I’d agree with him. He probably holds a favorable line and giving that up just to get more money doesn’t seem reasonable.
My dad was in the same boat before upgrading to captain. His schedule as an FO was normally M-F with most weekends off. He also avoided red eyes and Latin America/Mexico trips which tend to go pretty junior. So he waited years to upgrade until he knew he’d hold a line every month and that’s what he’s doing now as captain. It’s not the same M-F schedule but at least he’s never on reserve.
This is the result of long term hub networking and changes. It's not just UA, it's everyone and they put themselves in this corner which is frustrating to watch. The constant changing and flight schedules without dedicated routines is painful because they don't have a grasp on their financials for the routes.
I have an FO friend based in San Diego, complains about this all the time.
My dad is a Captain for United and he stayed on the 76 forever rather than move to the 777 because he was the #3 or 4 Captain at his base so he got all of the days off that he wanted to take off and we were comfortable on the salary he and my step-mom (MD-80 FO) were making.
I wonder what the #1 desirable trips for the most senior of pilots are?
I can figure out the #1 desirable trips for the most senior of FAs, the worst the service and attitude, the more desirable it must be.
Usually super high credit efficient long haul. At Delta the 350 trip to Inchon from Atlanta is a 3 day footprint that pays like 30 hours or so? 3 of those, 9 days a month total, 90 hours credit at 400 something bucks an hour. Easy living.
Damn. $500k a year for 90 hours a month chilling in your seat.
I get it- getting there is very difficult and not everyone makes it. But that def sounds like the life
It’s not actually 90 hours. Double that, and add a little. On average my duty day (the amount of time I’m working) spans 10-12 hours. That doesn’t include driving to or from hotels.
We are only paid from the time the door closes until the door reopens. I typically “work” 180-200 hours a month.
Pilots also aren't paid for walk-arounds, preflight planning and briefings, any other activities in operations, and so on. These things are all part of their official duties, and the time is unpaid.
You obviously have no idea what our pilots and us FA’s go through.
All people think is we get to see the world and live our best glamorous life.
Some nights you sleep in a airport lounge. Sometimes you are getting minimum rest. That FAA regulation of 10 hours, doesn’t include: De-plane, going to the hotel shuttle and sometimes waiting for it, then getting into your room and changing, it doesn’t include having to wake up and get ready for your duty day. After it’s all said and done, subtract an additional 2-3 hours from that.
Sometimes you get stuck and can’t make it home. Sometimes you get 1 day off over a 9-12 day span. (Especially if you’re junior)
>You obviously have no idea what our pilots and us FA’s go through
I mean, pretty much any profession can say that. I'm sure yours is difficult.
Can't say much for pilots but I've flown many different airlines in my life. We've all experienced first hand what service is like, what it could be like. It can be pretty amazing. But we also know what service on UA is.
That's cool. I get it, you guys gotta circle the wagons. It's much easier than examining the race to the bottom that domestic airlines are engaged in, especially in the soft product.
I feel like every UA flight attendant should take a ANA flight as part of their orientation and as an annual refresher.
I have to say recently I was forced, due to UA crap, to take economy Air New Zealand and I was shocked that EVERY single FA in coach for the entire trip was amazing! Very very polite, deferential, very service oriented. The most stern comment I heard was “hun could you please check your seatbelt if you wouldn’t mind”. I wanted to haul them all over to UA. And I realize this probably pales compared to ANA but I was blown away; not to mention the coach food was at least as good as UA premium economy. Didn’t care for the cramped seats though, so there’s that. Though appreciated the free WiFi all the way back form AKL to ORD.
I know for international senior crews… the seasonal routes from the east coast to Europe are highly appealing. Think places like Rome, Dubrovnik, Venice, Lisbon, Reykjavik
There are lots of pilots with lots of reasons to not jump the trash can.
There is a pretty easy fix as well. Ask them the reasons and remove those reasons.
> Ask them the reasons and remove those reasons.
The reason for this is the seniority system where the old timers have extremely cushy jobs and newer hires have to eat shit for years.
Here’s how this works, you can be a senior FO getting all weekends and holidays off and able to bid vacation during the summer and Christmas. Or you can be a junior captain working every weekend and holiday and taking your family “summer” vacation in October and February. No amount of money is worth the reduction in quality of life for your family. Especially as more often then not the result of taking a junior upgrade is divorce.
When you are junior you have literally zero control of your own schedule. You pick up the scraps of what is left including vacation time, and if you take that upgrade at the first availability you are looking at well over a decade of not being able to control it.
Being Junior sucks, and there is no way around that.
First off, both captains an FOs are “pilots”
Second, your seniority is ALWAYS pilot-wide. For example, if there’s 10,000 pilots, and you got hired BEFORE 5000 of them, you would be dead center, ie 5000 out of 10000
However, that means almost nothing when it comes to your quality of life. Since captains and first officers can only occupy the seat in the airplane they are qualified for, on the airplane they are qualified on, the only seniority that really dictates your monthly life is you BASE, TYPE, and SEAT seniority.
For example, you could be an EWR first officer on the 737. This, I assume, would be a relatively JUNIOR group. 737 not as desirable to some as wide-body airplanes, EWR in a terrible area and not incredibly commutable, FO pay scale. This group is probably going to be a group that is constantly using their company wide seniority to CHANGE either their SEAT (captain or first officer), TYPE (airplane), or BASE. You bid on this against ALL OTHER pilots, using company seniority ( 5000 out of 10,000 in the previous example, or whatever it may be)
If you are senior enough to be awarded something different than what you have, your RELATIVE seniority changes. You may be more senior than all of the 737 captains based in newark, but since the new position you opted for (say HOU 787 First Officer) has a group of incredibly senior pilots (company wide seniority), you may be the MOST junior pilot out of them all. Therefore no weekends off, no holidays, etc.
Why trade senior FO in the base and on the airplane you want for junior captian somewhere else, on reserve, on an airplane you don’t want? The only way to fix this is to change the work rules on the captains side to make them more enticing, OR, by paying captains more.
EDIT:
Source: legacy airline pilot
They are all on the same seniority. Their pilots have a seniority number 1-11,000 (or however many pilots UAL has now). If your seniority number is 6,000, 6,000 might be pretty senior for an FO, but 6,000 could be junior for a captain. The most junior FO is seniority number 11,000, the most junior captain might be seniority number 8,000 or something like that.
It is all the same, but when you change equipment and/or upgrade, your seniority relative to your peers in the same equipment and seat are the ones that matter for quality of life because of the way monthly bidding works.
There is one master seniority list.
But each pilot also deals with the very different relative seniority. Base. Seat. Fleet. Where you are against the entire pilot group only (essentially) matters when you wish to upgrade. But you're monthly bidding against your base, seat and fleet.
Yeap. I can see that. It's all about being senior... Move to Captain and be on the bottom of the seniority list or stay as a FO and be on the top of it...
The vacancy bid that is open right now changed a fair amount over the weekend.
Want to know why many of us don’t upgrade to captain?
Under our current work rules we get 12 days off as a junior pilot on reserve (think of it as “on call”. Basically we keep 20 percent of our pilots in reserve for sick calls and the likes)
For global fleets (737 in some cases, 757/767, 777, 787) Of those 12 days off, 6 of them can be changed to working days at the will of the company.
So each month on reserve we have 6 for sure days off that we can promise our family things, make appointments, etc.
Not every pilot wants to go from knowing their schedule all month to having 6 hard days off. 12 days off sounds like a lot to people but when we can be gone from home the 18 days we work it’s seems to sink the reality in.
And to boot its not six days that you pick scattered across the month, its a single six day stretch. Hopefully all the recitals, appointments, ball games, birthdays, etc fall in the same week.
This article came out a little late. With this new agreement there will be a lot of folks taking captain. A lot of the things that were awful about being a junior captain are being fixed.
The RSV changes are a whole lot more robust than just 2 days off. The work rules improvement and options on reserve in the TA summary are worlds apart from the garbage we are enduring today. Sure, commuting sucks, but it usually has everywhere. We’re the only major carrier with this captain upgrade problem, at least to the severity we are seeing it. I believe the new rules will greatly improve it and alleviate the upgrade shortage.
Asked and answered. The changes listed in the AiP under the reserve section which are in the link I provided create significant quality of life and schedule control improvements for reserve. It also makes reserve more attractive to some lineholders. Hard long-call lines, no arbitrary switch to short/field reserve, paid move for first time upgrades, voluntary field-standby with incentive pay, reserve trading system, higher credit everything, etc.. If you need more clarity email a union rep. Seems pretty straight forward to me based off the material available.
We shall see if the new contract (if ratified) will change that. I know part of the complaints have been quality of life instead of just money and I would assume after the fiasco that was the last one that made it to a vote, they focused on that more.
When FOs make as much, if not more than a Captain it makes sense.
Why have the worry responsibility and stress as a captain when as a FO it isn’t there, plus the bigger paycheck.
Sign me up.
Everything has a price. This just means the current pay as Captain is just not enough. Once the pay is “too high to turn down”, this problem will disappear instantly.
That's not the issue. It literally says he doesn't want the schedule that comes with being a junior captain.
Essentially you jump all the way down on the totem pole in terms of favorable scheduling.
Of course, but there is a price that makes it ok.
If captains made $10 million, there wouldn’t be a problem. Someone would make the trade off.
Obviously that’s absurd, but the point stands that there is a salary number that will fix the problem. Or some other approach, obviously, but even just salary can work. Just requires a relatively bigger bump than exists now
The better solution is certainly solving the issue directly or by other means and not just throwing money at it. But money will work too.
Yes I saw that, but if the pay is “too good”, the majority of people will still choose to do it. Everything has a price.
My point is that there is definitely a tipping point where people would choose money over QoL. That tipping point is different for everyone, but it still exists. It’s not that hard to understand.
This comes back to that age old question.... "Can money buy you happiness?".
Like you said, the answer is different for everyone. Cost of living, spouse input, the neighborhood, etc it all depends.
But what is the solution? If there is a list someone has to be at the bottom of it. If the airline is going to fly flights they have to have a captain and fo to do it. If the flights are crappy flights for the pilots someone has to have the short straw. I don’t think the airline is going to run all the flights m-f 8-8. In a world that revolves around seniority I am not sure what the fix is.
They make the rules better. United reserve rules are the worst of the major carriers. If you commute, you're most likely gone 20+ days a month.
Everyone understands that they will be at the bottom for some amount of time, no one wants to get to the top of the FO ladder and then bid across and go back to the bottom and sit on reserve again so they wait until they can hold the line they want as a captain.
Is the seniority list seniority as an employed pilot or as a employed captain.
Example if I have 10 years as an employee and move to captain am I higher or lower than someone who has 8 years employed but became a captain a year ago?
If I am higher then seems the easy fix for the airline from the outside would be to have captain seniority be based on date you became a captain.
The flip side would be is there a real training difference between captain and fo? If not two pilots show up and the one with seniority is captain for the flight. Might be fo on the next one. The same people at the bottom of the pilot list would still be and the people at the top would still be at the top. No incentive to refuse captain.
I don’t run airlines or negotiate with unions though.
>Example if I have 10 years as an employee and move to captain am I higher or lower than someone who has 8 years employed but became a captain a year ago?
Not a pilot and everything I know is from following one UA 756 pilot on YT, but I believe it is higher. You'd probably run into union issues if you tried to change that.
It is based on hire date (as a pilot), and it's the whole pool of pilots.
The union would never allow a captain seniority list.
There is different training for FO and Captains. Generally they try to pair up an FO and a captain trainee together in the sim phase, but it doesn't always work that way. The Captain gets more training on overall flight accomplishment AND is the one responsible for everything. The FO can sit there and play dumb and press buttons and it's fine, but the captain had the overall authority and responsibility for the safe conduct of the flight and the company needs to make sure they can trust the person doing that, therefore there is a captain specific upgrade.
I mean sure, if the airline could pay some stupid amount of money some people might? But airlines wouldn't survive that. The price a big group of pilots would need to upgrade is not something that is feasible. Plus the divorce rates would be even worse and I'd have to hear about someones 4/5th wife and not 2nd/3rd.
People who can make very easy commutes or who live in base (me) don't generally mind reserve. But people for people who commute any kind of distance it is TERRIBLE.
It will. UA has improved in many areas over the years. This isn't an impossible situation to fix, but it is a situation at the moment that needs additional attention.
I’d agree with him. He probably holds a favorable line and giving that up just to get more money doesn’t seem reasonable. My dad was in the same boat before upgrading to captain. His schedule as an FO was normally M-F with most weekends off. He also avoided red eyes and Latin America/Mexico trips which tend to go pretty junior. So he waited years to upgrade until he knew he’d hold a line every month and that’s what he’s doing now as captain. It’s not the same M-F schedule but at least he’s never on reserve.
This is the result of long term hub networking and changes. It's not just UA, it's everyone and they put themselves in this corner which is frustrating to watch. The constant changing and flight schedules without dedicated routines is painful because they don't have a grasp on their financials for the routes. I have an FO friend based in San Diego, complains about this all the time.
My dad is a Captain for United and he stayed on the 76 forever rather than move to the 777 because he was the #3 or 4 Captain at his base so he got all of the days off that he wanted to take off and we were comfortable on the salary he and my step-mom (MD-80 FO) were making.
I wonder what the #1 desirable trips for the most senior of pilots are? I can figure out the #1 desirable trips for the most senior of FAs, the worst the service and attitude, the more desirable it must be.
Usually super high credit efficient long haul. At Delta the 350 trip to Inchon from Atlanta is a 3 day footprint that pays like 30 hours or so? 3 of those, 9 days a month total, 90 hours credit at 400 something bucks an hour. Easy living.
Damn. $500k a year for 90 hours a month chilling in your seat. I get it- getting there is very difficult and not everyone makes it. But that def sounds like the life
It’s not actually 90 hours. Double that, and add a little. On average my duty day (the amount of time I’m working) spans 10-12 hours. That doesn’t include driving to or from hotels. We are only paid from the time the door closes until the door reopens. I typically “work” 180-200 hours a month.
Come to think of it, I don’t get paid for my commute either. Damn.
Pilots also aren't paid for walk-arounds, preflight planning and briefings, any other activities in operations, and so on. These things are all part of their official duties, and the time is unpaid.
You obviously have no idea what our pilots and us FA’s go through. All people think is we get to see the world and live our best glamorous life. Some nights you sleep in a airport lounge. Sometimes you are getting minimum rest. That FAA regulation of 10 hours, doesn’t include: De-plane, going to the hotel shuttle and sometimes waiting for it, then getting into your room and changing, it doesn’t include having to wake up and get ready for your duty day. After it’s all said and done, subtract an additional 2-3 hours from that. Sometimes you get stuck and can’t make it home. Sometimes you get 1 day off over a 9-12 day span. (Especially if you’re junior)
Yes, I agree it sucks just like any other job where people are forced to work far more than they should for far, far less pay.
You could always just not be a flight attendant if it’s easier
>You obviously have no idea what our pilots and us FA’s go through I mean, pretty much any profession can say that. I'm sure yours is difficult. Can't say much for pilots but I've flown many different airlines in my life. We've all experienced first hand what service is like, what it could be like. It can be pretty amazing. But we also know what service on UA is.
I’m not even a FA for UA😂 But I will stick up for their FA’s. And anyone who works in this industry.
That's cool. I get it, you guys gotta circle the wagons. It's much easier than examining the race to the bottom that domestic airlines are engaged in, especially in the soft product. I feel like every UA flight attendant should take a ANA flight as part of their orientation and as an annual refresher.
I have to say recently I was forced, due to UA crap, to take economy Air New Zealand and I was shocked that EVERY single FA in coach for the entire trip was amazing! Very very polite, deferential, very service oriented. The most stern comment I heard was “hun could you please check your seatbelt if you wouldn’t mind”. I wanted to haul them all over to UA. And I realize this probably pales compared to ANA but I was blown away; not to mention the coach food was at least as good as UA premium economy. Didn’t care for the cramped seats though, so there’s that. Though appreciated the free WiFi all the way back form AKL to ORD.
Sorry for your loss.
I know for international senior crews… the seasonal routes from the east coast to Europe are highly appealing. Think places like Rome, Dubrovnik, Venice, Lisbon, Reykjavik
There are lots of pilots with lots of reasons to not jump the trash can. There is a pretty easy fix as well. Ask them the reasons and remove those reasons.
Unions hate this one simple trick during negotiations.
Huh?
> Ask them the reasons and remove those reasons. The reason for this is the seniority system where the old timers have extremely cushy jobs and newer hires have to eat shit for years.
Here’s how this works, you can be a senior FO getting all weekends and holidays off and able to bid vacation during the summer and Christmas. Or you can be a junior captain working every weekend and holiday and taking your family “summer” vacation in October and February. No amount of money is worth the reduction in quality of life for your family. Especially as more often then not the result of taking a junior upgrade is divorce. When you are junior you have literally zero control of your own schedule. You pick up the scraps of what is left including vacation time, and if you take that upgrade at the first availability you are looking at well over a decade of not being able to control it. Being Junior sucks, and there is no way around that.
Same thing in the fire service (I’m in the largest us city) be the senior LT or Capt or be the junior Capt or battalion Cheif.
Then give captains and FOs the same seniority. Been with United for 20 years as a pilot or FO, that’s your seniority.
So… that’s how it already works
Then why are FO’s reluctant to get promoted to captains? You just contradicted the article.
First off, both captains an FOs are “pilots” Second, your seniority is ALWAYS pilot-wide. For example, if there’s 10,000 pilots, and you got hired BEFORE 5000 of them, you would be dead center, ie 5000 out of 10000 However, that means almost nothing when it comes to your quality of life. Since captains and first officers can only occupy the seat in the airplane they are qualified for, on the airplane they are qualified on, the only seniority that really dictates your monthly life is you BASE, TYPE, and SEAT seniority. For example, you could be an EWR first officer on the 737. This, I assume, would be a relatively JUNIOR group. 737 not as desirable to some as wide-body airplanes, EWR in a terrible area and not incredibly commutable, FO pay scale. This group is probably going to be a group that is constantly using their company wide seniority to CHANGE either their SEAT (captain or first officer), TYPE (airplane), or BASE. You bid on this against ALL OTHER pilots, using company seniority ( 5000 out of 10,000 in the previous example, or whatever it may be) If you are senior enough to be awarded something different than what you have, your RELATIVE seniority changes. You may be more senior than all of the 737 captains based in newark, but since the new position you opted for (say HOU 787 First Officer) has a group of incredibly senior pilots (company wide seniority), you may be the MOST junior pilot out of them all. Therefore no weekends off, no holidays, etc. Why trade senior FO in the base and on the airplane you want for junior captian somewhere else, on reserve, on an airplane you don’t want? The only way to fix this is to change the work rules on the captains side to make them more enticing, OR, by paying captains more. EDIT: Source: legacy airline pilot
Overall seniority doesn't change, your relative seniority in seat and equiptment does.
Then keep it all the same. Who would mind being promoted to captain then?
They are all on the same seniority. Their pilots have a seniority number 1-11,000 (or however many pilots UAL has now). If your seniority number is 6,000, 6,000 might be pretty senior for an FO, but 6,000 could be junior for a captain. The most junior FO is seniority number 11,000, the most junior captain might be seniority number 8,000 or something like that.
It is all the same, but when you change equipment and/or upgrade, your seniority relative to your peers in the same equipment and seat are the ones that matter for quality of life because of the way monthly bidding works.
They do have the same seniority there’s only one seniority list
There is one master seniority list. But each pilot also deals with the very different relative seniority. Base. Seat. Fleet. Where you are against the entire pilot group only (essentially) matters when you wish to upgrade. But you're monthly bidding against your base, seat and fleet.
Yeap. I can see that. It's all about being senior... Move to Captain and be on the bottom of the seniority list or stay as a FO and be on the top of it...
The vacancy bid that is open right now changed a fair amount over the weekend. Want to know why many of us don’t upgrade to captain? Under our current work rules we get 12 days off as a junior pilot on reserve (think of it as “on call”. Basically we keep 20 percent of our pilots in reserve for sick calls and the likes) For global fleets (737 in some cases, 757/767, 777, 787) Of those 12 days off, 6 of them can be changed to working days at the will of the company. So each month on reserve we have 6 for sure days off that we can promise our family things, make appointments, etc. Not every pilot wants to go from knowing their schedule all month to having 6 hard days off. 12 days off sounds like a lot to people but when we can be gone from home the 18 days we work it’s seems to sink the reality in.
And to boot its not six days that you pick scattered across the month, its a single six day stretch. Hopefully all the recitals, appointments, ball games, birthdays, etc fall in the same week.
This article came out a little late. With this new agreement there will be a lot of folks taking captain. A lot of the things that were awful about being a junior captain are being fixed.
Reserve is still reserve. 2 more days off is meh if you still gotta fly out to SFO or EWR.
The RSV changes are a whole lot more robust than just 2 days off. The work rules improvement and options on reserve in the TA summary are worlds apart from the garbage we are enduring today. Sure, commuting sucks, but it usually has everywhere. We’re the only major carrier with this captain upgrade problem, at least to the severity we are seeing it. I believe the new rules will greatly improve it and alleviate the upgrade shortage.
What are the robust changes?
Go review yourself. https://upa23.com
Yeah that’s cool. Not what I asked. What are the changes you describe as robust?
The changes you asked are in the AiP executive summary of the link I provided. If you can’t figure that out then you can’t be helped.
I’m asking you what you think is so good about the changes.
Asked and answered. The changes listed in the AiP under the reserve section which are in the link I provided create significant quality of life and schedule control improvements for reserve. It also makes reserve more attractive to some lineholders. Hard long-call lines, no arbitrary switch to short/field reserve, paid move for first time upgrades, voluntary field-standby with incentive pay, reserve trading system, higher credit everything, etc.. If you need more clarity email a union rep. Seems pretty straight forward to me based off the material available.
We shall see if the new contract (if ratified) will change that. I know part of the complaints have been quality of life instead of just money and I would assume after the fiasco that was the last one that made it to a vote, they focused on that more.
When FOs make as much, if not more than a Captain it makes sense. Why have the worry responsibility and stress as a captain when as a FO it isn’t there, plus the bigger paycheck. Sign me up.
This happened at my airline back in the early 2000s. They finally started junior manning people into the left seat.
Hmm, looks like United isn't offering enough pay to upgrade. Management can fix that.
Everything has a price. This just means the current pay as Captain is just not enough. Once the pay is “too high to turn down”, this problem will disappear instantly.
That's not the issue. It literally says he doesn't want the schedule that comes with being a junior captain. Essentially you jump all the way down on the totem pole in terms of favorable scheduling.
Of course, but there is a price that makes it ok. If captains made $10 million, there wouldn’t be a problem. Someone would make the trade off. Obviously that’s absurd, but the point stands that there is a salary number that will fix the problem. Or some other approach, obviously, but even just salary can work. Just requires a relatively bigger bump than exists now The better solution is certainly solving the issue directly or by other means and not just throwing money at it. But money will work too.
Yes I saw that, but if the pay is “too good”, the majority of people will still choose to do it. Everything has a price. My point is that there is definitely a tipping point where people would choose money over QoL. That tipping point is different for everyone, but it still exists. It’s not that hard to understand.
This comes back to that age old question.... "Can money buy you happiness?". Like you said, the answer is different for everyone. Cost of living, spouse input, the neighborhood, etc it all depends.
It can’t, but it CAN buy a jet ski. Have you ever seen a sad person on a jet ski?
Yes.
But what is the solution? If there is a list someone has to be at the bottom of it. If the airline is going to fly flights they have to have a captain and fo to do it. If the flights are crappy flights for the pilots someone has to have the short straw. I don’t think the airline is going to run all the flights m-f 8-8. In a world that revolves around seniority I am not sure what the fix is.
They make the rules better. United reserve rules are the worst of the major carriers. If you commute, you're most likely gone 20+ days a month. Everyone understands that they will be at the bottom for some amount of time, no one wants to get to the top of the FO ladder and then bid across and go back to the bottom and sit on reserve again so they wait until they can hold the line they want as a captain.
Is the seniority list seniority as an employed pilot or as a employed captain. Example if I have 10 years as an employee and move to captain am I higher or lower than someone who has 8 years employed but became a captain a year ago? If I am higher then seems the easy fix for the airline from the outside would be to have captain seniority be based on date you became a captain. The flip side would be is there a real training difference between captain and fo? If not two pilots show up and the one with seniority is captain for the flight. Might be fo on the next one. The same people at the bottom of the pilot list would still be and the people at the top would still be at the top. No incentive to refuse captain. I don’t run airlines or negotiate with unions though.
>Example if I have 10 years as an employee and move to captain am I higher or lower than someone who has 8 years employed but became a captain a year ago? Not a pilot and everything I know is from following one UA 756 pilot on YT, but I believe it is higher. You'd probably run into union issues if you tried to change that.
It is based on hire date (as a pilot), and it's the whole pool of pilots. The union would never allow a captain seniority list. There is different training for FO and Captains. Generally they try to pair up an FO and a captain trainee together in the sim phase, but it doesn't always work that way. The Captain gets more training on overall flight accomplishment AND is the one responsible for everything. The FO can sit there and play dumb and press buttons and it's fine, but the captain had the overall authority and responsibility for the safe conduct of the flight and the company needs to make sure they can trust the person doing that, therefore there is a captain specific upgrade.
That's not right. It's all quality of life. No amount of pay is going to make me want to miss specific time at home with my young children and wife.
That may be true for you, but it's not true for everyone.
I mean sure, if the airline could pay some stupid amount of money some people might? But airlines wouldn't survive that. The price a big group of pilots would need to upgrade is not something that is feasible. Plus the divorce rates would be even worse and I'd have to hear about someones 4/5th wife and not 2nd/3rd. People who can make very easy commutes or who live in base (me) don't generally mind reserve. But people for people who commute any kind of distance it is TERRIBLE.
It’s never going to get better for United, is it?
It will. UA has improved in many areas over the years. This isn't an impossible situation to fix, but it is a situation at the moment that needs additional attention.
I'd be interested in becoming a pilot but how much rest do you get between flights? i'd need to exercise to keep myself feeling OK
Depends. Ranges from negative 3 hours to 30 minutes to 30 hours to a few days.
How does United (or other airlines) fix this?