rg16

Hey guys. I'm a new hire, I start class in December. I have never been in the 121 world before, and the wife and I have tons of questions about, not only life in the airlines, but in particular what awaits us at SWA. We're both really excited but also a tad overwhelmed, particularly with the unknown aspects of this life altering event. Unfortunately, I know no-one at SWA with whom I can speak with to answer questions, and I don't want to keep pinging HR and wasting their time with stupid questions that I think also may be out of their lane.

I wonder if anybody would be willing to let me call them and let me bounce my stupid questions off of them? I'd just like to converse with someone about what's in store for me in the next few months........and have a button I can press when the wife asks me a question that I don't know (which is about all of them).

If anyone would be willing to talk with me for a bit, would you please send me a private message and we can coordinate a time at your convenience when we can chat. Thank you!

WHACKMASTER

Check your PMs, rg.

Opteryx

I thought pretty much all the majors were like that...?

flyguy81

AA has a cap that won't let you pick up beyond a certain number of hours. Not sure if UAL/DL have the same.

Opteryx

But their schedules are just as flexible, no?

full of luv

For the most part, except that I think at SWA since everyone flies the same airplane with the same quals, I guess you have essentially the whole company to pick from in open time vs a company that has categories where the amount of open time will fluctuate depending on staffing, seasonal variations etc, and you have a specific pool of flying and pilots that you can swap/add/drop from.

The MAIN upside with PBS (what all the legacies use now except SWA/ALK) is that you get much more control on the initial building of your schedule so much less tailoring required from the get-go, but the corollary to that is much less flying gets dumped into open time due to the absence of trip dropping conflicts with vacation/training.

From comparing notes with my SWA golfing buddies, if your goal is to fly 1000 hours per year block time and maximize your credit each month, it's probably consistently easier at SWA to make that happen. If your goal is to drop trips here and there because your wife is a doctor and work is interfering with your hobbies, it's probably easier at a legacy. This would be over a career, as any given month at either company can have vastly different results depending on staffing and flying load.

full of luv

At DAL there is a limit of ALV (average line value ) + 15 hours (not 100% sure of the limit) that you can pick up straight open time, but there are other ways you can pick up more time such as trading one trip for another does not have the cap applied, and picking up a trip from the pilot-to-pilot swap board doesn't care about the limit so you can in most cases sell your soul right up to the FAR limits if that's your thing.

flyguy81

There was a guy in my crashpad who was a DL FO on the -88. Could've held CA if he wanted or wide body FO but he was crushing it on green slips. He'd bid CKA and when his trips got bought for IOE he'd green slip on top basically triple dipping. One month he had 280 hrs credit and 17 off. So you can definitely credit a ton at the legacies but I'm not sure how frequently you can credit that much.

At SWA I've been easily crediting 120 tfp/mo and keeping 14-15 off living in base. I've flown 650 YTD.

FLY6584

This is wrong. Maybe it's true for for widebody guys, but I can guarantee I work less days and have the ability to drop more days of flying than any of my legacy buddies flying narrowbodies. And not to mention I credit may more than them per day of work.

But somehow I'm on track to only fly 650hrs this year even though I've had months that ranged from 90-143 tfps.

This month I was originally scheduled for 12 days of flying. Through some creativity I was able to drop 6 days of that flying. I then picked up an extra 3 day trip that I wanted to fly for a total of 11 days (two 4-days that are commutable on both ends and one 3-day that I can drive to work) and I will credit 93. That also includes a one day turn that I picked up out of my home commuter airport that paid 8 and was cancelled due to the hurricane. So I guess it's technically 12 days of work for 93 tfp's. It's also all weekday flying and I am a guy that just hit second year.

PBS blows and guys that think it's awesome don't know enough about line bidding or never figured out how to work the system with line bidding.

full of luv

Well there you have it, I'm not sure where I'm "wrong" other than you can log 93 tfp's in 12 days, all I said was that if you wanted to fly up to 100block you could do that as well, obviously your not choosing that route. All I commented on is that at a legacy you can drop down easier (with loss of pay) and that the swa folks seem to have quite a bit to add to their schedule if they want to work. Somehow after you say I'm wrong, you go on to tell how you pick up trips at different bases to tailor your schedule, exactly what I was eluding to and not available to the legacies as they operate a multitude of types.

My golfing buddies who've been with SWA for only a decade and a half seem to have a bit more difficulty straight up dropping trips than you seem to have, but maybe someday they'll be up to your caliber, or maybe their just afraid to meet on the course.

PBS is what your work rules/contract makes of it. Imagine line bidding where you could ONLY select lines that didn't conflict with training, each other, or vacation. That would blow as well. PBS is efficient, which requires less pilots to fill the schedule, but if you had PBS with trip touching, that would be the best.

Lemme guess, your prior AF since you seem to know everything better than everyone in general, otherwise not quite sure where it's wrong.