DTW Base
 

Going to class next month and I’m hoping to get DTW based! Anyone have any insight on to how long reserve is, QOL in base as well as the type of flying / layovers?

I was based there for my first 11 months. Being relatively senior in my new hire group allowed me to hold DTW out of training.

Schedule - I held a line after seven or eight months. Hiring ground almost to a stop shortly after I was hired so it's possible that I could have held a line sooner if I were on the start of a big hiring wave like it seems you are.

QOL - are you planning to commute to DTW or live there? The crashpads there are standard fare from what I hear. The outer north and western sides of Detroit are nice places to live. Downtown is reviving strongly from its bankruptcy woes and there are good amenities popping up down there like large parks, restaurant districts, etc.

Flying - there is very little international flying out of either DTW or ORD. I got out of the country about once a month. It doesn't make much difference considering we have very few international overnights. Plan for a lot of trips with long legs to the west coast at the start and back at the end. Good layovers and easy flying.

Awesome! Thanks for this. I’ll commute at first but luck out with a place to stay at a friends house! I’m going to eventually move there once my lease is up! Thanks again.

Oh and I forgot to say that if you bid early reserve you have quite a few opportunities to do repo flights for move up pay. Having a hangar in DTW means that's where they keep spare airplanes. I did three repo flights in one week when based there.

How do you bid early RAP?

in pref bid, we have pre set rsv windows, R3= 3am to 5pm

The problem is that RAP is allotted according to coverage on the working days you are awarded, not necessarily by seniority.

So for example say everyone wants R03. If there are 10 R03 lines for November, and the ten most senior reserve bidders have too many overlapping days working, a much more junior pilot would get it instead.

You can pref R03 or you can go in the backyard and yell, “I want R03!!”
The two methods seem equally effective.


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Facts.

filler

R03 seems popular, do people just want to be done earlier in the day? Any benefits/drawbacks to the different reserve shifts?