36-42 additional guaranteed days a year off for reserves is a pretty nice advantage. Most of the airline commutes and as reserve is correlated with juniority (not a straight line relationship but fairly similar) most who commute on reserve benefit very little with mid reserve stint long calls where they weren't used after the fact compared to an extra 36-42 days off a year, guaranteed.

And that's best case when we have fat categories. When we're lean on staffing and reserves are always flying, our current system is even worse.

For every guy sitting long call at home there is someone sitting long call at the hotel or pad and even if they aren't eventually used I doubt very much that *most* reserve pilots benefit more from the current system than having an extra 36-42 guaranteed days a year off.