Equipment / Base Seniority
 

Been lurking for a while and have a CJO from UA and AA. Would be commuting for both. Just looking for some more information regarding equipment and base seniority. If anyone at UA could answer these questions I think it may be useful to a lot of hopefuls.

Also wanted to ask how the schedules have been? Are you able to drop reserve days/trips even in these times. If you could list it by DOH that would be helpful.

Any information would be appreciated. More specifically interested in ORD or DC. But I’ll take what I can get. QOL over pay for me so just looking for the best fit and trying to set my expectations.

Base:
Equipment:
Date of Hire:
Most junior line holder in base:
Average Days off:
Commutable trips:
Average pairing length:
Able to drop trips:

Don't have any data on Average days off, but it is 12 or 13 on reserve depending on the month length, and then variable based on how senior of a lineholder you are for lineholders. On all the fleets the Lines have been constructed to pretty high values over the spring and summer, so the junior lineholder that has inefficient trips is ending up with 13 or 14 days off.

I will let a commuter speak to commutability, but that is also wildly dependant upon where you are commuting from.

The trip mix shown is from the ALPA report for the August flying. It doesn't show base specific mix, but does give a good idea of the trip mix across the different fleets.

The below shows the line seniority number of the junior pilot staffed in each seat/location and the junior pilot gauranteed a line in each seat/location.

Pure trip drops are difficult to come by right now as the coverage is so poor it basically would require somebody being willing to do a straight pick up of your trip. Since everybody's lines are being built to a high initial number, most people can't/dont want to do a straight pickup. Hopefully as they catch up on OE training (happening already on the 320) the staffing will get to the point where at least some people can get a drop (senior folks generally) . We do have trip trading that includes bad day-worse day, so if you have a trip later in the month you want to get out of and they have an open trip earlier in the month where the coverage is worse, then you can trade. It can work for trips later in the monht, but is much more restrictive so almost never works.

Also of note is that the 777 and 787 have gone very junior/unfilled in DCA recently, so you could get that assignment potentially as a new hire or very quickly thereafter if you were interested. If you are going to stay commuting, I would highly discourage that path!!!

Hmmm….well for starters, AA has already straight up offered their pilots a better prospective contract than what our NC spent years negotiating for us……:D

You can be a 777 or 787 FO as a new hire and a 737 or Airbus Captain in 2 years in numerous bases. I think that’s really the advantage United has right now. We are adding 550 planes in 5 years, 200 of those are replacing RJ flying bringing that to mainline. Whatever we have going on now will likely be much better in a few years.

Just 4 years ago this guy came on here trashing United because his CJO was after Southwest’s and all he wanted to do was be based in Denver. So he took the job with Southwest because someone told him it took 20 years to be a Captain in Denver (not true). Junior Captain in Denver is 3 years seniority right now.

So trying to judge based on “now” isn’t always the best way to look at things.

20 years??? pffft. It only took me 18 years to be a Captain in Denver. First available upgrade in 2015. Timing is everything.

It went from 18 years to 3 in about 6 years.

I know there's a good site somebody compiled for Delta's "widgetseniority" but is there any equivalent for United? Or raw data for instance?

Yes. unitedseniority.com

It almost sounds facetious 😆

Thank you for posting this. I have almost the exact situation myself and really appreciate the comments on here. Thank you!