What it’s really like to be a pilot - The truth about pilot schedules

Welcome to the newest series on our blog: What it’s really like to be a pilot, from MY perspective. In this series, I’ll guide you through the ins and outs about the real day-to-day life of a working pilot. I hope that you’ll come along for the ride. I'm really excited to bring a more personal touch to our education offerings here at LadyAv8rBeth. 

For the first part of this series, I want to talk about what might be the most obvious misconceptions about being a pilot: the schedules. 

Often when somebody says they’re a pilot, it’s immediately assumed that they’re always working, never home, and can’t have a good work/life balance or time with their families. This could not be further from the truth! As a female pilot, I’ve been asked if it’s possible to have a family? Be around for my kids? And as a single mom, I can say an emphatic YES, and the reasons for that can be clearly understood the more we understand how pilot schedules work. 

First things first, everything about a pilot’s schedule is based on seniority. Senori-what? Seniority in this case refers to how long a particular pilot has been with their airline, in relation to all of the other pilots employed by that airline.

Let me explain how this works: a pilot’s initial seniority number is given when they are first hired, each incoming class of new pilots is put in order by age, with the youngest pilot getting the lowest seniority number. When I started at American Airlines, my number was over 13,000!

A pilot’s seniority determines everything: their pay, their schedule, what equipment they can fly, where they base, what options they have as they advance, the list goes on and on. However, the seniority number is not set in stone! While all pilots retain their same employee number for their entire career, their seniority number will increase with each pilot ahead of them that retires. 

Now with that out of the way we can get into how the schedules actually work. “Full time” for a pilot does not mean the same thing as in most other fields, with eight days off per month (typically weekends). The exact number of days that a pilot works per month varies (largely due to seniority), but typically a junior/reserve pilot has 12 days off per month, and senior pilots up to 18. 

So what does this monthly schedule look like?

Well, typically there are two types of schedules a pilot can have: a line holder or a reserve pilot. 

A line holder pilot is typically a more senior pilot, and these schedules are very structured and predictable. Line holders can bid (also depending on the airplane they fly) for daily (single out-and-back routes), or schedules that range from 1-5 days of traveling. As with everything else in a pilot’s schedule, which choices are available all come down to… yep, seniority. 

A typical three-day schedule on my airplane might look like this: Fly three legs (individual flights) on the first day, two legs on the second day, and one leg on the third. I call this schedule a 3:2:1, but other variations like a 1:2:3 or 2:1:2 are common as well. 

Line holders or Reserve Pilots (again, according to seniority) can also choose to live in base (meaning, in the same city as their main departing airport), or to commute (fly into their base before their first scheduled flight, this is called “commuting”). Line Holders get the flexibility to customize their schedules by “trip trading” with other pilots, and bidding for more desirable schedules on a month-to-month basis. 

Currently, I’m in the process of transferring to a line holder position in Miami after spending many years as a reserve pilot in Dallas. 

Which transitions us very nicely to the other type of schedule: a reserve pilot. 

Reserve pilots (as the name implies) are called in to work as needed. When I am on reserve, I often refer to myself as the rescue pilot: when I'm assigned a trip, I'm either helping to relocate airplanes, piece a trip back together due to situations like weather and mechanical delays, or stepping in to work for a line holder pilot who is sick or requested to drop a trip for personal reasons. 

This doesn’t mean that reserve pilots are just sitting around at home every day, or that they barely work, though!

When they’re on a reserve schedule, pilots can be sent out (with two hours notice!) to their base airport to fly in all kinds of exceptional circumstances that I call “rescue missions” (where a mechanical issue requires sending a pilot out to help figure out the issue and safely fly the plane back to base), crew time outs, and delays. 

While reserve pilots have to be flight-ready on all of their scheduled on-call days (phone on, bag packed, no alcohol, and staying close enough to the airport to arrive in time), they are not always on call! They too have assigned off days. 

Personally, I have enjoyed my years as a reserve pilot, because the flights I get called to are often more interesting, and break up the monotony of flying the same schedule over and over. Flying reserve also often means that I get to stay closer to home, and sometimes avoid longer stretches of flying, which has made it easier to balance my career with being a single mother. 

However, both types of schedules have their pros and cons: Line holder schedules are more predictable, usually get more hours, have more flexibility when it comes to customizing their exact schedule (as their seniority allows), and have the option to a more planned commute to a different base than the one they live closest to. A reserve schedule can be more interesting, is more likely to involve short out-and-back trips than a long five day trip (also, you might not get called on your on-call days!), and a more predictable salary structure to their income. 

Either way, both types of pilot schedules have ADEQUATE room to have a good work/life balance, with ample time with friends, family, and hobbies. In fact, there are FAA regulations about how much rest time is required for pilots to take, but that is a topic for a future blog post. 

Now that we’ve gone over the basic ins and outs of pilot schedules, what other questions do you have about being a pilot? Ask in the comments and hopefully we’ll go deeper into it on a future post!