New Hires to be offered Widebody FO
 

Starting with the Jan 11th class.

They will be offering 777 and 787 FO in SFO, EWR and DCA.

Also 757/767, Airbus, and 737 is almost every base we fly them.

Seems like new hires will have a lot of choices in 2022 after having 1,200 vacancies. There won’t be any direct Captain hires, despite the unfilled bids because the contract prohibits it. Many of the May 2021 hires will be eligible to start bidding Captain in the Summer of 2022 after they get off probation.

I’m curious what the QOL would look like for someone who can drive to DCA and gets WB. How long is the call out? How many years until you can hold a line? How much can you expect to make in the first few years on reserve?

This question has been answered a bunch of times in recent threads, although not specific to DCA. Call out is 2:30 to report on SC. You’ll be on reserve for many years. How many is many? Could be 5, could be 10. Depends on too many factors to be able to guess. 1st year is the same pay for all fleets, so you’d be making around guarantee for sure—about 80k year 1, 150k year 2. WB flying is depressed right now so the pool of reserves is deep on a relative basis. The WB fleets at DCA are smaller and planned growth means people will bid on top of you for years once a hint of normal flying returns.

QoL-wise, you’d live at home and rarely do anything other than go back every 3 months to Denver for landings class. But you’d be on the hook for 18 days out of every month and probably feel a little uncomfortable for a long time with how United works and flying in general.

Pre Covid, my buddy on 75/76 spent just about five years on reserve. He was paid by United to remodel his house, with the interruption of having to go to DEN for landing currency every three months. Even after he started flying fairly regularly, he was mostly the relief pilot and STILL had to go for landing currency for another few years. He was just starting to fly enough to not have to do that when it turned to $h!+.

There are some significant things to think about if a new hire chooses to pick a widebody in class. First, you have to ask yourself “can I sleep on on the airplane?”. If you can’t, you’re in for two years of hell. Another thing to think about is that you’re going to take your probationary training event in an airplane that you’re not going to be flying much, if at all. As a junior pilot on a widebody, you’ll be a bunkie most of the time.

I’m not trying to scare anyone from their dreams of flying on a widebody, but have your eyes wide open!!! I was a junior WB FO in SFO and loved it!!! But when I took the bid, I left myself an out in case I couldn’t sleep on the airplane. I could go back to narrow body as a captain. I was also about 80% in category, so I would be able to get some flying legs. I was also not on probation!!!

Just some things to think about…

Whitepaper: Exploiting Training Center parallelism for maximum throughput.

They are duly warned that reserve sucks and commuting to reserve sucks even more. For the Y2Captains you will hate it even more. Your soon to be ex spouses will hate it too but at least you will have a higher income to afford paying for their house and your new apartment.

A choice..?
 

Always love these pearls of wisdom/warnings… as if New Hires will have a choice in this matter. regardless if a new hire “chooses” to go to a WB or not, someone, rather a few new hires, will not have a choice those vacancies need to be filled. I didn't when I went through…. It’s a company decision not a New Hire decision…

I think the general trend is to offer more seats than the new hire class has people. If that continues, some, maybe all, will have a choice.

My advice would be don’t be consumed by what’s offered in new hire class. You’re only a good vacancy bid away from getting the plane you want (no necessarily in the base you want). Give yourself more choices by giving yourself the opportunity to bid up, can’t bid down without seat lock. . So 738, a320 are good choice in BI. Doubt they will offer more than 1-2 wide body slots per class.
For some commuters base might not necessarily matter 🤷🏻‍♂️