Reserves and Your Airline

[CoffeeIcePapers]

When I was AA, they broke up trips all the time.

The former manager of scheduling (proper caps) was the devil in female form. She hated pilots. It was either her or someone else that got it into the heads of the higher ups that pilots sitting around on reserve were "stealing from the company", so Scheduling did everything thing in their power to keep the reserves flying right up until guarantee.

On the plus side, this burned all the reserves so that no one was available when the excrement hit the air acceleration device and thus lead to a pure meltdown when one wasn't needed.

AA has had a hub in DFW since 1981 and it's rained in Texas since the beginning of time. But for some reason, it was a completely new and foreign event every time it happened.

The computer is now in charge of reserve assignments. They’re still working out kinks, but it seems to work as designed, where seniority plays a huge role, which is good, imo. I think they still manually break up trips, but I do a lot of trips like DH DFW to AUS and fly back, home by lunch.

 

[N826AW]

At AA, we have trip ownership and are assigned trips based on buckets of days available. If you have 3 days of availability, you're in the 3 day bucket and will get a 3 day trip if your number gets called. They can assign outside of the bucket, but that's only if everyone in that bucket was already cleared out. Once you get the trip, it's yours. If you get re-assigned for any portion of that trip that you are qualified, legal, and available for, you get paid premium for that portion.

They can breakup a trip that hits open time however they want and turn a 4 day into whatever they want, but this isn't that efficient.

We have the same setup sans the premium pay. They typically grab the Day 6 & 5 SCR people to sit hot.

Me, on a 5-day reserve block Mon-Fri

By Friday night. Wife - "Are you sure you're still employed?"

I had this going in October. I like the 'rolling thunder' technique. I may try that next month so I avoid sitting hot.

 

[roundout]

Don’t forget the Oprah “you get a car’” meme, except instead of cars, err’body gets short call.

At least you get paid

 

[ChasenSFO]

That’s a lot of underwear to pack

Not if you wear chaps.

 

[Apophis]

At least you get paid

I’m feasting on short call credits like a fat kid at the buffet.

I’ve flown 2 days in the last 4 weeks….if not for CQ I probably wouldn’t know what my aircraft even looks like.

 

[Cherokee_Cruiser]

I’m feasting on short call credits like a fat kid at the buffet.

I’ve flown 2 days in the last 4 weeks….if not for CQ I probably wouldn’t know what my aircraft even looks like.

Same here, I just got called for a 2-day Monday Tuesday (yesterday). Before that, my last official reserve callout was a 1-day trip on Oct 1.

 

[Pilot Fighter]

You figure out where to do laundry pretty fast. I still manage get all my clothes in a 22" suitcase for a 17 day trip.

Socks and underwear are disposable.

 

[ASpilot2be]

Socks and underwear are disposable.

Something tells me I would have a hard time finding underwear in my size in China. Plus I don't want to do that every month.

 

[Pilot Fighter]

Something tells me I would have a hard time finding underwear in my size in China. Plus I don't want to do that every month.

China needs Dollar General with American sizing.

 

[BobDDuck]

China needs Dollar General with American sizing.

Pretty much everything in Dollar General comes from China...

 

[Skåning]

Something tells me I would have a hard time finding underwear in my size in China. Plus I don't want to do that every month.

400 in china, go get em!

 

[BrettInLJ]

The short answer to your question is, YES.

Reserve is going to vary widely among Cargo, Regional, Major narrowbody, and Major widebody.

Even the latter though, you can go from working zero or once a month, getting assigned an actual full pairing, or getting assigned some out and back, recovery, ferry, etc. So it all depends.