April was a nice shift in pace. I was pretty fatigued from the craziness of March, as soon as our schedules were released I posted nearly every trip in Open time. Luckily, I had a four-day and a standup back to back picked up by other crew members. This meant I had an entire 10 day block in the middle of the month off! I browsed open time for some premium pay trips but I decided I needed the rest instead. I spent some much needed time at home and even went on a spontaneous beach vacation. This is one thing I love about this industry- schedule flexibility!
You’ll notice a big red bar labeled DIOE. That means the Captain is a check airman and crew support displaced me from that trip in order to get an IOE completed. The four day got replaced with an easy three day with a free hotel on Tuesday night. I got paid for the higher credit trip, so in this case the 4-day even though I worked the 3-day. The Saturday local wasn’t replaced with anything so I got the day off and got paid the 4 hrs of credit.
In total, I logged 57 hours of block time and credited 69 hours of pay with 16 days off.
TAFB (Time away from base): 268 hours which came out to $536 (non-taxed) per diem.
A standup is a split duty trip. It’s typically the last flight of the night and first flight of the morning with a minimum rest time. They are very efficient on credit because you get paid for the block time plus the “scheduled rest opportunity of 3 hours”. So block time is 2:41 but you get paid for 5:25.
Fun fact: As some of you may or may not know last year Hawaiian started doing InterIsland overnights. IMMEDIATELY ALL the former SkyWest pilots we have (and we have quite a few) started pushing for “standups” as apparently they were very popular. We approached the company with the idea. Problem was/is, with our min daily guarantee the company would’ve needed to pay for 2 full duty days which would’ve been too expensive. I believe that’s the reason you don’t see standups at the Majors.
Hello Hannah, Thank you for sharing with great detail and honest insight. Do you know a Skywest pilot based in either SLC or DEN flying the ERJ175. I am curious about their schedule. Thank you, Paul
@PN135 I know quite a few actually. Right now the schedules are pretty similar across the airframes. Different routes obviously but average block/credit time and average days off per month is pretty consistent.
Awesome! Congratulations. Welcome to the Skywest family
There isn’t concrete data out about when you’ll necessarily be able to hold a line, however, there is this tool that will help you get an idea of the seniority of each base. If it’s very senior, you can expect sitting on reserve for a while. If it’s pretty junior, that means there’s more movement so you’ll be able to hold a line sooner.
(Scroll down to the map and click “Seniority” and toggle the switch to ERJ.
I can tell you though, SLC has been historically very senior. Things have been changing rapidly though… hope this helps!
Good morning Hannah,
I’m starting class this coming august with the CRJ, I live in Chicago and I was wondering if the Skywest website is accurate about holding time to be base in ORD…
Do you have any insights?
Thank you.
Yes, the base seniority is updated every month. What’s listed there is a very accurate representation of how long it might take you. Historically speaking, ORD has been a very junior base and easily held right away.
