Turbosina

I've perused the forums extensively and have pieced together a basic understanding of UAL reserve policies, but with the new contract it's a bit confusing to figure out what's the latest. Got my class date (hallelujah!) so I thought I'd ask about reserve.

Initially I was planning on bidding NBFO, with the hope of driving to work and holding a line as soon as realistically possible. I can see the SFO airport beacon from my house, so driving to work is easy. There don't appear to be any SFO FO spots on the new-hire class drop lists, but I figure I can bid DEN or IAH and hopefully get a base transfer at some point soon. And hopefully I'll hold a line sooner rather than later.

Then I got thinking about bidding NBCA. Obviously I'd be on reserve until the sun runs out of nuclear fuel. But I live in base, and I actually prefer to fly on weekends. I don't care about working on holidays -- in fact I prefer it. Also (and feel free to call me nuts), I prefer to fly a fair amount — I'd rather fly than sit at home. The last thing I want to do is sit around twiddling my thumbs for weeks on end on reserve.

So my questions are:

1) I believe reserve is now mostly long-call, with up to 6 short-call conversions per month?

2) What is the callback window (i.e. when Scheduling calls you for a trip, how long do you have before you have to acknowledge the trip?)

3) How easy is it to proffer for trips (ie get trips assigned on your reserve days)? How about picking up flying on your days off?

4) Just the fact that CA slots are even available to new hires, tells me that I'm missing something big in terms of the rsv rules. The pay difference between CA/ FO is significant, and that means the QoL hit people take by being on reserve must be significant. What am I not seeing?

5) Roughly how long to hold a line, at the moment, for NBFOs in SFO? I'm guessing NBCA is 6-7 years, correct?

Thank you in advance for any information y'all might be able to share. It is much appreciated.

sofarup

You’re coming from SkyWest right?

1. It’s always long call, unless you get converted to short call. Not like the SKW system of 12 or 18 hours and you’re off or whatever it was. 24 hours on LC with current 13 hour call out. 18 hours in August. Not everything is implemented until August and that’s when the better reserve rules happen, like 6 SC caps.

2. No set limit. I had PTSD from SKW about having to answer when they call. You don’t have to. You just have to call back in a reasonable time frame. Most take this to mean 20 or so minutes. Let them call, check the trip, make sure it’s legal and legit with the contract, then call them back.

3. You can Agressive Pick Up a trip the day before it starts. The trip has to fit into the bucket of days you have left or the bucket (silo at United) minus one day.

4. Lot of people commute. They don’t want to commute to reserve rules that won’t be made better until August. Commuting to current reserve as a captain is pretty draining to say the least. I’m in base so it works for me.

5. SFO is insanely junior. Think the most junior. I’ll have to look but I think you can hold NBCA there in a year easy. You’ll hold a line on the 737 within months.

Upon looking, less than a year to hold CA in SFO on the 737. Current plug is a 402xxx number which has been on property about 13 or so months.

Turbosina

Super helpful! Thank you so much for that.

Yup, coming from SKW...I had a good line as a CA for a while and then we lost much of our SFO flying so I was back on RSV. Being on RSV, even in base, was not my cup of tea.

Just out of curiosity...(roughly) how many years to being the plug lineholder for SFO 737 CA? I'm out of my mind for even considering it...I should probably just bid for NBFO and enjoy having a line, until such time as I can hold a line as a CA. But this "awarding CA slots in indoc" thing just has me wondering.

Halon1211

is WB f/o pretty junior out of SFO Or LAX? Thanks

Also if I didn’t get WB out initially while in training, am I seat locked if I want it at the next bid?

PK387

If you don't mind getting used on reserve and flying weekends and holidays for a long time, junior NB CA is perfect for you. Living in base, reserve really isn't bad at all in my opinion. Others may disagree, but pre-UPA23, I think people's biggest gripes about reserve here were:

a) Moveable days off, especially on global reserve
b) Unlimited conversions to short call or field standby
c) Largely because of b), commuting to reserve was hellish
d) Fewer days off compared to a lineholder

Contractually, here's what's improved (or not) since then:

a) UPA23 barely improved this one
b) SCs are now limited and FSBs are basically gone, and both pay significantly better. New flavors of reserve are also coming this August, including long-call-only which can't be converted.
c) Improvements to b) should help, and the call out on long call was also improved to 14 hours during the assignment window (1200-1400) or 18 hours otherwise.
d) We got an extra day off in the 8 slowest months of the year, and more pay for the same days off during the busy 4. This one's basically always going to be a fact of life on reserve though.

Agree with all of sofarup's answers above.

For me personally with a little under two years on property, I bid around 40% NB FO but would be 99% NB CA. As an FO that lives locally and usually bids reserve, I get everything I ask for in terms of days off, pretty decent vacation, etc., and I'll make a bit over $200k this year, which is more than enough for me and the wife. In terms of QoL, I flew a total of 66 hours during the 10 months I bid reserve last year... talk about a dream job. To me, it's not worth screwing that up by moving to the bottom of the list in the left seat. The marginal utility of another $100k (currently) just isn't worth the QoL hit.

PK387

For Feb, the juniormost SFO CA guaranteed a line was roughly a 2017-2018 hire with a seniority number around 98XX. I'm sure some guys managed to get a line below that, but that's probably the point where you could get a line semi-consistently, at least at this snapshot in time.

Eh, not really. Juniormost folks that got SFO WB FO on the recent vacancy were around 2.5 years on property. Worse for LAX although there were only 3 awards there, so not a great indication. I'd plan at least a couple years though.

Oversimplifying here, but you can basically always bid up after indoc. The seat lock would just prevent you from bidding laterally or down.

Turbosina

This is fantastic info, I'm really grateful for your having taken the time to write this.

2 more noob questions:

1) You mentioned that people get used a lot on reserve, but you also mentioned you only flew 66 hours in 10 months. If I flew that little my wife would kick me out of the house and tell me to go do something with my life So my question is: are people really flying that little on reserve? Or were you flying so little because you're senior in seat and bidding reserve, thereby escaping most of the reserve callouts?

2) You mentioned an assignment window of 1200-1400. At SKW, you're notifiable either 0400-1600 (AM SC reserve), or 0900-2100 (PM SC reserve) with a 10-minute callback. Plus you're notifiable 24/7 if on long call with a 1-hr callback. This basically means you're absolutely tethered to your phone for 12 hours a day (short call) or 24 hrs/day (long call.) Can you explain a bit more about the 'assignment window'? Is that just when trips are pulled out of OT and assigned to reserves, or...I guess I'm just trying to understand, on a reserve day (under the new contract), how many hours in a day you are on the hook for that callback.

Thank you so much for all this helpful info!

Turbosina

Thank you! That makes perfect sense and is in line with what I had anticipated.

ThumbsUp

Just realize that DOH means very little. System seniority is a better measure. A 9800 seniority number today is about 58% system seniority. It might be substantially longer for someone hired today to hit that mark.

Turbosina

Ah yes. That's a great point indeed.