Reserve Coverage?

GaTechKid

Well-Known Member
Just wondering how much reserve coverage there is at other airlines, specifically on the FO side. I'm thinking 0.0% at my domicile and 2.7% system wide is a little low, but I've been known to be wrong before. :p
 
Depends on what you define as "coverage." If you're just talking about guys on reserve, I think we're good there. Now, if you're talking about guys to cover things like vacations, sick calls, people leaving in the middle of the month, etc, we're not so good. Our reserves normally get used to cover open time, leaving the line holders to get extended to cover the emergency stuff. It's even worse for the FAs......
 
75% of my work as a MEM PNCL rsv holder has come out of open time. I have only had 2 trips that were not. One guy got sick, the other started vacation..
 
Get ready for it to stay that way. With lines being built to 90-95 hours of credit, there's no way line holders can even attempt to pick up open time and still be legal. Even AFTER the build up lines came out, there's still a decent amount of FO open time out there in MEM. I didn't even look at the other bases or CA open time.
 
Get ready for it to stay that way. With lines being built to 90-95 hours of credit, there's no way line holders can even attempt to pick up open time and still be legal. Even AFTER the build up lines came out, there's still a decent amount of FO open time out there in MEM. I didn't even look at the other bases or CA open time.

kell, got a few questions for ya, I'm trying to get a feel for how this reserve duty stuff all works...

Assume you're a newbie DTW FO on reserve, and assume you are on reserve from April 2-7th.

1. Is there a way that you can look up open trips, and then pick one if there is one available during the period of April 2-7th? Does crew sked ok you for it?

2. Say today is April 1, and you have your reserve period starting tomorrow. You discover (I don't know how, but just say you do) that there is an open time trip, a 4-day from DTW. Can you call crew sked and request that open trip?

3. Assume you've been assigned an open time trip for April 2nd, and has a check in time of 0900L. Can you now leave your phone off from April 1 all the way up until you check in to the airport on April 2nd? Say your normal reserve time begins at 0600L. But since you've been assigned an open time trip with a 0900L check in, can you now leave your phone off even though your reserve duty time begins at 0600L ? Can crew sked still call you in the morning at 0600L and change your schedule at the last moment?

Thanks!
 
If it's in open time, you can't pick it up as a reserve. It can be ASSIGNED to you , but I don't think you can grab it. Open time goes to lineholders first, and they have (I think) up to 72 hours before the shift begins to try to grab it. After that, it's generally assigned to a reserve guy. In reality, it normally gets assigned to a reserve guy much earlier than that. Back when I was on reserve, I generally knew what I was flying a week or so in advance. There was ONE day where I got a call saying "you're flying XXXX today."

And if you DO get assigned a trip, scheduling can change it at any time. Since you're on reserve, you don't "own" any of those trips. If you check your schedule the night before and see you have a sweet 4 day with 14 hour layovers, you might wake up in the morning with 4 high speeds.
 
If it's in open time, you can't pick it up as a reserve. It can be ASSIGNED to you , but I don't think you can grab it. Open time goes to lineholders first, and they have (I think) up to 72 hours before the shift begins to try to grab it. After that, it's generally assigned to a reserve guy. In reality, it normally gets assigned to a reserve guy much earlier than that. Back when I was on reserve, I generally knew what I was flying a week or so in advance. There was ONE day where I got a call saying "you're flying XXXX today."

And if you DO get assigned a trip, scheduling can change it at any time. Since you're on reserve, you don't "own" any of those trips. If you check your schedule the night before and see you have a sweet 4 day with 14 hour layovers, you might wake up in the morning with 4 high speeds.

Couldnt have said it better myself.. although if you call em up about 2 days before (at night) while they are assigning trips for the next couple days they have been known to give ya one you are eyeballin- happened to me 3 times, the other 10 times i get "rsv guys cant pick up trips"... yeah yeah.. worth a try though
 
At each of your guy's own companies, what's the average flying time a month a reserve pilot is getting? I ask, considering Kell's point that most of PCL's reserve guys are flying open time from lines built for 90-95 hours. Interested to see if any reserve guys are actually coming out with more hours than reserve guarantee.
 
A highspeed, standup, CDO is all the same. The trip would look something like this:

2958 DTW ABE 2128 2258 1:30
2938 ABE DTW 0605 0750 1:45

You get a hotel for the "night" and get your required rest during the day.
 
Basically, a high speed is where you leave the night before and you're still techinally "on duty" while you take your nap at the hotel. Normally, you're one of the last flights out and one of the first flights back. So, it's a max time of 16 hours legally or 15.5 for us per the contract. So, you could take a flight out of DTW at 10:00 PM to HPN and fly it back at like 9:00 AM. Oddly enough, I've gotten more rest on a couple of high speeds than I did on some reduced rest overnights.

When I was on reserve, it was a crap shoot. Some months I got 45+ hours, some I got 12-15. I never broke guarantee of 75 hours, though. If you're a reserve CA, all bets are off. I was routinely hearing guys getting 80-90 hours on reserve on that side of the fence. Now that we're short staffed, I'm betting the reserves are flying a LOT more.
 
FWIW last month I hit 60 hours of credit for the month.. 45 hours of flying and 15 hours of deadhead pay (meaning 30 hours in a pax seat:banghead:) Explain how that makes any sense? I dunno- but I worked 19 of my 20 rsv days and had 4 JM calls that the ignore button made go away:rawk:.
 
He could be lying, but I just talked to my buddy on the bro and he's coming up on 4 months of rsv.

Yeah the bro is staffed(at the moment), but from what I can tell in salt lake is that there is no jet reserve on the FO side.
305 targeted lines - 296 FO's = No reserve
 
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