I just nod my head when a cappy explains how his airplane gets better fuel economy then his GMC 3500 and that's how anyone can afford to use an airplane to commute to work.

My Toyota hybrid just needs to hang in there until I upgrade...

 

Actually, an RV-6 will burn less than an F-150, and a nice one will cost about as much as a brand new Lariat. But unlike the Lariat, it won’t lose value the second you fly it home.

 

I also own an F-150, and have deemed it too expensive to drive to work, as an FO.

 

Newbies working weekends? Holidays?

As a newbie can I drop reserve days? Pick stuff up?

 

You can’t drop anything. You can only trade or give away.

You can trade with other pilots I.e swap reserve for a trip (which you can then trade with the company for other trips).

You can always pick up stuff as long as you meet limits.

 

Yes to working weekends and holidays, because newbie. That said, it will depend on what base you're in and what season. In the summer, reserves get used a lot so the reserves go to junior pilots. The bottom of the seniority list can expect to sit reserve friday - monday the whole month, and only rarely get someone to trade their weekend line for your weekend reserve (it happens, just not all the time). In off seasons when reserves won't get called as often and in some bases where there seem to be lots of reserve availabililty and therefore less callouts, more senior pilots will bid reserve. But again, you'll still see weekend reserves go to the bottom of the seniority list.

Picking up out of open time is fairly easy, and there are a few ways to trade actual trips. Open time pickup is seniority based but first year pilots have a small advantage in that they can bid for open time trips at straight pay, and get paid second year rate. Straight pay bids have priority over premium open time bids, and some trips are great at premium rate but not so good at straight pay, so most pilots won't bid on those at straight pay. So a first year guy can pick those up reasonably easily.

Also, a handful of trips in open time have deadhead legs that might be to or from a place that is more convenient to you, so you can sometimes pick up a trip that deadheads from another domicile to an airport near you, or which ends in an overnight and a deadhead the next day. With those trips, you can sometimes call to get released from the deadheads and get paid for a 2-day trip where you actually only fly one or two legs before jumpseating home. The risk there is that the company can change up the trip once you're on it and that might kill off the good deal part, but sometimes you can get a whole lot of pay for one leg too. My best so far was about 10 TFP pay for a single leg, because to be a legal trip it required a deadhead from a domicile to begin and an overnight hotel stay before the DH back to domicile. I flew the leg, sat in the hotel 3 hours, and took an early jumpseat back home. 10 TFP at second year pay rate for about 7 hours time away from home, not too bad for a new guy.

I guess the simple answer is that SWA scheduling rules and current contract make it easy to fly more and hard to fly less. For a new guy trying to pick up extra, one of the biggest barriers is hitting maximum block limits because future reserve periods are counted as 6 hours block per day, and a reserve block usually gets you 96 TFP for the month up front. So it's hard to add to that if you're not careful managing block time. Picking up good short trips is sometimes a better idea than grabbing long trips even when the long trip pays well, because the extra block time in that long trip can prevent you from picking up anything at all for a while.

 

Thanks for the reply.....if I’m on reserve, can I pick up straight time trips that are not on my assigned reserve days and negate those reserve days?

Can I bid open time out of domicile and commute to those trips?

How long can I expect to be on reserve given the current environment?

I assume that I cannot drop reserve days into open time?

 

Not sure what you mean by "negate," but yes, you can pick up trips on your day off as long as you don't exceed legalities and buffer limits.

Yes, absolutely, but keep in mind you'll be behind people in that domicile if they bid for the same trip.

Varies based on domicile. OAK or LAS, probably just a few months. MCO, I'd guess at least a year. ATL probably longer.

Correct. The only way to get rid of reserve is to get another pilot to pick it up in the trip trade/give away system. Same with regular trips, for that matter. We don't have an provision to just drop trips. You can only exchange them with the company for unassigned trips (this doesn't apply to reserve days), or put them out for other pilots to hopefully take.

 

My experience so far. I am based in HOU. For September (My first month of true seniority bidding in my base), I was 3 from the bottom of the FO list. I got a PM reserve line with 3 3-day reserve stints, Th-Sat, and 1 four day stint Th-Sun.



You can only give reserve days away to other pilots willing to pick them up or trade with those same pilots for a trip. I put all my reserve blocks in Give-Away and 1 got taken by another pilot so now I have the last 8 days of the month off. I can pick up a trip from another pilot, or something from open time. I traded the 4 day sequence with another pilot for his 4 day trip. I then traded that trip with the company for a better paying, 4 day trip I liked better.



YMMV depending on base and season as mentioned by others. For October I have 32 (i think) guys below me in HOU. I started in May of this year.

 

How many FOs are there in Houston?