Here's a few answers:
-Reserve time. Do you mean how long you'll be on reserve before able to hold a line? Or how many hours a month? For the first question, it depends on your equipment, and how many people are below you. Right now, I'd expect maybe a year of reserve, maybe less. Reserve pilots get 75 hours a month, 12 days off a month. There's a 3-hour call-out, although if there's a lot of reserve people on a given day, some will get 4-hour callout times. Crew Scheduling does a 'reserve leveling', so whoever has the fewest hours for the month will be the first called.
-Commutable? If you're on the 767 or 330, yes. Interisland is tougher with the schedules they have. Commuting is fairly standard from the west coast on any of our flights. We do have a few that commute from farther, but it's a chore. Once you're a lineholder on a widebody, you can commute from other islands too. We have a lot of people who commute from Maui and the Big Island. It probably wouldn't work if your were interisland though.
-Retirements? Not a whole lot - maybe 10 to 15 a year for the next decade or so. Still, with an airline that will have just over 600 pilots by next year, that's not too bad.
-Line Values? Minimum 75, Max bid 90 most months. You can go oversched by 10 hours, which will fill a bank that you can use if you are under max bid in another month, with up to 25 hours in the bank. They can flex up or down too, and lately a lot of months have been flexed up by 5 hours (80 min, 95 max) because of all the growth and training bottlenecks.
-Raises? 2% raise July 2013, and 2% September of 2014, which is one year before the amendable date of the current contract. Those are for the Captain's rates. FO rates are a percentage of equivilent-year Captain.
-Living in HNL? Expensive, but not overly so. It's not Iowa, but it's not Hong Kong either. Great outdoor life, especially if you like the ocean. More cultural events than a city of its size on the mainland. Definitely a different pace of life though, so get used to things being done on island time. Housing is more expensive than almost anywhere else in the US for comprable sized homes, but food & gas only marginally more costly. You are stuck on an island though, with the good & bad that comes with it. Want an In-N-Out burger? Go to LAX. We have Costco though, and that helps a lot.
-Overall outlook? Cautiously optimistic. We're growing and hiring, and against all odds still making money. That could change if something bad happens to the world economy, or a bad health scare happens, or war, etc. But those would affect any airline. It really is a good place to work, with quality people, interesting flying, and a management that doesn't have its head up its okole.
HAL