Originally Posted by
gloopy
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.
Gloopy,
According to my buds at SWA - you are pretty much going to fly on reserve. This is very category and time of the year dependent at DAL - at times we have guys pushing up against mandatory sims because they have not flown at DAL in months. So if you really want to add up days off - which for guys in base pretty much means long call - DAL is a pretty good deal. And yes - surprising as it may be to some guys on this forum - some DAL Pilots do actually live in base and enjoy reserve, especially long call.
So I repeat - there are many things about SWA that are better than DAL - reserve is not one of them.
Scoop