Hi all, I know the airlines work on a bidding system based on seniority but was wondering if anyone could go a little deeper onto how flexible (or not) schedules are. What I mean is, if you prefer flying during the day and being back at base by the end of your day, is that something you can generally do? This is presuming flying short/medium haul of course. Thanks in advance!
Andrew,
As you state, EVERYTHING is based on seniority. What people get confused about is that doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t get what you want if you’re junior, it means you can’t get what you want if EVERYONE else wants the same thing. For example most pilots want Christmas off, I’m Jewish and could care less about Christmas but I do want Yom Kippur off. Since most pilots aren’t Jewish that’s never been a problem.
In your case the question is do you think you’re the only one who would like to only fly during the day and be home at night? Since it’s safe to say that’s what most pilots want it’s not going to happen for some time.
Adam
Good point never quite thought of it from that perspective haha, thanks for the answer!
Andrew,
PBS is a highly intelligent bidding system that frankly most pilots spend years trying to learn and understand its full capabilities. It can give you virtually any legal line you’d want, typically you’ll find having the seniority to hold it is the harder part.
Hannah
Andrew,
There is some flexibility in pilot schedules, and it generally gets better with more seniority. However, pilots be definition fly to far away places, that means nights on the road. There are very few pilot jobs that allow the pilot to be home every night. If your goal is to be home every night, I would consider another job.
To address what Hannah said, we do use the preferential bidding system, but that just allocates the trips according to seniority. The trips are still build in one, two, three and four day trips, so there are only so many single day trips to be had. I believe less than 15% of our trips on the domestic fleet are day trips and almost none on the international fleets.
Chris