Good morning,
Quick question that I haven’t seen addressed on the forum, I tried searching for it. How much vacation time and sick leave, or personal leave do you get first starting out? How much does that increase as you gain seniority and rank? Thank you for your time.
Gary,
This varies from airline to airline but the usual is your first year you get no vacation. Second year is a week but it continues to grow with years of service to to about 6. Sick leave you accrue monthly, I believe the average is 6hrs a month.
Again this can vary considerably from airline to airline.
Adam
Gary,
The regional I’m at has similar practices that Adam described. No vacation for the first year. Sick time accrues every month. The amount it accrues grows for each year of service.
Right away, you don’t have any time stored in your bank. If you’re sick, you can still call out no pay with a doctors note. Then it just depends on the specific rate for that airline. At Skywest it’s 1.46 hours per month of sick time and 2.08 hours of vacation per month for 2 years of service.
Hannah
Gary,
At my airline I believe it is two weeks, starting your second year. It increases by a week every few years. I now have five weeks of vacation. Keep in mind though that you bid those weeks in seniority order, you cannot just take them whenever you like.
Chris
Thank you all for your responses. As a follow up question, if you call in sick how many hours of leave do you use? Is it how many hours you were scheduled for that day or a standard amount like 8 hours? Also, if you don’t have a lot of vacation time, are you sometimes able to stack up some off days and take a week off without actually using vacation time? Thank you.
Gary,
If you’re scheduled for a trip the credit hours for that trip will be deducted from your “sick bank”. If you’re on Reserve it’ll be however many hours your airline credits for a Reserve day (typically 5-6).
It’s very possibly to get consecutive days off (I’ve got 7 next week). That ability, like virtually everything at the airlines, comes with seniority.
Adam
Two weeks a year for me from years 1-5. Goes up a week a year every 5 years from there on. First year is prorated so I got 9 days. A 7-day vacation with a 7/7 or 8/6 schedule results in three full weeks off work where you start wondering if you will remember what to do when you get back. We also get one PTO day per month but can’t take those days until the first year of probation is up. After that you bid those extra days every month, can use them for sick leave, or can ask for last minute First Come First Serve days off. Every flying job is different though.