Bengalsfan

can anybody answer any of these questions?:

- How long will one generally stay on reserve?

- What is the minimum garaunteed days off per month?

- What are the trip regs with regards to... is Continental allowed to give you your 24hr crew rest in a place other than you domicile?

- Basically does Continental treat the pilots kindly with work rules, or will you find yourself gone 20 days a month because of scheduling priorities, etc.?

calcapt

Reserves at CO get 12 days off. Now that staffing is somewhat better, moving those days around is easier than it used to be. Your days off will be in your domicile. I am flying with new first officers in Houston that are getting off reserve in less than a year but of course that all depends on when you get hired and how many are hired after you. It also depends on if you are reserve in a junior (Newark) or senior (Houston) base. You will be off reserve sooner in a junior base as more new hires tend to be assigned to the junior base. If you live in your domicile reserve is tolerable but just like every other carrier I suppose, when they are short of pilots, scheduling tends to abuse the available reserves more. We also have good schedulers and "others" who are less popular. Good ones will occasinally release you early, bad ones will not even though they could. CO has a "A" and a "B" reserve system. "B' reserves have a two hour requirement to show from initial call, whereby "A" reserves have nine hours to show. Show is one hour prior to push. The "A" system is more popular with commuters who live too far away to make the two, but close enough to make the nine. Monthly guarantee is 72 hours for "A" reserves and 76 hours for "B" reserves. My own personal experience with reserve is mixed. Some days bad but most days tolerable. I commute so that adds it's own set of issues - but that's my fault not the company's. CO reserves also have the ability to look at trips in open time for the following day and pick them up the day before. There are some limitations with this that I won't take the time to explain but, it does give you the chance to get something on your schedule that you choose rather than be assigned something later. Any way you slice it reserve is reserve, and we all look forward to the day we will ascend the the ranks of "lineholder". Hope that helps some!