flytastic
16th Oct 2010, 16:58
Do pilots from SWA or Legacy 737/A320 pilots get to be home every night after doing some shorthauls?
I'd like to know before I sign away all my money for flight training.
flytastic
16th Oct 2010, 17:12
ok thanks lol. I'll stick to GA.
ben_keghead
17th Oct 2010, 07:47
It's not guarenteed, but pilots for airlines like EZY and RYR do generally get to be home most nights
virginblue
17th Oct 2010, 13:52
I think he is asking about legacy carriers (and Southwest) in the US where the ops are slightly more complex than Ryanair's.
Piltdown Man
19th Oct 2010, 11:44
The vast majority can't even guarantee a job after graduation, let alone get to choose a company. You will also be disappointed if you believe that you'll walk straight into the RHS of a shiny new 737. I'd do some real work and hunt out some of those who have just come out of the sausage machine (flight training) and see what they are up to. You'll probably find (ex-services guys excepted) that they have two or three jobs to help them pay off their loans and if they actually have a job flying, they'll be earning less than a burger-flipper in Maccy-D's.
PM
Denti
19th Oct 2010, 13:37
Flying 737s on 35 minute to 5 hour sectors, usually 5 days on the road and 2 to 3 days off, sometimes only 4 days on the road with one day off followed by another block of up to 5.5 days. We do hire usually low hour guys or take our own homegrown cadets, type rating of course provided by the company with a 12 month bond.
With another operators (that got bought out by my current one) i had years without any overnight stay out of base, however that was only possible because we had a very small route network and extremely streamlined operation.
Junkflyer
20th Oct 2010, 05:13
Not familiar with SWA routes, though the company I fly for flies short-haul routes with the 717, typically 6-8 legs a day. And yes we are home every night.
If you haven't begun training yet you are still quite far from even considering a job with these airlines and the future may hold a lot of changes. You must be prepared to spend a lot of days on the road if you want to fly for an airline.
SNS3Guppy
20th Oct 2010, 06:04
So if I choose only to fly 737s shorthaul, can I be home every night?
"Choose" is the word that leaps out. You don't get to choose.
If you're familiar with the phrase "Beggars can't be choosers," then you need to understand that as a pilot coming out of flight training (and for the next ten to twenty years thereafter), you're the beggar.
Consider yourself lucky to find work. To imagine you'll get to choose, especially a place in your career that won't be accessible for at least a decade, may be overstepping yourself, a bit.
I don't fly "short haul," though I am home more than some who do. I'm typically gone for several weeks with my current assignment, and I've often been gone for six to ten months or more, with others. that ten months without seeing home.
Airplanes get used for many things, but when it comes to moving people and boxes and gear from A to B, airplanes are used because they go long distances quickly. This means leaving home and rapidly moving away from it.
Unlike office work, where one drives to a building and secretes one's self in a cubicle, flying involves driving to an airport and secreting one's self in a cubicle which zips away from home, and the airport, at five or six hundred miles per hour. The airplanes don't come to us; we go to the airplanes, where ever they may be, and where ever they may go.
Find someone in aviation who has held the same job throughout their career, and you may well have discovered something more rare than a hens tooth, a four leaf clover, or the ark of the covenant. Aviation is all about getting laid off, furloughed, downsized, or moving from one assignment to another as one gains hours, experience, ratings, etc, or as companies close, go under, go bankrupt, fail, merge, and so forth. Aviation is about as stable as a mudslide on a rainsoaked hillside, and it always runs downhill...right on top of you.
Getting a job, indeed choosing a job that's local and has you home every night, if you're so fortunate as to be able to do so, is to choose the temporary. All things in aviation are temporary; what goes up must come down, and that includes airplanes, profits, and companies. If it flies it can fail, and it's never, ever a matter of if, but always when.
Aviation is an adventure. Are you up to it?