AboveAndBeyond

Between 30 and 80. Depends on base, what month it is, and what seat is more short staffed at the moment.

Stratapilot

I'm DCA based and I've done 11 hours so far in September and 36 last month but that was purely by virtue of having my last IOE trip at the beginning of the August. Better get a crashpad because hotel rooms will get expensive.

WICheeseHead

What makes the reserve rules at PSA so bad? Seems everywhere it is bad, but people are saying it is really bad at psa...

chrisreedrules

Reserve does suck everywhere. It's bad at PSA because our scheduling department is such a nightmare. They're constantly losing the forest for the trees and they seem to use reserves as inefficiently as possible most of the time. That's it in a nutshell from what I can tell.

AboveAndBeyond

Most people that complain about the reserve rules here have never been on reserve anywhere else. So, they complain.

Schedulers are inefficient, but that is about it. The company is working to make it better, as was described at the company meeting with the pilot group today. No details, but they know it could be better.

Being able to call and request a trip that is in open time when you are on reserve would be great. We should be able to look at the open time and call in and request a specific trip if it is open. As long as we don't break guarantee, who cares if I fly a particular 4 day or another. They are going to make me work, I might as well work something that I want if given the choice. It isn't hurting anyone. If someone more senior wants the same trip, then he/she should get it instead of me. Simple.

Also, being able to commute in during your call out time would be great as well. For instance, if I am on reserve starting at 11am, the earliest that I could actually fly would be 1pm after a 2 hour call out. I could fly in at noon and be ready to fly at 1pm, except I would not be available to answer the phone at 11am when they called me. So, if scheduling allowed me to call them at 9am and say "hey...I'm getting on an airplane to commute to my base, if you are going to assign me a trip that starts at 1pm, I will be ready and will call you back when I land at 12:10".

Scheduling requires us to call them the night before a reserve assignment starts to get our reserve start time. They should be able to look forward a few days and be able to assign it when we check out on the previous reserve assignment, but they can't. So, we have to call the night before. That means that we are required to call on a day off, which makes it a work day in the eyes of FAR117.

But, if those things are fixed, it is like most anywhere else.

Thedude86

Did they discuss anything else worth noting? Like upgrades or maintenance? Seems like everytime I've flown a 200 lately it's been delayed (if not canceled) more than half the time.

Hardcharger

Hopefully they also discussed these trips that start at 0445 on the fist day and finish at 9 or 10 in the evening on the fourth day.

Quarryman

Or those multi hour sits in CLT as you repeatedly go in and out of that hell hole.

Nothing will change so long as classes are being filled.

DoNoHarm

I have looked through hundreds, if not thousands of trips, and have never seen one that starts that early nor ends that late. Can you provide an example of this?

DoNoHarm

Im pretty sure that not filling classes would make things even worse.

Right now, time spent on reserve is only a few months and time to upgrade is less than a year. The number of lines is increasing, so those that have been here awhile have more choices for lines. Flow is increasing, and opportunities for line pilots to become LCA's or instructors is increasing.

None of those things would happen if classes were not being filled.

If we were not filling classes, we would have less trips and less chances of bidding an efficient schedule that we want. It would make things worse, not better.

If you don't like flying in and out of Charlotte, then quit and go fly in and out of some other hellhole for another company. Charlotte ramp pays me thousands a dollars a year. My favorite thing is sitting on November short of 36C for 30 mins. That is the easiest money that you can make.