amount of red eye flying on NCAA and MLS charters. It’s not fun. I can’t fault anyone who bypasses the upgrade.

Gotcha, that answers my questions. Thanks!

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The uncommutable portion sounds like it will drive away the majority of potential hires

Fixed it for you

in the last new hire class of 15 in September I heard there was only 2 that did not commute. Those 13 new hires are in for a rude awakening! It seems that most commuters are using the type rating and experience as a stepping stone to a major airline. The company also gave reserve captains two more days off in September trying to get FO’s to upgrade. I hope these guys don’t fall for it. It’s not permanent. They will pull it away faster than they gave it! They are trying all the tricks they can besides pay and providing an industry competitive contract.

Very inappropriate comment. We lost a coworker. Let's not focus on anything else.

Serious question, does APC have a block user option?

You’re sick.