Originally Posted by
UncleSam
FTB,
This is not what I have been told by scheduling supervisors. I was #7 in order for a 4-day. Everyone ahead of me was assigned SC for the next day. A 4-day trip came up late in the day but was over 12 hr before sign-in. I got the trip because all the other pilots "had an assignment for the next day." Turns out that they should not use a pilot that has SC assigned unless there are no other LC pilots available in that grouping. So, yes scheduling can manipulate the trip assignments by using SC's.
Had a conversation with a scheduler about this (one that knew what he was talking about, after a long painful conversation with a clueless scheduler). This is what I gathered: What happens automatically is it will look forward to when the trip starts, and if a pilot is on short call it will not assign it to them. However, there are some schedulers (the daytime guys that have been there a long time and know what they are doing) that will see a guy who would be next in line for a trip has short call the next day, and they may choose to take the short call off of him so that the trip falls to him instead. Typically this is if that person has a 0 raw and hasn't flown. Spreads out the flying. Either way it is contractually allowed.