RD,
Answering your questions from above:
Does it mean that the more senior get to choose to stay at home and not fly?It depends on how much you weight seniority. Giving senior pilots the most possible weight would allow them to pass on trips until the junior guys fly to the limit. This requires the company to man the category with more reserves to handled the lopsided distribution of flying.
The company does not like this.
Junior guys on reserve don't like this. With the possible exception that it requires more total pilots - possible hiring but small consolation while they are being abused.
Senior guys on reserve like this.
On the other hand with the current system seniority has almost zero weight - basically a tie breaker. Consider this:
Senior pilot has flown for a total of 9 days with a raw score of 48.
Junior pilot has flown for a total of 9 days with a raw score of 49.
Both guys have the same days of availability - senior guy gets assigned first unless the junior guy chooses to lower his raw score. So in this case the senior pilot has no real seniority advantage.
If seniority were considered in the reserve system, instead of RAW value, wouldn't the more junior folks be getting a worse deal than we have already?
You can see from the above that there is a spectrum along which you can weigh seniority to favor the senior pilots and disadvantage the junior pilots. In the past we operated more to the favor seniority end of the spectrum. We are currently operating more toward the no weight for senority which by the way appears to more efficient for the company.
There are two separate issues in my mind when trying to improve our system:
1. Find a method to weigh seniority that would not cause the company to carry more reserves or minimize the additional reserves required. Or else just accept the higher cost of more reserves required.
2. Find a suitable seniority weighing mechanism that would favor the senior pilots but not totally hose the junior guys. Basically, how much weight should we give seniority. Some guys want the system to absolutely favor the senior guys. Other guys want seniority to not count at all in reserve assignments. Most guys (myself included) want to try to figure out the sweet spot that gives senior guys some but not a total advantage in reserve assignments.
If you keep up with this post there have been many suggested improvements to our reserve system that tweak the seniority advantage at minimal cost to the company.
One thing that absolutely needs to fixed is the reserve guarantee needs to be 75 hours minimum or even 75 for long call pilots and 79 for short call pilots. If its good enough for DAL's preferred Pilots (Alaska Pilots) its good enough for us.
Scoop