BLUF: Financially moving to UPS is likely a slam dunk, but other personal considerations will drive whether it’s a QOL improvement.


Unless you are domiciled in SoCal or Miami (does SW have a domicile there?) you would have to move to live in domicile here. That’s the only way you might significantly improve your QOL by flying here vs there. Yes, we fly far fewer block hours and the payscales, retirement, healthcare, and LTD are more generous. We also have layovers in exotic foreign locales, plus small town America. However, first year pay is a kick in the wallet for most guys and you won’t be able to hold upgrade for probably 6-7 years. You also have to be emotionally prepared to be assigned a 74 to ANC as a new hire. That commute is no joke (unless living up there appeals to you, then go for it).

Not hard to do on 3/4 year.

3-4th year pay/domestic/no JA’s. I’m not even close to that.
edited for punctuation

Share your secret sauce then. Bid with check airmen - requires seniority and a bit of luck. Conflict bidding - good for time off (IF your conflict pans out) but you can’t pickup over the footprint of conflicted trip so increases in pay requires flying on scheduled days off which doesn’t work for everyone. Play JA game essentially requires living in domicile and working on days off. The days of sitting reserve and not getting called then picking up trips on days off are long gone.

I work my schedule, only increase credit when it happens by trip trading for a better (more commutable) schedule and I’ve always been close to the unions “average total pay” numbers. I could pretty easily increase that with flying on days off but doing it and keeping 14-16/28 off, now that’s a magic trick.

Why is that? Hiring projections?

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I’ve been making $270k/yr plus 40k (2020) minus 10k since I hit year two pay. My fleet is mostly domestic with occasional international trips. Living in domicile is pretty much required and you need to average 100 credit hours per pay period. So yes, you won’t have more than 14 days free. Most of the strategies for doing this result in losing some days off. How tolerable this is for you depends on how you look at time at home on days you are working. That is a debate that has eaten up lots of pages on this website.

Live in base and mostly bid reserve. Pick up on days off.

It appears the company (as of a few days ago) is planning to slow hiring as they get a feel for which direction the economy is going. Even when we are hiring “big” numbers they are tiny compared to FedEx, Delta, United, and American.

Attempting to read between the lines, I believe the hiring outlook is dependent on the economy, but even more so how they decide to handle the MD wind down. Seems there are significant things occurring behind the scenes that could have a major impact on short term hiring. Obviously could be wrong, but that union video contained a few eye brow raising comments.

As far as hiring numbers, % is far more important than actual numbers. We are tiny compared to those legacy carriers, so our numbers are obviously smaller, but % wise, we’ve been right up there with them and exceeding them the last few years.

Has any other "big six" airline grown their fleet by 22% in the last 5 years?