Best Case Scenario At Regional

If you live where you are based it will make a huge difference, especially on reserve. I'm near the bottom of reserve and live where I'm based and am only away from home a few nights a month. Got an excellent QOL aside the pay.
 
I have a four day line, two 10 leg 7.8 days, one day reserve, last day is 4 legs. Three days off. No weekends, no overnights. Not too shabby.
 
I worked at Mesa for about 20 months, I was on reserve for 20 months on the Dash-8 in Denver. My quality of life actually wasn't too bad, but at the time I had zero debt. YMMV.
 
pdxcfi said:
I have a four day line, two 10 leg 7.8 days, one day reserve, last day is 4 legs. Three days off. No weekends, no overnights. Not too shabby.
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My god man, I have some 4-day trips that don't have 10 legs the whole trip.
 
Gonzo said:
My god man, I have some 4-day trips that don't have 10 legs the whole trip.
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Us prop fellers do earn what little money they pay us... thats why we compensate with cowboy boots w/ spurs, a moustache, and an special swagger that attracts the girls like ball bearings to a magnet.
 
ChasenSFO said:
Best case scenario would probably be you are flying 21 people in your Brasilia from Yuma, AZ to Imperial, CA in a thunderstorm and a strange worm-hole opens up in front of you. You are too shocked to avoid it and you fly through. You come out the other end sitting in the left seat of a Pan Am 707 on an 8 mile final in Honolulu. You notice your sides bulging. You find a wallet with 57 $20 bills shoved into it in your left pocket, a black book with phone numbers of women in every city Pan Am serves in your right pocket, and the release says its 1968.

That's my ultimate career goal.
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DayTripper said:
If you live where you are based it will make a huge difference, especially on reserve. I'm near the bottom of reserve and live where I'm based and am only away from home a few nights a month. Got an excellent QOL aside the pay.
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This is gonna vary from company to company, though. I'm on reserve, live in base, and I generally sleep in my own bed on my off days (or on days I just sat at the airport for 9 hours with no pay credit and no per diem). This week, I'm in my bed three nights. Last night was a fluke since they removed me from a flight because I was gonna make the outbound AND the inbound flight in the morning late. Okay, four nights. Forgot about the night after the 5 leg, 13 hour duty day on the last day of the 4 day.....
 
kellwolf said:
This is gonna vary from company to company, though. I'm on reserve, live in base, and I generally sleep in my own bed on my off days (or on days I just sat at the airport for 9 hours with no pay credit and no per diem). This week, I'm in my bed three nights. Last night was a fluke since they removed me from a flight because I was gonna make the outbound AND the inbound flight in the morning late. Okay, four nights. Forgot about the night after the 5 leg, 13 hour duty day on the last day of the 4 day.....
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OK Fact: not having to commute will increase your QOL no matter what airline you work for.
 
ChasenSFO said:
Best case scenario would probably be you are flying 21 people in your Brasilia from Yuma, AZ to Imperial, CA in a thunderstorm and a strange worm-hole opens up in front of you. You are too shocked to avoid it and you fly through. You come out the other end sitting in the left seat of a Pan Am 707 on an 8 mile final in Honolulu. You notice your sides bulging. You find a wallet with 57 $20 bills shoved into it in your left pocket, a black book with phone numbers of women in every city Pan Am serves in your right pocket, and the release says its 1968.

That's my ultimate career goal.
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Wow. . . .I did that flight a few weeks back but no worm holes. Though that did happen to me once out in Eastern Wyoming. T-storms and worm holes tend to get bigger out there on the prarie. Crazy times.

You just gave me an idea. Next time I hit some guys wake on final, I'm going to tell the passengers it was the edge of a worm hole. Or swamp gas reflected off Venus. . . . . .
 
Unless you DID fly through the worm hole, in which case you are still in it, and this post, the previous post, and the last few weeks of your life were just creations of your subconscious. In fact, it hasn't been weeks at all. Its been about 12 seconds.
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DayTripper said:
OK Fact: not having to commute will increase your QOL no matter what airline you work for.
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Don't commute because I don't want to hear more people bitching about the perils of commuting.

Plus, I commute. I don't need the competition. :)
 
As a one-time commuter and current in-base type guy, I second the "don't commute" thing. HUGE improvement.

On days when my trip ends early, that 15 minute period from the terminal to my front door is a far cry from the time I spent 4+ hours begging for jumpseats out of Chicago. (There are hourly flights.) Then there's the two hour flight after that, etc. That's not even the worst I've ever heard. Not commuting = win.

Beyond that? Best case scenario? Working 12 days a month as your line. Min guarantee, but plenty of downtime. Or even better, you get a 4 day trip line, then get paired with an IOE Captain and get bumped to he can shake out new hires and get them line qual'ed all month. Lots of combinations.

The real answer is that there is no truly ideal situation- all things are fluid, and things change monthly. The trends run better and run worse.

Ultimately, the best case scenario is where you do the best you can to get the best you can, and when you get what you can, you decide to be as happy as you can be with what you've got.

(... and if it really sucks, do something about it. Feeling that you can't change things in your life is allegedly the single biggest cause of stress anybody can feel. This leads nowhere good.)
 
Firebird2XC said:
The real answer is that there is no truly ideal situation- all things are fluid, and things change monthly. The trends run better and run worse.

Ultimately, the best case scenario is where you do the best you can to get the best you can, and when you get what you can, you decide to be as happy as you can be with what you've got.

(... and if it really sucks, do something about it. Feeling that you can't change things in your life is allegedly the single biggest cause of stress anybody can feel. This leads nowhere good.)
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Well said.

There are guys that are here for life. (I make it sound like a prison sentence. :) ) As an average, a senior RJ Captain might hit a little over 100K a year and probably have, on average, 15 to 16 days off per month.
 
Firebird2XC said:
As a one-time commuter and current in-base type guy, I second the "don't commute" thing. HUGE improvement.

On days when my trip ends early, that 15 minute period from the terminal to my front door is a far cry from the time I spent 4+ hours begging for jumpseats out of Chicago. (There are hourly flights.) Then there's the two hour flight after that, etc. That's not even the worst I've ever heard. Not commuting = win.

Beyond that? Best case scenario? Working 12 days a month as your line. Min guarantee, but plenty of downtime. Or even better, you get a 4 day trip line, then get paired with an IOE Captain and get bumped to he can shake out new hires and get them line qual'ed all month. Lots of combinations.

The real answer is that there is no truly ideal situation- all things are fluid, and things change monthly. The trends run better and run worse.

Ultimately, the best case scenario is where you do the best you can to get the best you can, and when you get what you can, you decide to be as happy as you can be with what you've got.

(... and if it really sucks, do something about it. Feeling that you can't change things in your life is allegedly the single biggest cause of stress anybody can feel. This leads nowhere good.)
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Well said. Sometimes the best situations turn out to be bummers (Pan Am anyone), and temorary stops end up being a place where you spend your career. I knew a number of captains at my regional who were hired in the early 80s thinking they were there for a few years. The great guys who everyone respected where not the ones who were bitter, but the ones who were positive about where they were and what they were doing. They made a descent wage and enjoyed their jobs. The ones I hated flying with were bitter and hated everyone at a major airline. Those trips were horrible.
 
If I was getting decent QoL with a decent pay check and living in a place I wanted to live, I'd have no problems staying at a stable regional. Right now, I've got 0/3, so I've got nothing to lose by moving on. In fact, I may be doing the evil and turning myself INTO a commuter. What the hell, at least I'll finally be off reserve. Who's got a line on crashpads in JFK?
 
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