ZapBrannigan

Beats me. Maybe they wanted to hold reserves back in case they needed them deeper into the weekend? Maybe they saw someone with 5 days of reserve and couldn't figure out how to put a 4 day on there. No idea how the sausage is made.

e6bpilot

Crazy thought here:

Reserves aren't really meant to fly open time trips unless they are uncovered by other means. They are meant to absorb the shock from disruptions and last minute happenings.

The company using reserves to fly open time has blown up in their faces spectacularly many times in the past.

ZapBrannigan

That's how reserves are used at virtually every other airline.

If learning has occurred it would benefit the pilot group greatly (even if it inconveniences me personally at the moment.) Worth it.

hoover

Scheduling can also see the trips that aren't in open time that they are parking so they know if they'll.have the reserves or not. So they award premium first for a bit

e6bpilot

Not sure I follow this one. They shouldn't be parking anything for longer than it takes to throw it back in open time. Even trips that get broken are placed back in the pool once they are given deadheads and new trip numbers.

They can see the open time inventory, the weather, and any perceived disruptions and adjust accordingly.

Interestingly enough, during November they assigned reserves before premium and had a pretty good month (mostly due to good weather).

I don't know if they have decided to switch back for December and see what it does to their numbers or what? Time will tell.

Mozam

You are correct , but against what is allowed CS does park/hid trips. They do more often when they have lots of reserves .

ZapBrannigan

I’m wondering if there are either regional, or domicile specific scheduling supervisors who are given wide latitude to determine what reserve staffing they think they’ll need. So one might decide they want to hang onto reserves for the weekend, while another rolls the dice betting on good weather. Maybe there isn’t a companywide policy at play?

Tenacvols

In MCO (FO) since November, that’s when I started looking at it, scheduling has been awarding Premium for daily open time before using reserves. If there are not any straight or premium bidders, they have been dropping those trips back into open time as VPF options. Then, day of, they’ve been assigning reserves.

usernamehere

Seems like a hybrid to me. Sometimes they’ll award premium before reserve sometimes they won’t. I had a turn awarded and people were bidding premium. And I saw trips go to premium with reserves available.

e6bpilot

I bid a lot of open time in a lot of different bases and it is generally the same policy applied throughout the system for the day, at least for the 0900 close. Some days it is premium before reserves, some it is max reserve then premium. I haven't seen a day where they mix it up by locality. If I am bidding open time, I almost always throw at least 3 bases worth of bids in the hopper to maximize my chances.

I am sure that it is a policy being applied by one supervisor, whoever is in charge of open time awards for the day. I just wonder if they have latitude to do what they want or if this is some sort of experiment by crew scheduling management to throw different things against the wall and see what sticks. There doesn't seem to be any real consistency to it at all, at least as of November. Prior to that they were almost always (with a few exceptions) awarding premium prior to reserves and then still utilizing reserves in the 80 to 90 percent range because they would run out of bidders. In Zap's example yesterday, there were a ton of reserves, great weather, and they assigned everything to premium. It is a weekend and there will be sick calls, but still....weird.