donpizmeov2

How many days of rvs in a raw and how often they call you in BWI? When they call you have to be at the airport or at the airplane in 2 hours? They usually call you and they give you only 2 hours show-up or they usually call you for a 3+ hours?

CA1900

All reserve comes in either 3-day or 4-day blocks, depending on which reserve line you get. Typically you'll see 3 or 4 days off inbetween those reserve blocks.

All schedules, even reserve, have a minimum of 15 days off per month, which is what I'd expect on reserve. So a 31-day month will have 16 days of reserve.

Reserves are used fairly heavily here. You can put in a preference for "pass," and if there's a guy with a "fly" preference before you, for the same number of reserve days remaining, he'll get called before you will. But overall, expect to fly on the majority of your reserve days.

That said, the bulk of our trips are 3-day trips, so if you get a line with 4-day reserve blocks, there's a pretty good possibility you won't get called out on either the first or last day of the block.

It's 2 hours to report to the crew lounge, which is another hour prior to departure/pushback time of your flight. So really it's 3 hours from callout to pushback. In my experience on reserve, the callouts were evenly split between being assigned the night before, and right at the 2-hour report time.

donpizmeov2

Thanks CA1900
basically you have to live within 1 and half hours from base till you are reserve

at6d

As long as you can be within a two hour callout from the time your RAP starts, you can commute to reserve.

You can also trade reserve blocks for a trip (with other pilots), you can give away reserve blocks in your domicile and pick up in another, and you can also try and give away your last day of reserve.

Of course, anything you give away is deducted from your monthly trip payout.

donpizmeov2

That's nice ... so instead of only 3 days off between rsv you can have 6 days off in a raw so you can spend 4 days at home and 2 days commute ... did I understand?

Cozmo

I'm guessing the company doesn't cover the cost of hotels while you're sitting around waiting to get called in. If you're commuting, do you have to budget $1500 per month for hotels? I assume crash pads are cheaper? What do most first year guys do?

Skyward

I was able to trade almost all of my reserve for trips when I was a newb. The few times that I had to do a reserve block as a commuter, I would bid to fly. I don’t think I’ve ever had to spend more than about $400 a month on hotels. Now that I’m awarded a hard line and can ELITT, I don’t need a hotel at all (still a commuter that prefers PM trips)

e6bpilot

Most reserve commuters either get a crash pad or just budget a few hundred a month for hotels. If you have a fly preference, you will almost certainly fly 90 percent of the time.
I had a crash pad in Houston when I was young and eventually decided it wasn’t worth the hassle and hazard.
Reserve has been a boondoggle for the last 7 or 8 months but that is coming to a screeching halt here very soon. Even the most ardent pass guys will be flying their butts off.

CA1900

You don't have to live in that radius. You just need to be there on your assigned reserve days. I commuted to PM reserve in Oakland for a few months. I'd come down in the morning, drop my bags off in the crew lounge, and either hang out there or take the train into San Francisco, depending on my mood. Towards the late afternoon, if an assignment wasn't looking likely, I'd go check into a hotel for the night.

I had a "fly" preference, and would get used a lot. I had a lot of 4-day reserve blocks, but most of our trips are 3-days, so I often sat on that 4th (or 1st) day of the block. But otherwise I'd fly. I typically had to buy 4 or 5 hotel nights a month, since PM trips often got back after the last commute flight home, but sometimes they got in early enough to get home that night.

Yes, crash pads are cheaper, but some bases (like OAK) really don't have them. The hotel I used in OAK was $92/night including tax, and was very commuter-friendly, offering 4pm check-outs and easy cancellations. I budgeted about $500/mo for hotels, and that was pretty accurate. If I had it to do over again, I'd have switched bases to LAS as soon as I could, as the hotels are cheaper and there's a whole lot more to do.

PowerShift

The reserve philosophy has changed at the NOC. Dump them into system on day 1 and keep the reserve out in the system for their whole trip. Double, triple deadheads your last day back to base.

Plan on being gone your entire reserve block.