Hey all - wanted to throw out my schedule in case anyone has SWA specific questions. We get paid in “trips” instead of hours which is an entirely separate conversation. But if I get 90 hours then a rough conversion would be to multiply by 1.15 - which is 103.5 trips (for example). As many know, we have a large portion of our fleet grounded (~10%) and are running extremely thin on hours with the overstaffing we have in preparation for the MAX to come back. So credit is much lower than usual. I’m just past my 1 year mark and sit at 93% on the FO list at a very senior MCO base. But here’s my October schedule which credited 100 trips:
OFF
OFF
OFF
MCO-BDL-STL
STL-MCO-BWI-CMH
CMH-MCO-BUF
BUF-MCO-MCI-MCO
OFF
OFF
OFF
MCO-DAL-MAF-HOU-TUL
TUL-LAS-PHX-SJC-RNO
RNO-LAS-MCO
OFF
OFF
OFF
OFF
OFF
MCO-STL-DSM
DSM-STL-MCO-BNA-OKC
OKC-DEN-MKE
MKE-LAS-MCO
OFF
OFF
OFF
OFF
OFF
OFF
OFF
MCO-MCO-MDW-STL-SEA (yes, return to field - last 2 were deadheads)
Away from home 6 nights in a month as an airline pilot…now that’s a schedule I can get behind. That’s not much different than the travel I do for my current job! I assume the 93% figure means 93% of F/O’s at MCO are senior to you?
Haha well I’m not sure where you see the 6 nights away - it was actually 10. But yes! 93% means that number of pilots are above me. The more I move up, the better my schedule gets. But for a low time in our trip credit average and sitting almost at the bottom, it’ll do!
Oops, yeah 10 nights away. What I should have said is 6 full days away from home…I was thinking you were home the morning of the first day of each trip which counts in the “I saw my family today” column, haha.
Ah okay I see what you’re thinking but I’d still count it as 10 since on either the front day or the last day of the trip (depending is it’s an AM or PM) you won’t see family at all. I do AMs so I’m always leaving my house the first day before the sun is up. If you did PMs you’d be getting back after everyone is asleep. There are a few good middle-of-the-day trips but as you can guess, those go pretty senior.
I started ATP in March of 2013 in their 0 time program and graduated 5 months later. Southwest is very difficult to get on with. 50% of hires are typically direct from the military, the other 50% civilian. We had 9 folks in my class with previous 121 experience. The average regional pilot heading there has about 8,000 hrs if I had to put a number on it. There will be some with significantly more time than that but only a few with less. I only know one who has made it without the 4 year degree.
Yes that’s true for any airline though. Trips will always start and finish at your base. How long the trip is will determine how many nights are spent away from home. If I do a 3 day trip - it leaves from MCO day one, you fly to X number of airports and then return on day 3. So 2 nights away from home. Every airline will create trips for the pilots to choose from. Southwest has mostly 3 days, a few 4 days, and very few 2 days and locals (1 day trip).
Thanks for sharing your schedule. When it comes to pick a base ( let`s say you are a new hired at X regional airline) do you get the option to choose your home base or do the airline automatically assigns the home base for you (therefore, you will have to move cities or commute).
When you are hired, your new hire class will bid for available bases using seniority within the class (typically the oldest in the class is the most senior, and sop forth down the line). Typically the “senior bases” are not available to new hires, but places that are considered less desirable are (particularly anything in the NYC area) are. If you do not get the base you want at first, you can always try again to bid to that base when your airline has “vacancy bids”, which are typically a few times per year. Eventually, everybody usually gets to where they want to be.
Thanks for the information. Based from your experience if I would like to be in the NYC area, how hard is to win this bid so I could live close to this home base ? ( I am assuming places such as; the New York tri-state are, SF bay area, L.A. , or Miami might be hard or easier to obtain since those areas are the most expensive are to live in the nation).
Yeah our company is pretty well known for awarding mostly schedules with 3 days ON, 4 days OFF. I purposefully bid for a schedule with the weekend of the 26th off because I had family in town. One thing we have here is an insane ability to change our schedules around, so you can really make it what you want. Even as a junior pilot.
NYC is traditionally one of the most junior and easily held bases. It’s expensive, pilots sometimes have to cover multiple airports and it simply has a bad rep. When I was at the Regionals I got EWR day one and never lost it.