Well, as a newhire with a few months seniority, you're going to get a pretty uncommutable schedule, if that's a concern. The bulk of our trips (out of Albany, anyway) start at 11am and end at 11am the next day, with an overnight somewhere. (For the next bid, that's been moved to 330pm, and there was a huge backlash from all of us who commute in the northeast. I think it'll be back to 11am next time.)
Part of the problem is that, with the exception of Cleveland flights, CommutAir doesn't operate on Saturdays or Sunday mornings. So if you're junior, you get stuck doing trips that start on Sunday afternoon (with no way to get there on CommutAir), or end on Friday night (with no way to get home). The junior guys also get stuck with a two day that reports at 5am one day, and releases around 9pm the second day. If you live at your base, that's not an issue; if you commute, it is. Just FYI. As you move up in seniority, you'll be able to pick better trips.
As for building your schedule as you like, yes, you can do that (we bid day-by-day with a leftover-trip sheet faxed to us each month), but with some significant caveats. First, you must take one calendar day off after 6 days of work. Even though you might be able to work out to have 24 hours off by bidding one trip into the next, they won't let you do it. So you can work 6 on, 1 off; that's the most. Second, *every* crewmember is required to work a weekend trip and a friday trip each bid, regardless of seniority, and even if there's a junior crewmember who could cover it. Even our #1 captain. Very annoying. Finally, you have to pick, from your leftovers, trips that add up to fit within a fairly arbitrary hour window that the schedulers come up with. (Last month I think it was 65-72 hours.) That's tough to do when you don't have many leftovers to pick from, and you might end up working days you *should* be able to bid off, but can't because the trip you need to make your time is only available on that day.
The perk of all this, of course, is that as you gain seniority you're able to really custom-tailor your month, those restrictions aside. That's nice. The last few months, the bids have been really hard to put together. It goes in cycles, I guess. I can't speak for our Cleveland domicile; it may be easier with those trips. I dunno.
In any case, as a newhire, you're not going to have much choice in your schedule anyway. One perk is that nobody is forced to work nothing but reserve for months on end. Everybody gets to pick at least a few trips each bid. The bottom guys end up having to work 6 or 12 days of reserve per bid.
Hope that helps.
