Reserve vs. Ready Reserve, which do you prefer?

At AX...it depends on the month. We get 5 hours of pay for each ready assignment and we can do it as many times a month as we get it assigned...so if I'm short on hours its a great way to make up the difference. Home reserve is nice too...no pay, but nice to be at home. Today is day 4 of home reserve with no calls in sight.
 
Wow, some of you guys get monthly lines with nothing but Ready reserve (or as we know where I work "ARC" or "airport standby")? Sounds brutal.

For us it's a 4 hour "pairing" that gets assigned to reserve pilots on their regular 2 or 8 hour callout. We get 4 hours of flight pay if we don't get used, and are then released to 11 hour domicile rest. If they call us for a flight (or to start a trip) during airport standby, we only get paid block time for the flights we conduct that day. The time we spent sitting around prior to that gets donated to the company for free, although we do have a 2 hour DPM, so in the worst case scenario you'll get 2 hours of pay.

The paradoxical thing about our contract is the potential to be paid just 2 hours for 3:55 Airport Standby and a 1:55 flight, yet a 24 hour layover where no flights occur nets you 3 hours of pay. Long layovers with no flights are more productive than any day with less 3 hours block time! Weird.
 
Eagle's reserve is garbage now.

They USE to get one Ready Reserve pilot per shift for each aircraft/seat/domicile.. if they used him that was it until the next shift came in. So they only used him if absolutely necessary.

NOW, we still have a scheduled monthly RR pilot but also everyone on Regular reserve gets called from home to come in and sit ready at their will.. it's total BS and a complete waste of your time most of the time to drive all the way to the airport and then back home just to sit there for a couple hours.

Scheduling burns the Ready Reserve.. calls a guy from home on regular reserve just to come sit Ready.. burns him, and so on..

Nothing like getting a call at 7pm when you think you're home free for the day to come sit RR for 1 hour then drive back home:rolleyes: I like when scheduling tries to say "Hey, at least you get paid per diem" Yeah, freakin $1.75 hr to come sit ready.. woopty friggen doo, doesn't even cover gas money.:rolleyes:
 
ctab5060X said:
At 9E, Ready Reserve is the worst possible.
Click to expand...

It wasn't always like that. I only sat a total of about 5 months of reserve my entire time at Pinnacle, but I always bid the pure ready reserve lines that we had when I was a newhire. They were absolutely great for commuters. They were built with 12 days off, and each week started with a late reserve period and ended with an AM reserve period. You got the extra two days off, and were still able to commute same day on both ends. Back in those days, you could easily get scheduling to release you a couple of hours early, too. My, how things changed.
 
I definitely prefer being assigned a RAP, which is our regular reserve. You can go have a life until you're called. I do however like sitting ready on the last day. I can bid the first ready period and attempt to commute home that same day.
 
ATN_Pilot said:
It wasn't always like that. I only sat a total of about 5 months of reserve my entire time at Pinnacle, but I always bid the pure ready reserve lines that we had when I was a newhire. They were absolutely great for commuters. They were built with 12 days off, and each week started with a late reserve period and ended with an AM reserve period. You got the extra two days off, and were still able to commute same day on both ends. Back in those days, you could easily get scheduling to release you a couple of hours early, too. My, how things changed.
Click to expand...


I didn't work for Pinnacle, at Mesa the best Reserve in DEN was an R2 line. It was 6PM-6AM, ready reserve was like 6PM-2AM. However, the last flight left like at 8:30PM... so really after that you were golden. It was like 2 extra days off, because you could commute back on your last day "working" (since you got off at 6AM) and could commute back on your first day back again since you didn't have to be there until 6PM.

I remember calling in one time to get released after the last flight left and the crew tracker was like:

CT: 'Uhh... I don't think so.'
Me: 'All the flights have already left, there is nothing to cover and no reason for me to be here.'
CT: 'Well, they might want you to do a maintenance flight or something.'
Me: 'There are no aircraft here, and furthermore there will be no aircraft here until 7AM tomorrow morning.'
CT: 'You can't go!!'
Me: 'Lemme talk with a chief pilot.'
CT: 'Fine, you're released!! *click*'
Click to expand...

I'm convinced they were training crew trackers during negotiations to make the pilot's lifes as hellish as possible so that they could make the union expend negotiation capital on "QOL improvements". But maybe I'm a cynic.
 
Alchemy said:
Wow, some of you guys get monthly lines with nothing but Ready reserve (or as we know where I work "ARC" or "airport standby")? Sounds brutal.
Click to expand...

It's actually better than it sounds. Either you are regular reserve 2-hour callout or you are ready reserve sitting for 8 hours a day. In most bases there are 2 RR lines and they typically go senior. 4-5 year F/O's bid them and mid-level seniority CA's bid them. You show up around 4:30 AM and sleep until 10 AM, then play Super NES for another 2 hours then go home.

And if your crashpad or your house is close enough you can sit there as they won't know the difference.

Beats being on call for 15 hours a day like regular reserve here, and you always go way over guarantee for flying very little.
 
wheelsup said:
It's actually better than it sounds. Either you are regular reserve 2-hour callout or you are ready reserve sitting for 8 hours a day. In most bases there are 2 RR lines and they typically go senior. 4-5 year F/O's bid them and mid-level seniority CA's bid them. You show up around 4:30 AM and sleep until 10 AM, then play Super NES for another 2 hours then go home.

And if your crashpad or your house is close enough you can sit there as they won't know the difference.
Click to expand...

Must be nice. Our Ready Reserves are given to all reserve pilots, we don't have Ready Reserve lines at Pinnacle. That being said, if you happen to be top dog on reserve, you can pretty much get any reserve period you request. Generally the top two reserve pilots end up with all the Late Ready Reserve periods (19:00 show) and hardly fly. Then again, if you don't fly (even off of RR) you wont break guarantee...ever.

As far as sitting at home, Ready Reserves must "check in" via CrewTrac when they get to the airport... and you can only check in on company approved terminals, i.e. you must go to ops at the airport.
 
ATN_Pilot said:
It wasn't always like that. I only sat a total of about 5 months of reserve my entire time at Pinnacle, but I always bid the pure ready reserve lines that we had when I was a newhire. They were absolutely great for commuters. They were built with 12 days off, and each week started with a late reserve period and ended with an AM reserve period. You got the extra two days off, and were still able to commute same day on both ends. Back in those days, you could easily get scheduling to release you a couple of hours early, too. My, how things changed.
Click to expand...

Wow, have things changed! Too bad reserves get the shaft through PBS. 10 days off with RR periods scattered throughout the entire month. Every reserve FO in MEM has a RR period sometime during the month.
 
wheelsup said:
It's actually better than it sounds. Either you are regular reserve 2-hour callout or you are ready reserve sitting for 8 hours a day. In most bases there are 2 RR lines and they typically go senior. 4-5 year F/O's bid them and mid-level seniority CA's bid them. You show up around 4:30 AM and sleep until 10 AM, then play Super NES for another 2 hours then go home.

And if your crashpad or your house is close enough you can sit there as they won't know the difference.

Beats being on call for 15 hours a day like regular reserve here, and you always go way over guarantee for flying very little.
Click to expand...

It's like a parallel universe. If you even suggested here that a senior (even mid-level) guy would choose a month of our 4 hour RR, they'd spit their coffee all over you laughing! It's almost funny reading it!
 
I'll take ready reserve. If i have to be in EWR, I may as well get paid for 50% of my time on duty.

I know they only pay 3.75, because they drop the last 45 or whatever... but guess when I leave? When I stop getting paid.

If I can bring my credit up to 75hrs with just RR... as soon as I get activated I'm over. I used to be able to mix in some office work for double pay... but the company caught on to the fact that I was pretty much getting paid 8 hrs at full CA rate per day... and put a stop to it. In my short tenure at Colgan, I've come up with some creative way to get paid. My personal fav. was getting paid to drie from Augusta me, to Altoona PA, then rerouted to IAD, to fly 2 legs in the 1900, then drive back. That one trip paid about the same as I was making a month...

Or maybe It was when I did some extra work to get to a wedding... and they sent a 1900 to come get me the next day to bring me back to my base to cover 2 legs LEB-LGA-LEB...

The old 9L used to be fun sometimes...
 
ATN_Pilot said:
It wasn't always like that. I only sat a total of about 5 months of reserve my entire time at Pinnacle, but I always bid the pure ready reserve lines that we had when I was a newhire. They were absolutely great for commuters. They were built with 12 days off, and each week started with a late reserve period and ended with an AM reserve period. You got the extra two days off, and were still able to commute same day on both ends. Back in those days, you could easily get scheduling to release you a couple of hours early, too. My, how things changed.
Click to expand...

Oh, yeah. PBS ROYALLY screwed the reserve system. I remember line bidding on reserve wasn't bad. You hardly ever got escalated to RR, and they couldn't magically change your line however they wanted up to 4 days after it was posted (except for interface). Scheduling won't release you until the last flight is off the ground (just in case of an air return), and even if you're not legal to accept anything, they'll still hold you at the airport "just in case we need you for a MX flight." They kept me the whole time the other night, and I wasn't even legal to take the last two flights. It wasn't until they click over to departing an hour after my reserve was scheduled to end that I convinced them to let me go home.....5 minutes early.

If there were a pay credit for RR, I'd have broken guarantee back on 4/21. Instead, I credited 71 hours with NINE RRs for the month.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top