Sounds like the consensus would be to take a DL offer if available… even if it comes with a later class date and worse/slower initial seniority progression?

1) no. You take the first major class date offered and if you leave in X weeks, so be it
2) you said wife’s career “currently” doesn’t allow move. This needs more detail. Can move in 2 years? 10 years? 30 years?

And I'm guessing you are very single with this response.

exactly my point! if it ends, do you think the opposing lawyer is giving you a discount because you elected to commute for x number of years. 🤣 in either scenario you’re paying, might as well not commute for her and then still pay. OP could always postnup the situation for contingencies.

Negative. Just a realist. If you’ve been around long, then you know the odds.

What makes you think it’s worse? The seniority progression over there for new hires seems pretty much the same as it is here in the domiciles that you’d be commuting to. But take whatever comes first and make a decision from there. Whether you’d want to stay or go probably depends on your age. If you are not in the forced to a WB age range, the time on reserve wouldn’t be that long and you’d probably just take the seniority and stay.

This is correct. Take first class available. Get a seniority number. You never know when the music will stop. You won’t have a decision to make unless you get a CJO from another company. That’s when you can consider whether to stay or go.

For all you know, his wife could work in the area and earn double what he would make at UAL. Maybe think before you you go on a tangent that doesn’t help anyone.

Guess I should’ve clarified:

1) Sitting on CJOs from both with a UAL class date approximately 30-90 days sooner than when DL would have a class available.

2) My wife will make more than I will till I’m 8-10 years up the pay scales. Can’t move or don’t want to move is an irrelevant semantic. We’ll be in Charleston for the next decade at least.

3) I like the first pancake so I guess that makes me part of the 15%. Or you need to be better at making pancakes.

The conventional wisdom is take the first class date available. Since I’m sitting on two offers within a short span of time, it makes the decision a little more difficult, since both offer many unique positives.

You could be done with initial training at UAL before your DL class date even arrives. I did have a few people either in my class or classes around me (that I knew personally) who left UAL for DL, but solely because they lived in ATL. It was 100% domicile related.

May as well start at UAL and then move to DL if you want to. You never know if something causes a slow/stoppage in hiring during those 90 potential days (unlikely, but stranger things have happened).

It sounds to me like you kind of want to end up at Delta, but there’s no harm starting at United and going from there.

Just looking at the ALPA Jumpseat finder, CHS to Newark has about 4 flights a day (Airbus during the week, mostly, mix on Weekends). Dulles is bad. ORD is pretty meh. Atlanta has like 6-7 flights, though, and I guess you could drive it in a pinch?

So…..