HaleHortler

Thank you, that helps out a lot.

Can anybody give some insight on trip length? My family hates 4 days, but I get the feeling thats most of the trips at spirit.

Appreciate all the replies. The next airline I go to will be my last so I want to get it right.

RemoveB4flght

Trips across the network typically range from 1-4 days. Some of those lengths are trips that end after midnight or with a red eye early am arrival in base, so call them what you like.

With PBS it is certainly a possibility to bid for trips less than 4 days, but having 4 days off between shorter pairings would be a challenge. You can also drop or swap with open time, which would probably be your go to move until you get enough seniority to bid for exactly what you want.

Qotsaautopilot

Be a lineholder that bids reserve and live in base. Not saying you won’t work a 4 day but time at home will be substantial.

Balker

I don’t mean to be an a*hole but, your family “hates 4 day trips”? Doesn’t sound like your family is very supportive of your profession. 4 day trips are probably the most common type of schedule structure among the airlines. Allegiant could be a good fit if your goal is to avoid overnights.

As far as Spirit goes, in theory once you’re a line holder you could bid for 3 day trips but they’re usually less efficient. You could do one 3 day trip a week, and have 4 days off but it’s going to be reflected on your pay. 3 day trips pay between 13-17 hrs on average.

Living close to the airport would be your best shot. Otherwise consider adding the time, $$, and effort of having to do multiple trips to the airport for inefficient trips.

Bottom line: Spirit it’s a very flexible airline. If you can live happily with min. guarantee or less, you could have plenty of time off at home. Unfortunately I run into people that complain about not getting the trips and the time off they want, but are secretly trying to credit 100hrs a month. Catch my drift?

Best of luck

Omniscient

No family likes Dad to be gone for 4 days. Have to look at it from a different angle.

PBS is going to build your schedule to a credit window. 4 day trips, although not fun, are going to usually be the best bang for the buck on credit/day average with the 3.5 rig either forcing block higher or soft time. Higher credit 4 days mean you hit the credit window sooner which means you stand a better chance at more days off.

I’ve done the 3 day trip route and what I found was I got many 3 day trips worth 16 hours. And I think “one more day on the road I could get a much higher credit value for the extra day. Many trips over 23 hours, so that 7+ extra hours for 1 more day of work, that’s how you hit the 16-17 day off lines vs the 14 day off lines with the 3 day trips.

So although the family doesn’t like Dad being gone for 4 day trips, he is home more days of the month.

In the end, this the airlines and you have zero seniority here. You will feed on scraps for a while. If you can’t accept that, as others suggested, Allegiant would be better and you can do day turns. But this is the job, pack a bag, kiss the family goodbye and see them in 3 days.

Balker

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SSlow

I cannot speak for DTW, but in the Florida bases once you have decent seniority you can easily get around flying 4 day trips. I think I've done maybe five 4 day trips this year and all except for one were at 200% pay. My schedule could probably be more efficient but like I said in another thread I'm rarely gone from home for more than 48 hours, which for me is the goal.

That's a nice benefit of PBS (if you have seniority of course).