Here's the honest truth in my eyes about SkyWest... Unless you were hired about 2 years ago the 175 is not the plane for you. The direction of the airline appears to be that of solely a 175 operation so with that said all the upgrades/transitions will be those who are senior in this airline. All the movement seems to come from the CRJ side of the house... come in as an FO and get your hours/ upgrade and move on. I'm one of the top guys in ORD on the 175 not that that means anything but literally everyone I fly with has no desire to move on. You'll never achieve the QOL they have on the 175 so do yourself the favor and take the CRJ and get your time and move on. If you just absolutely cannot fly anything but a 175 then go somewhere else cause this isn't the place for it. You'll come here and sit reserve and whine about it just like the majority of the pilots on the 175 that are junior and nobody will listen to you when you've had so many tell you otherwise.

 

Bases that have predominantly been senior at SkyWest aren't likely to change such as PHX or TUS. You're going to have not the best trips so take that as it comes, but the other interesting thing to think about is what do you expect out of a regional job? You're literally going to fly anything from a 1 day trip that pays 4 hours to 7 hours or a 4 day trip that pays as little as 17ish hours. The literal job description of being a regional pilot entails you going away for a set amount of days a month to fly a plane. No one company is light years better than the other and anyone who tells you otherwise is ill informed. 3 regionals later things have been better and worse at each but my life hasn't been so much better that Id definitively say go to xyz company. It's just a JOB that pays around 30-50k for 12-18 days off a month and nothing more as an FO at ANY regional airline so don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

 

Looks like PXH will grow.. Insight talks about UA 700's going to AA.. That realy leaves them 2 options LAX/PHX for our AA flying... And as far as the 175 questions. We have 830 E175 pilots. And 50 planes. They say we need 8 per seat in that plane. And will have 105 E175's planes in 12 months. (You do the math). Also. Those that think we will be a all E175 airline.. Doubtfull. Maybe all 900/175 in 10 years.(the 900's are going through a cabin refresh program). But the 200's will stay tell they time out..

 

84% FO in ORD. I wanted to fly all standup in Chicago in June as I did in May. Instead I got 4 4-day trips all with "CN" under them.

The "Reason Report" shows dozens of lines stating:
160604 1491-(2) replaced/not-awarded because of line constraints
160604 1497-(2) replaced/not-awarded because of line constraints

I think that means that when the computer went through the bids I was given the standup but then they were removed so that the company could give me these CN trips?

There is one P3 standup and one P7 one day on my line which I guess were trips awarded and not taken away.

I would much rather have reserve than these 4 day trips. Am I reading the report correctly? Is there any method for me to change these? I believe it is almost impossible to get rid of 4 day trips. Can I trade my whole line with someone who is on reserve?

Any insights or strategies would be appreciated.

 

Join the club. Nearly all my P1's were awarded (4-days over the weekend), then "removed due to line constraints". Instead I got 4-days from layer 7 with locals backed up to all but 1 of them. As a senior FO, I thought I had a good handle on PBS and a good bidding strategy. As a moderately junior captain on a different airframe, I feel like I need to re-learn everything. If only we had a system that didn't require one to be a software engineer to understand...

 

^^^ your probably out of luck trading your entire line unless you find a reserve guy willing to take it. Go down the list in PBS and figure out who likely got a reserve line.

The more important thing will be to fix your bid going forward and see from the reason report what trips where available to you at your seniority. If there were only 4 days left then there is little you can do. If there was a good mix of trips left you need to revisit your bidding strategy and understand what limitations you put on your bid that prevented you from getting them.

 

I put very few restrictions.
Line one was requesting standups over 6.5 hours credit.
Line 2 was standup over 6
line 3 was standups over 5
line 4 was standup over 4
Line 5 requested 1 day pairings on weekends
line 6 requested any 1 day pairings
line 7 requested any 2 day pairings

Looks like they gave me the standups but then the credit was not up to 88 hours so they took them away and put the 4 day trips in there.

Any reserve people want to trade next month?

 

But what you're not telling us is what the trip mix in your base is, nor what the senior guys in your base are bidding. At 84% you're going to get whatever nobody else wants, so there would have to be A LOT of standups and locals in your base in order for you to get any. Locals in SFO are extremely rare and go very senior, for example, and I'm assuming they go senior in ORD as well. As for standups over 6 hours credit, good luck holding those until you're in the top 15% of your base. It's just not gonna happen.

The reality is, you just have to get more senior before you can hope to exert much control over your schedule. If you need certain days off, at your seniority level it's almost better to bid reserve because at least then you are guaranteed to have certain days off.

As for trading your trips away, this is a lot easier if you:

1. Have trips that frequently return to base (ie 4 days worth of hub turns) so you can split the 4 days into multiple locals or 2-days. Those are much easier to trade or give away since nobody can pick up a 4 day, really, since everyone's already flying near max block hours.

2. Pay money. Lots of it. There's a guy in my base who's offered like $600 for a 3-day. Hard to resist that kind of cash; that's like $900 before tax. Of course, you have to have the cash to give away in the first place.

Honestly at your seniority you just gotta wait a while...

 

You are at 84% and bidding like someone in the top 20%. You have to open up your bid to include almost everything by layer 7 at 84%. I usually make sure layer 7 includes my percentage (84 in your case), plus the percent reserve coverage in your base, plus a 10 to 15 percent buffer (as you can see were already beyond 100% of the pairings at this point). You're not bidding realistically for your seniority.

 

In May I bid the same way and got the month of standups I requested. A large % of the trips in Chicago are standups. The "Results Report" showed that many of the standup were available when it came down to me but I guess it could not build a line of 88 hours with those remaining standup, locals, and 2 days.

I emailed guys on reserve to see if anyone was interested in trading their reserve lines for my line and immediately got 3 guys who wanted to do that. Scheduling told me that they are not allowed to swap entire lines however.

I appreciate the strategy on breaking up the lines. Any other suggestions would be welcome.