Thanks for the quick reply! Currently at an AA WO with roughly 3-4 years to flow. SWA and AA are the only 2 majors I have any real interest in at this moment for the Florida bases. MCO would mean I can stay put where I’m at and drive to work. MIA at AA would necessitate a move and uprooting the family. Either way my wife doesn’t want to move out of Florida so those are the best options for me...

 

No love for brown? Ups has a base in Mia i believe. Unless late night cargo isn't your thing which is understandable.

 

Their pay is certainly attractive but that lifestyle does not suit me one bit haha...

 

I'm starting at SWA in February. I've been a corporate pilot since 1997. My wife and I would like to move to Orlando. I've heard you can hold any base except Atlanta first year. I've also heard that Orlando is top heavy. I'm assuming this means I would be on reserve for a long time before senior enough to get a line. I'm a 121 rookie, what's the good and bad about being reserve?

 

All the bad, none of the good... Living in base can make reserve very palatable though.

 

The good: it pays fairly well, especially if you get rolled onto a trip. An unused reserve day pays 6.0 TFP, but if you go out on a trip, you're paid the average daily guarantee of 6.5 per day on the days you fly. So it's very unlikely you'll get less than 100 TFP per month without picking up any extra days.

The biggest downside to reserve at SWA: reserve days are ineligible for ELITT, the system we use to trade trips with the company for other unassigned trips. If you have a regular line of trips, you have a good shot at being able to change them for different trips (maybe an easier one, maybe one that pays more, maybe an overnight you like), changing workdays for a day you need to be home, and so on. With reserve? The only way to make changes is to swap or give away the reserve days with other pilots, and that's often hard to do.

If you're living in base, it wouldn't be terrible. We don't do "ready reserve" (sitting at the airport in case a trip pops up), so you can sit at home or run errands or whatever. You have two hours from notification of a trip to report to the pilot lounge.

 

I just did the math on my first year. I spent 25% of my Reserve days from my couch, including Christmas and New Years. Two complete four day blocks and three 3-day blocks I didn't turn a wheel. One of those was in the middle of summer. Right now the FO Reserve bench can be pretty deep. We hired a lot of dudes this past year, with a fleet that actually got a bit smaller. We are supposed to hire just a tad less in 2018, but who knows what else the year holds. If you live in base -- right now at least -- getting 18 or 24 TFP for doing nothing isn't too bad.

 

Thanks for the replies. The reserve schedule doesn't sound that bad to me. Maybe I'm missing something. I actually feel like I'm sitting reserve in the corporate world. If I'm not scheduled to fly, I still have to be available short notice for the pop up trip. Aka house arrest. Except no hourly limitations or guaranteed days off.

 

Very true, this was always an issue I had in the corporate world. Very few operators give you a true day off where you know 100% they won't call and expect you to fly.

The main con of reserve is that you'll be working weekends, with really no ability move your blocks since you don't have access to ELITT (trip trading). There are very few (sometimes zero!) reserve lines with multiple weekends off every month. It's also hard to create longer groups of days off for the same reason.

That said I trade or bid into a fair amount of reserve. Living in base you can game the system to get paid to sit at home. Reserve that comes from the OT process pays 2nd year rates (wish I took advantage of this more my first year). If it's busy, there is a good chance you're reserve block will pay well as often a change means premium pay.

 

I've been wondering the same thing! Happy I am in the same boat as you; all corporate and 135 my whole career. If you are reserve and don't live in base, does that mean you still need to be available within 2 hours. So I would need a crash pad or hotel?