LAS Base
 

Not seeing much discussed about the LAS base.
Is it going junior or senior ? Chances of getting it on the first vacancy bid during or after initial training?
Thanks

yes and yes

It is Junior in both seats, but small and done growing. Going forward it will be about how many vacant positions will be offered. Smaller bases sometimes are junior but takes awhile to get into because the isn’t much movement in and out.

The flying doesn't seem great with the high percentage of trips with red eyes, so my guess is that it will stay junior.
The ability to break seatlock early ended in the Jul vacancy bid so the churn should be slowing down after those pilots are activated over the next 1-2 months and bid out to where they actually want to be.

Thanks for your analysis, I really want a LAS base it seems that UA has the best conditions in the base at the moment, I’ll fire my App to all LAS based airlines and see who bites.

If all you care about is being based in LAS I would put UAL towards the end of your list. A lot of other carriers offer better QOL and scheduling flexibility and have a stronger presence.

Better QOL? Not so sure that is the case right now over at LUV. One thing UAL has over every single other carrier with a LAS base is the potential to fly WB to other continents (albeit if willing to commute). The growth of the UAL LAS base has been stunted precisely because a lot of the locals would rather fly WB than be locally based (think about what that says about WB flying). So far I’ve met a couple of LAS crews and most of them actually commute to LAS (for the seniority and easy commute). The trip mix so far is apparently sub par, but that’s to be expected in a pretty small base. I think it will grow, albeit very slowly.

The way the OP worded his post it sounded like he wants to be based in LAS, not just live there and commute elsewhere. If he doesn't have WB aspirations I'd look at Frontier or Spirit. You can fly a modern airbus with better trips. You can actually trade or drop a trip there and won't soon be forced to upgrade if you don't want to either.

I didn’t infer that he wanted to commute, I just pointed out that a lot of LAS folks who have a choice actually do so. My top choice when applying to the majors was LUV, for very similar reasons to what the OP implied. Knowing now what I didn’t know then, UAL would easily be my top choice this time around. And dropping/trading trips at UAL is easy if you ask the right questions when you hit the line. (For example - short trips are much easier to drop).

This takes seniority though. If you're junior you won't be able to get day trips or two days if the majority of your base is flying is 3/4 days.