Scoop

Secondly, "keeping you on reserve for a long time" - Define "long time."
1 year? 2 years? 5 years. IMHO, not all that much in a 25+ year career (of course ask me again when I've been on reserve for 3 years!? ) But overall, I'd be willing to bet reserve as an FO for 5 years would beat what it was like to be an FE for 5 years a "few" years or so ago? Any of the more "experienced" folks want to add thoughts?

The answer is it depends. If you can do short call at home life is good. When we are fat on pilots you hang out at home and get paid. If you are commuting to sit in a rat infested crashpad with 12 other lucky souls - not so good. My first two years at DAL were on the panel flying about 1 trip a month sitting short call at home and enjoying a "window seat" in the Navy reserves, so back to my original statement - it depends.
Good luck Scoop

BalloonChaser

I would imagine there may be "some" that have an air if entitlement - There are more and more pilots who have moved through the ranks quickly as the industry continues the paradigm shift towards faster upgrades/opportunities to fly bigger jets (E.g. when I left school at 250+ TT, you couldn't buy multi time and you needed $15,000 bucks and 2000+ for a regional job! Now, you can hold a CRJ regional job with 250+ TT and pulse practically!) I forsee, as the industry continues to enter the pilot shortage, you're going to continue to see the majors "cherry-pick" the left seat regional capt's and eventually leave the reg's with a major crisis for experienced crews? The majors will eventually see this shortage (5+ yrs or so down the road) and finally have to start to lower their competitive mins as well? - We're already hinting at ab-initio stuff here in the US!? - It's coming...
But I digress, so while yes, I imagine you may find some that make those sorts of comments of feeling "cheated". I would hope to think that "most" of the newhires are the ones who have been in the trenches working long/hard enough to never feel "cheated" out of anything. I'll be happy to be onboard watching on my ob. rides grinning from ear to ear.
And I'd be happy to help you part with some of those "green drinking vouchers" in your wallet!

BalloonChaser

Agreed! And if 80kts is any indictaion of what's in store, then I'll be smiling for 12mths reserve vs. 3 years! In any case, I'll probably be commuting to my base for the time being, so basically I'll be commuting to reserve however, I'm a NY native and have been away from the city much too much, so having family and friends to utilize might help alleviate the "rat infestation" issues? Heck, if I'm stuck commuting somewhere, I might as well be where I'd want to hang out? But again, this is all very,very new to me, and I' sure my learning curve is going to be quite vertical for the first 6 months to a year!? Hoping to utilize all the "gouge" from APF to help maybe level it out a bit!?

DelDah, thanks for the info. I'm in the "Official Slackers are... uh, we'll finish the name later" club too! 80 hours? ***?

tedspal

The last 76ER went to the 29th guy out of a class of 47. But, a huge portion of that was due to high socials picking 88s to ATL

BalloonChaser

Well my SS starts with a "9" so if I can do the ER in JFK that's what I'm going for, so if some new-hire gets/wants ATL after I bid, then I guess they can owe me one at indoc! Like I've said before, if we all get 88's on the 17th, then that's a win too. Just psyched to be onboard!