Soon enough you'll be maxed out on the sexiness of that chocolate milk. You'll see. lol

With UPS hiring I'm giving it serious thought. First year pay sucks, but it all seems good after that. I'm more concerned about quality of life. As a junior captain at a regional I can really only get 12-13 days off a month. I want more of course. What are the scedules like for a junior FO on various aircraft types? What am I most likely to be on when I first get hired? Junior bases?

Thanks!


Get the offer of employment first then you can worry about quality of life! We have over 12000 apps on file for 300 jobs so the odds of you having to worry about this is very small.

Forums are a huge source of information especially when you don't know anyone at a given airline and since we are a small group the probability guys don't know anyone on the inside increases this effect. But I wasn't limiting it to social media. Can't tell you how many times I've heard guys tell me, "I have a bud that works for UPS and from what he told me I would never apply there."

Source for those numbers? Even if correct, how many have apps at and/or have been hired by other carriers? The individual's chances may be better than you think. That said, you are correct in that it's all theoretical until you have a job offer. To the OP: get your app in ASAP if you are even mildly interested. If you are selected to interview, ace it. If you are offered the job, then you can ponder the pros and cons of leaving the left seat of an RJ. (Hint: this is the better deal). One of the best things about UPS is that there is a great variety of flying. Coupled with the single pay scale that means that there is something for everyone. We have some really senior guys who just want to fly domestic, so if you want widebody international, that may be available to you sooner than at a pax carrier. On the flip side, if you want to maximize time at home and bid reserve you can do that too. There really is something for everyone here and if it were me, I wouldn't hesitate to leave a regional for big brown.

A QOL point to consider:

I have been awarded 2 weeks vacation in a single pay period (a 28 day window or 1/2 of a bid period), not over the summer but touching it. I'm converting that 2 weeks into 4 weeks off by selecting the entire pay period off via OCV, optional crew vacay. Next, I'll probably get a couple of days on either end without even trying thereby turning the time off into 5 weeks, all paid. Of course I'll try, and may even succeeded, to bid favorable choices in hopes of pushing that into six weeks, maybe. If all the stars align and I get very lucky with bidding I may even see close to 7 weeks (or I could trip trade, trip drop etc to try to do so). Senior guys can do this all day long and even stretch it up to 8. They also get 5 weeks of vacation(2 weeks = 4 weeks off) so they could do this twice a year plus use another week elsewhere, effectively working less than 8 months per year from this perspective. Not bad...