ancman

Have you read anything that he or I posted?

He’s clearly a rep (my apologies if I got the council wrong). I’m simply wondering where his data points are coming from.

It’s worth asking when his sole rebuttal to a post in which I agreed with another pilot’s idea was “your fellow pilots disagree with you”.

Gone Flying

idk about his status as a rep, but I do have to say I think switching to a system like what AA has would be wildly unpopular here. 50% of reserve lines are SC every day and they only get 3 extra hours for it? And I believe LC can still get converted to SC. No thanks.

now if we are talking a system like what UA has where it is voluntary and pays a good chunk extra, I think it would have merit, but I think most pilots would consider AA’s system a big step down from ours.

tennisguru

That sounds unnecessarily complex. Hopefully it works out for UA. Our 18 hour callout with occasional SC conversion sounds better than that. Sometimes if you try to get too cute trying to "fix" things it ends up being worse.

Our reserve system works pretty well as is. Someone is always going to be junior and trips need to be covered. With a little seniority, whether you commute or live in base, you can make reserve a pretty comfortable gig. I would venture that most of the people griping on here can easily hold a line, but bid reserve regularly in order to work less or hold the days off (primarily weekends) that they need. As staffing in any particular category swings up and down you may need to adjust your strategy each month. And honestly category staffing is doing to be the biggest driver of reserve QOL. At least if the category is super short staffed you can play the GS game (if you live in base or have a relatively short/easy commute). So overall what we have works. Like I said earlier, the easiest improvement would be to have 1 hour SCC paid for every assigned SC, not just unused. That alone would assuage a lot of the angst for commuters having to come in knowing no matter what they are getting some extra coin.

ancman

SC is popular among those who live in base there because they do less flying than LC reserves (and receive slightly more pay). Obviously that doesn’t directly translate to our system as 12-hour vs. 18-hour callout skews usage. LC to SC conversion is possible at AA under limited conditions, but is very rare compared to ours.

A good starting point for us would be establishing 1 hour pay above guarantee for every SC, whether used or not. IMHO, we should at least be able to pre-bid all 6 of our monthly maximum SCs.

cencal83406

imo a good first step is actually honoring the current pwa lin regards to short call awards and assignments.

brakechatter

I will throw your post right back at you and ask if you even read anything I wrote, because you misquoted. Here is the post again:


I really have no obligation to clarify myself to your odd claims and non-sequiturs. I will repeat that I am well versed both professionally and personally in AA's system, that your fellow pilots were collectively not interested in AA's system (if you look at the quote above and actually read it, you will see the word 'disagreed', and that my personal observations of pilot feedback to C2019 are that the reserve system is much improved and many commuters routinely bid as such. The main question I get involves positive space. When drilling down further, it seems the largest beef is not the positive space itself but the backup requirement -- as the company is willing to positive space you to work a large majority of the time when your primary fails. But I digress in that it is just an unscientific personal observation of conversations on the flight deck, layover get togethers, and crew room conversations.

My opinion and observations are different from yours, and the best you can come with is that I am a council 44 rep, then you weakly try to back off a bit by distilling it down to an unknown council, but definitely a rep - as if that somehow makes my observations and opinions invalid.

I mean, you say that you have friends at American, and I am suspsect that you have friends at all, let alone at American. But I don't use that suspicion to try and further my argument.

I do have a suggestion. If you feel very strongly about it, get your rep (it won't be me no matter the base to which you are affiliated) to help you write a resolution to explore it as part of the next contract negotiations. Anonymous web boards, while great for lobbing spears, accomplish little in the real world.

Every airline has a culture, and every airline has reserve in some way, shape or form. My personal opinion is that great strides were made in scheduling, including reserve, in C2019 to accommodate all pilots, but with commuters specifically in mind. Further improvements will be accomplished in the next contract via the collective feedback of our pilot group, and hopefully won't be offset by inevitable wish list of the company -- which is where the real key lies in negotiations.

I'll say it again: if you want to continue receiving full pay, eventually you will have to step foot on the property - even as a commuting pilot.

JTwift

an extra wrinkle that other airlines probably don’t do that we do, is FIFO/SILO. You are put into buckets with how many day left on reserve you have, but then you’re also in First In First Out order.

my main personal issue with this is the FIFO system. If there are two people with let’s say 5 days of reserve, person A gets a 4 day trip that ends on day 4 at 1400. Person B gets nothing their first 3 days until day 4, but their 1 day trip ends at 1401. Person A will still be ahead of person B to get something on day 5 because they “returned” first, even by one minute, even though they worked 4 full days and person B had 3 days off then worked 1 day.

the locals will strategically pick up a short call when they’re getting close to the top of the FIFO list, hope they don’t get anything, then that resets them to the bottom again. Meanwhile, commuters are working all 5 days with something.

FangsF15

I think you are confused. That’s not how it works. FIFO isn’t a thing here. Seniority and RAW buckets control. If both pilots are in the same RAW bucket, and have the same days of availability left, the only way that 1 minute would make a difference is if Person B is Junior but not legal for the trip. If both are legal and in the same RAW bucket, the junior pilot gets the trip, period.

Moreover, Person A got more RAW points, and may be in a higher RAW bucket after the trip, which puts them after Person B regardless.

Gone Flying

I think JTwift works for United

JTwift

im talking about UAL. There was some discussion on the difference in reserve rules. I’m just providing context.