Jusme

Career Guidance!!!!!

Is it all possible to fly the line at the regional level, and receive a good enough bid to where you still could run your own business throughout the week. Also what is it called when you fly the trips that require you to fly the last flight at night and the first that next morning (And that's it for the day)

WEACLRS

They're called "stand-ups". Typically you leave out the evening around 8:00ish or so and fly the first leg in the morning at about 5:30 - 6:30am. Your duty day is 14 - 15 hours. Most airlines - not all - will get you a hotel room for maybe 5 to 6 hours sleep, if you're lucky. You are basically working a night shift. If you can live day-in and day-out with five hours sleep, don't mind or need to ever break guarantee, and don't care about flight time (you'll get maybe 30 hours a month), then stand-ups might be for you.

As far as running a business, there are too many factors to tell. It would depend on the business, whether you commute or not, your airline's bids, your seniority, etc.

SkyWestPilot

At the regional level, I think it would be tough. The max-days-off schedules and stand-ups go to the senior guys (8+ years at Skywest depending on domicile). Your business would have to be flexible enough for your monthly schedule changes. There's no way to have absolute consistency month-to-month. They're always changing and your bids will always be different until you get into the upper echelons of seniority (read: years in service).

That being said, I know of more than one regional pilot doing real estate in partnership with spouses or other agents. When the pilot is on the road, the spouse or partner works with the client. One guy I know was only able to sell on average one house a month, but in the CA market that was a pretty good supplement.

hatetobreakit2u

which airlines don't..........and what the hell are you supposed to do?

StudentPilotGuy

well one of my instructors whos on Leave Of Absence from YV owns his own restaurant in DRO while he is on line and while molding the young and middle age members of YV's future

rickair7777

Mesa. You sleep on the plane for 1-3 hours.

This is partly due to mesa being @ssholes, and partly due to the unique schedules of their HP service out of vegas....the midnight departures from vegas make it feasible to start you at about 1830, fly a couple legs, end up in vegas for a couple hours, leave at midnight, fly to an outstation, hang out (sleep?) for a couple hours, then work the 0630 businessman departure to PHX. This is extremely brutal, and you have to not only have a crashpad in PHX, but you basically need a place all to yourself to have any chance of sleeping during the day. You will live the life of a zombie.

I have also done standups on the east coast, those were pretty good...show between 2000 and 2200, one short leg somewhere, 5-6 hours in a hotel, back at domicile by 0730. Then I had the whole day to myself.

Other names for standups: CDO's, Naps, High-speeds

WEACLRS

Rick answered it. Mesa was the one on my mind. I don't know about others. Maybe someone else can chime in. Colgan gets us hotel rooms. The stand-ups out of IAH are junior, not senior, for the most part.

Freightpuppy

Mesa doesn't give you a hotel on stand ups?????

I can't believe someone hasn't gone postal on that scumbag JO yet.

rickair7777

They do if it's a long one, but there a very large number of trips out of LAS where the sit is only a few hours, so sleeping across an aisle is the accepted practice. Also heard they were starting to get a SINGLE hotel room for the entire crew on standups...wonder how they decide who gets to nap on the floor?

BURflyer

Probably the pilots. I can't believe I'm reading this, is it that bad at MESA??