Quote:
Originally Posted by Metroaviator
I'm just curious and was wondering if any current PS people can answer this. From what information I'm seeing it sounds like if you are in one of the new bases that were added last year (excluding PSM, ATL & MCO) your typical schedule works out as follows. Day 1, get airline out to your plane, possibly fly during day 1 if duty time allows. Day 2-7 flights as assigned. Day 8 airline home, possibility after flying a morning flight. If this is the schedule (not 100% sure) what is stopping PS from just allowing home basing from anywhere as long as you're within 100 miles of an airport with multiple carriers? It seems like by expanding this area they would not only have more applicants applying to chose from but maybe even be able to retain more people by offering the QOL of home basing and not having to uproot their families to move closer to one of these other bases? Is it just a financial issues to the company? Increased cost of the airline tickets flying someone from say PHX or DEN to the east coast?
DFW is currently the furthest west base. I've looked at ticket costs of airlining someone from DFW to PSM, ATL or even BOS and compared those to flying someone out of PHX or DEN and the price difference is negligible. So what's stopping this?
Aside from my potential and likely misunderstanding of the typical schedule, I'm sure there is something very logical that I'm missing or completely overlooking that would prevent this but I'm struggling to figure it out. Can someone clue me in?
Thats pretty much how it is. From what i've seen, remote bases definitely have the better end of the deal. It really depends on the base though, and their need for you. So far the majority of my time i've airlined Day 1 and Day 8 (sometimes even Day 7 home, score!) but if there's need for you at your base or close to base, you'll be starting Day 1 like you're supposed to. For example, three cycles ago I was not needed in MCO, but I was needed in Stuart (2 hours south of MCO) so they rented me a car and had me drive at 5am, for a 7am show in Stuart. Then I flew a full day after that.
Sometimes you get unlucky and have to do stuff like that, but PSM based folks pretty much work full days day 1 through day 8, so i'm certainly not complaining.
But yeah the rest of it basically has to do with duty time and airline tickets.