Listening to the mentors’ advice, I just got my bachelor’s degree done in 2 years (I’m 21) and I’m waiting for my medical to come out before going to ATP (FAA requested for information about my corrective eye surgery and male pattern baldness medication lol)
As a fresh regional pilot will it be realistically possible to have atleast 2 weeks off at once using vacation and days off?
How many consecutive days can I have off at once realistically?
I have family members in Korea and was wondering if I would have some time to go see them as a regional pilot.
Our vacation at my regional is awarded based on completed years at the company. As a cadet, it was based on the date I signed my cadet agreement. As a non-cadet it would be your date of hire. 1 year of service gives you a 1 week vacation block, after 2 years you get 2 weeks, after 7 years 3 weeks, and after 14 years 4 weeks. These numbers are specific to my regional, but I expect they are similar elsewhere. We bid for the weeks that we want the year prior and they awarded based on seniority.
With that being said, it could be possible to get two weeks off as a regional pilot even by only using a single vacation week. I have done that both last year and this year by having the trips that touch the vacation be dropped. If you tactically bid, it is possible. It is possible to get a large stretches of days off without using a vacation block once you are senior enough. On reserve it is unlikely.
I have family in England that I travel to see twice a year and I don’t even use vacation blocks for those trips. I just bid for and move my trips to get me 7 or 8 consecutive days off. I have 8 days in a row off in November to go to England, but I had to sacrifice working on Thanksgiving to make it work.
I guess the main point is that it is possible, but you have to be flexible and understand that it might not work out the way you had hoped. There are a lot of factors in vacation bidding, and as a junior FO you probably won’t be able to get any of the popular weeks (ex: Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc…)
I’ve already enjoyed that benefit for probably the last time here. We switch to a PBS bidding system in the near future and the negotiated alternative is we can add 3 additional days off to the front or back of our vacation block. Which is still pretty good!
Is it possible as a junior FO? Yes, but the crazy schedule you might have to put yourself through to do it would be rough. Theoretically you could bid to have all your flying in the first 2-3 weeks of the month and then the following month the flying towards the end of the month. As you get more senior, it will get easier. However each time you move airplanes or seats your seniority changes so keep that in mind.
As a freshly minted Regional pilot you should be focused on becoming a better Regional pilot and eventually a Capt. How much vacation time you’ll have should be an after thought.
First off, welcome back to the forum and congrats on completing the bachelor’s degree (in time, I am sure the hardwork paid off well)! Secondly, vacation should be the last thing you’re worried about right now.
While it’s nice to start imagining and fantasizing the future, the focus on things should be on the present. There will come a time when you’re able to bid for vacation and how that works will be depended on a lot of factors, airlines, contracts, bidding systems, etc. For example, we at Piedmont get the beautiful feature of trip touching, will it stay forever, probably not. As Roscoe said, Envoy is the first of all three regional wholly-owns of American to go to PBS. PSA and Piedmont are still in negotiations, which could take weeks, months, years, you get the point.
Eventually after you get some time under your belt and seniority, you may have the ability to move vacation days and bid a line/reserve (as applicable) to get your maximum time available to go overseas.
For schedules, I recommend taking a look at our schedules section: