[PilotMan]

My January schedule came out and I guess I still haven't learned my lessons about being too optimistic in my schedule expectations. I was trying to get a full break over new years. There were only 28 trips that would have even impacted me, so I was hoping that it would be good enough to hold all that time off between the end of December and my short vacation before the kids go back to school.

Every single one of my bid failed until it got down to my last resort bid and then it put a 2 day trip on my schedule right over New Years. To make matters worse, it's a 2 day that will act like a 4 day for me because of when I have to leave to go to work and when I get back home. That doesn't make me happy either. I'm going to try and drop the trip without pay and try and pick up something else at the end of the month. The end of January is challenging to find anything good though. If it doesn't happen it doesn't, but I have to try.

The rest of my month isn't bad at all. It's back to weekend working, with trips that I'll be able to get back and forth on. The biggest issues are that the commutes aren't as easy as some have been. For example I've got a 5 hour sit before I get to come home after a trip on a Saturday. That's why I try really hard not to have trips start or end on that day. There's just not enough flights back and forth and they end up being a giant waste of time.

There is currently another vacancy bid out for some different planes. I thought about switching planes next year. There are reasons for staying and reasons for switching. Right now I can hold a first officer position in any of the bases, New York, DC, SF, LA CLE, CHI, on the 737 or the combined 757 and 767 fleet. Chicago is probably the easiest commute to work, but I would lose a day off or so because the trips aren't as productive and I wouldn't be as senior so my schedules would suck. If I were to go to the international fleet I'd be spending all of my trips in London somewhere in the UK. I'm not really senior enough to hold trips to any other location and while that is certainly something I want to do, I want more control over my schedules. So in order to have the control I've got to have the seniority. My current seat has the best seniority thus far, and that allows me to have some quality of life. My QOL was so bad for so many years I don't even know what a good QOL is like. I expect that I'd move up more this next year and the good thing is that as each year goes by my seniority goes up company wide. I'm now at 89.9% seniority overall, which means that I've got over 1250 pilots that are Jr to me. Once I make it into the 79% range I should have enough furlough protection that if the industry really just tanks I'd have enough to keep from being laid off. Roughly 2500 pilots, 20% furloughs are common in bad times. That will probably take another 18 months which just shows you how fast things are moving for me. I went 10 years in my last job and never moved up 1000 numbers. Here I am 30 months in and already up higher than that. Retirements are coming, new hires are coming. Jet fuel is much cheaper and the airlines, after 15 years of restructuring, bankruptcies, shuttered airlines, and thousands of pilots on the street, are finally making money and job security is looking much better. Sure nothing is set in stone and it can all change on a dime. Worldwide events shape the industry. There are still plenty of bad things that can make it all go away.