tnkrdrvr

The MD has been awful. You should all bid 75/76. Amazing schedules!

UPSFO4LIFE

Man, that's some funny **** there. If you want to cut 5 years off your life, bid 75 domestic.

FTv3

Maybe accounts for guys in the training center and things like that?

Brownose74

all kidding aside. I’m a 74 ANC FO. I live in SDF. Is 767 domestic that terrible? Can’t be any worse than commuting to ANC 4-5 times in two pay periods.
i would really like a honest opinion. Thanks

Precontact

SDF 757 living in SDF will be a big upgrade in qol. Depends on what type of flying you like, but afternoon reports/am or pm turns and senior VTO/VTOR lines should be available. You’ll fly more legs in the 757/767 compared to the 747 and won’t have to worry about landing currency!

MD11Simnerd

What do you find unusual?

tnkrdrvr

Significantly more captains than FOs.

BoilerUP

Most domestic fleets have more CPT than FO...Captains tend to be older, have more vacation, are on LTM in greater numbers and domestic fleets don't need IROs.

FTv3

I always said I’d never do domestic much less junior domestic. Well, I jumped from the whale (senior in sdf) to 75 domestic for the upgrade and that put me into junior schedules which I’m assuming you are curious about. It’s no where near as bad as I thought but YMMV.

In general….

On the 74 at cruise you’re hanging out, chatting, maybe working on your bid a little bit, you cook a couple of meals, take a 2-3hr nap then overnight. Almost always a one and done. On layovers you go out and do stuff, have drinks, etc.

On 75 domestic, you’re banging out multiple short legs (relatively speaking) each night, often not enough time to cook and eat a meal during a flight. Overnights are usually daytime and short so it’s sleep for as long as you can, get up, eat, exercise, try to take a pre duty nap (6-8pm) then head back to work. You just don’t feel you have any time to breathe compared to 74 trips. At the same time, the days seem to go quicker and it’s nice to be proficient at flying all the time.

Fleet culture: 75 is not as laid back but still low threat in general.Training dept itself is miles ahead of the whale but is still overcome with the typical UPS checking the boxes focus and generally disorganized.

Plane itself is very similar to whale. Box, VNAV, etc almost identical. VNAV otoh, is a pos frankly but doesn’t take long to learn its weird behavior. A lot of things are standardized between the fleets too so transition is not difficult.

Schedules: at the end of the day they got you for 14/28 so unless you’re constantly winning at the conflict bidding game in ANC or have a second family somewhere in Asia, you’ll probably be home a lot more on 75. And there’s a lot more CMLs on domestic which can help your schedule as well. However, the domestic schedules I detest (week on off nite sort in sdf) don’t trickle down to the junior folk. I was also bidding at 75% on domestic which gave me enough bid choices to get what I needed and sometimes wanted. YMMV!

In a nutshell week on/off nite sort is a big chunk of the fleet’s repertoire, there’s shorter sort trips and those that flow in and out of the other sorts besides SDF. There’s turns (many 3 leggers and a bunch that show at midnight but there are also pms), then you have cross country stuff that’s night or day and associated with base trip lines and or sort flying. Lots of VTO and VORs and your standard A and B reserve. Your best bet is to look at where you would fall on the bid list then use the bid award sheet on cms to see what lines people +/-10 of got. Take a look at the vto and VOR lines too. Again, I don’t like night flying but for me the junior stuff wasn’t as bad as I was expecting.

The Z could be another option but you trade seniority (vs being on domestic) to be there and it adds up over vacation, CQ, regular bidding (much less options left). And as a junior guy, you’ll be doing mostly Z-mestic which is a slightly more palatable version of domestic flying except you’ll get to goto Canada and Mexico. No, not Vancouver or puerto Vallarta, but Hamilton ON (marijuana ruined town) and Mexico City (the new airport N of city with nothing to do). Every once in a while you may get an intl trip on reserve or a vto but say goodbye to the ala Moana and memos for a while. Again, look at the bid awards and see what kinds of things you could hold. Nice thing about Z and domestic is that you can easily bounce back and forth between the fleets. Biggest consideration, again, is the seniority cost of being on the Z vs domestic.

Last point I’d consider is what fleet do you realistically intend on upgrading in? Not a bad idea to get R seat time before and skip the time and energy learning an intermediate unless you like LTT and collecting type ratings. Food for thought.

Hope this helps!

Riverside

Let's be honest
It'll be 15 years before any jr folks here will upgrade lol.