Most trips are overnights (2- and 4-day trips), except we have lots of Friday night flying at are single-day trips. Great if you live in Albany, really crappy if you don't. Per Diem is $1.25 an hour, from report to release at your domicile. (That's a change from years past; you used to only get it on overnight trips.)
We don't have entire reserve lines -- to start, you'll probably get 12 days of reserve (out of 16) per bid, along with 4 days of flying. As you move up, you'll get down to 6 days of reserve, and eventually you won't have to bid it. How much reserve depends on what flying is left when they get down to you. We don't bid lines, we bid day-by-day from a leftover sheet that's faxed to you when it's your turn to bid. You can build your schedule day-by-day based on what trips and days off are left. We work 16 of every 28-day bid cycle.
Upgrade time is anybody's guess because of our recent furlough. (The last group to upgrade had been with the company a little over two years.) If things get back to normal, it's about a year and a half. (But even after you upgrade, it may be a few months before you get a slot as a captain -- until then, you're paid as an FO unless you're working a captain trip or pulling reserve.)
Hope that helps. Not sure when we'll be hiring again; that'll depend on when other companies take more of our pilots.
