How does an airline pilots work pattern change over their career?

josh_drummer_pilot: How does an airline pilots work pattern change over their career?
I’ve heard that many senior pilots get involved with other careers and investment in their spare time and I also know of pilots who treat their job as a pilot as part time. Im just wondering how does the schedule of an airline pilot change from a new young pilot to an older senior captain, such as hours per shift, shifts per week, weeks per month etc. I would prefer this question to be answered by real pilots not sim flyer’s who think they’re pilots lol, cheers.

Answers and Views:

Answer by Warbird Pilot
Seniority gives you the power to pick and choose what and when and how much you want to fly. The junior guys get what’s left and sit reserve (they have no schedule but are on call out).

Answer by Bizjet Flyer
The most junior pilots sit reserve, ready to go whenever they are called. Reserve lines are usually around 22 days a month, give or take a few depending on the airline. These days have to be spent at or near the pilot’s base airport (ready reserve is at the airport, standard reserve is ready within a specified amount of time, usually an hour or two). Add commuting days in, and some junior pilots only have a day or two a month that they can plan around.

The most senior pilots at the largest airlines can bid the best lines and they have the greatest amount of vacation days available. Between using vacation and good bidding, some senior pilots may work around 4 days a month flying international trips.

Most pilots are somewhere in between these two extremes.

Answer by Rob G
Seniority is what allows you to do these types of things. When you first start out, you are pretty much working and gone all the time. As you gain more seniority, you will have more time off and can do other things on the side. Keep in mind though that as soon as you upgrade to Captain or go to another airline, you are back on the bottom and are starting all over again as far as how much time off you get. Even still, it can be hard to run a side business. It works best for businesses that you can operate when you are gone. When the real estate market was good, that was a popular choice (e.g. running rental properties, flipping houses, etc).

This is one of the (very few) pros to this career. If you decide to pursue this career, I highly recommend that you try to keep something else going on the side to cover you when you get furloughed.

Some airlines allow you to drop your trips (unpaid of course). What some pilots, of these airlines, do is they drop virtually every single trip and only fly the bare minimum (once every couple/few months). This allows them to virtually have another, more traditional, full-time career going. I don’t think many airlines allow this.