FtB,

I'm gonna wait to see how it all plays out, and I admit I had to skim all of you guys analysis on what you think is gonna happen with the new reserve changes. But, if your goal is to stay at home, I think you should be ok.

Here's how I look at it. The company and union saw a lot of people complaining about being forced to commute to reserve. These changes probably address those concerns by not allowing a difference of 1 point in RAW score to be the cause of someone who doesn't want to fly to have to fly when there is someone out there who want's to fly. Make sense? (I know, probably not. )

Ok. Maybe an example is better. Let's say you are a reserve pilot who lives in base and you want to stay at home. You've got a raw score of 0, but there is a guy who has to commute to reserve who has vacation at the end of the month, so he has a RAW score of 16. Both of you start your reserve days on the 1st, and a trip comes up for the second. (Of course, he's in base because he had to sit SC his first day.) He want's to get out of there because he burning up hotel expenses, or his crash pad buds are in town and they don't take baths, or something. Under the old system, even though he wants the trip to escape the funk, he can't get it, and he's stuck and unhappy, while you get the the trip that takes you away from home.

I'm thinking the buckets and increased seniority honoring provisions will even themselves out and allow people to fly when they want to based on seniority. If I'm on reserve and someone gets a trip I wanted because he's more senior to me, at least I know he wanted it and it's not a situation where he has to go fly and I have to sit in a hotel room just because of a point or two.

I think the changes assume that there are a certain percentage of people in every category on reserve who want to fly. For the people who want to stay at home, they should be able to do so, up to a point.

Well, that's how I see it.

New K